Also in the News - Part 2

[Jon the Hat]

1 hour ago, Daggers said:

I find your comment sad tbh, and I’m guessing you never went to a pantomime as a kid.

I’m not debating this so don’t expect further response.

Sadly the tradition of the pantomime dame is a long way from the sexualized dress of some of these performers.  Its just not appropriate for kids, and I cannot see the benefit to be honest.  How would it possibly help kids?

[marbles]

33 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

 

 

On the general topic, my viewpoint is that in terms of deeds while the worst some "woke" activists have done have gotten some people "cancelled" in terms of losing careers or being hounded on social media, 

Sorry, had to laugh at this part.

Are you actually suggesting that being cancelled, losing a career and/or hounded on social media has not, and will not lead to depression, thought of and possibly suicide?

 

Not comparing it to being killed, but the way I’m reading what you wrote, is that “it’s really no big deal” - which is surprise coming from you.  Hopefully I am mistaken.

[ozleicester]

on "algorithms"... Ill just recommend this book once more...



Its not just algorithms, it is a concerted, for profit, corporate plan, and if you use Facebook, youtube, twitter, tiktok or any socials, you were and are being targeted.

 

[Jon the Hat]

4 minutes ago, ozleicester said:

on "algorithms"... Ill just recommend this book once more...



Its not just algorithms, it is a concerted, for profit, corporate plan, and if you use Facebook, youtube, twitter, tiktok or any socials, you were and are being targeted.

 

As the saying goes, if you are not paying for a product, you are the product.

[leicsmac]

1 hour ago, marbles said:

Sorry, had to laugh at this part.

Are you actually suggesting that being cancelled, losing a career and/or hounded on social media has not, and will not lead to depression, thought of and possibly suicide?

 

Not comparing it to being killed, but the way I’m reading what you wrote, is that “it’s really no big deal” - which is surprise coming from you.  Hopefully I am mistaken.

I'm saying that actually being killed is a bigger deal than being cancelled, and while it is possible to focus on both problem areas at the same time perhaps the bigger issue should be the priority issue?

[marbles]

20 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

I'm saying that actually being killed is a bigger deal than being cancelled, and while it is possible to focus on both problem areas at the same time perhaps the bigger issue should be the priority issue?

and we do that by minimizing the impact of the "lesser" issue?

Just saying.  Your wording left a lot to be desired - unless sugar coating was your objective.

 

Either way, not looking to argue or debate.  Just thought I'd seek clarification.  If you're happy with it, so am I.

 

 

[leicsmac]

Just now, marbles said:

and we do that by minimizing the impact of the "lesser" issue?

Just saying.  Your wording left a lot to be desired - unless sugar coating was your objective.

 

Either way, not looking to argue or debate.  Just thought I'd seek clarification.  If you're happy with it, so am I.

 

 

Fair enough, clarity of communication is important so thanks for pointing that out. I hope that I have made my position clearer in subsequent posts, but purely for the record - deal with both issues at the same time as a matter of necessity and there is a problem with "cancelling", but the bigger problem out there in terms of deeds is still the various prejudices against people of colour and LGBT folks held by those who still have power to exercise them (and numerous examples of that exist), so there needs to be an appropriate amount of focus on each problem to deal with both successfully.

[Super_horns]

Was there racism in how the pandemic was handled and people treated differently depending on their race?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64783753

[Daggers]

8 hours ago, ozleicester said:

on "algorithms"... Ill just recommend this book once more...



It’snot just algorithms, it is a concerted, for profit, corporate plan, and if you use Facebook, youtube, twitter, tiktok or any socials, you were and are being targeted.

 

Facebook is currently telling me my wife doesn’t love me for me and that I should put myself out there to find someone who does. 
 

Facebook knows everything, I guess I’ve got to do it. Who here has got a mum who’s a bit of a slapper?

[LiberalFox]

Massive Walrus Spotted

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-64793768

 

[Tommy G]

Couple who were missing with their newborn baby are found.....but missing the baby, and not cooperating with Police. Some weirdo's out there

[ClaphamFox]

2 hours ago, Tommy G said:

Couple who were missing with their newborn baby are found.....but missing the baby, and not cooperating with Police. Some weirdo's out there

I really, really hope they found somebody to look after the baby, but at the same time I can't help fearing the worst  

[Super_horns]

1 hour ago, ClaphamFox said:

I really, really hope they found somebody to look after the baby, but at the same time I can't help fearing the worst  

Doesn’t sound good .

 

No baby can survive outside surely ?

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64794712

[Facecloth]

35 minutes ago, Super_horns said:

Doesn’t sound good .

 

No baby can survive outside surely ?

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64794712

Further arrested on a charges of gross negligence manslaughter. So I guess the police have found a body or are working in the thought process that the baby is dead.

[foxy boxing]

31 minutes ago, Super_horns said:

Doesn’t sound good .

 

No baby can survive outside surely ?

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64794712

They have been arrested on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter. Unless they know someone who is looking after the child, it is most likely dead. 

[Legend_in_blue]

18 minutes ago, foxy boxing said:

They have been arrested on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter. Unless they know someone who is looking after the child, it is most likely dead. 

It's beyond comprehension to have a total 200 police on the search and continue to not say where the child is.  No words, terrible.

[Jon the Hat]

20 hours ago, Super_horns said:

Was there racism in how the pandemic was handled and people treated differently depending on their race?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64783753

It's a fair question, although unless there are some stats to back it up I'm not clear why this should be the center of the enquiry.  Part of certainly.  There was a point where the reporting suggested ethnic minorities were more severely impacted, but that appeared to be due to the share working in industries which kept going to work, which if the case would be the likely cause, not racism. I suppose you could argue an indirect causation, but not sure how that helps anyone.

[StanSP]

17 hours ago, Legend_in_blue said:

It's beyond comprehension to have a total 200 police on the search and continue to not say where the child is.  No words, terrible.

Maybe they don't know where it is? If they did, why would they still be searching? 

[ClaphamFox]

1 hour ago, StanSP said:

Maybe they don't know where it is? If they did, why would they still be searching? 

I think Legend-_in_blue was referring to the parents. Presumably they know where the baby is and are refusing to tell the police. If the poor baby has died, they'll both be facing lengthy prison sentences. 

[yorkie1999]

https://news.sky.com/story/m-s-apologises-for-daffodil-and-spring-onion-food-display-after-safety-fears-raised-12822780

 

There used to be a joke about the owner of the local chinese being sent to prison for using daffodil bulbs instead of onions.... did he.... yes, but it's alright because he'll be out in the spring. I never actually thought it could happen in real life.

[ClaphamFox]

In light of recent discussions about censoring Roald Dahl and the meaning of 'woke' etc, I found the article below interesting. It basically argues that the rise of identity politics is not the relentless historical force that some claim it is, but rather a specific cultural trend, borne of certain socio-economic circumstances, that has already peaked and is now petering out. Arthur Brooks, a social science professor at Harvard, was arguing the same thing the other week. Many will undoubtedly disagree with the analysis, but it's an interesting take. 

 

The cultural left has peaked 

Janan Ganesh

 

Exactly when the tide turned, I don’t know. Perhaps a year ago, when Joe Biden in his State of the Union address said he would “fund the police”. Or last week, when Penguin bowed to pressure to keep Roald Dahl’s sometimes cruel work in print. Or the fall of Nicola Sturgeon over, among other things, a gender bill. Or the resilient sales of JK Rowling.

 

These are disconnected events, yes, except in one respect: you wouldn’t have counted on them happening in 2020.

 

The cultural left, it is increasingly clear, peaked that year. “Peaked” does not mean “vanished straight after”. Progressive norms and language remain ascendant in lots of domains. But the year of “defund the police” and vigorous statue-toppling looks in retrospect like the high noon of something, not the dawn of it. Even the word “woke” has a derisive connotation now that it didn’t back then. Were I to use it in this column instead of “cultural left”, it would be cheap and ad hominem: an epithet, not an argument. That wasn’t so true in 2020.

 

So what happened? Why is a once-rampant movement on the defensive?

 

First, the context changed. It is natural to assume that young people grow angry and subversive when things are bleak. But dissent is more often a fair-weather pastime. Rebel Without a Cause came out during the Eisenhower boom. The unrest in Paris in 1968 took place deep into the Thirty Glorious Years of the French economy.

 

Well, identity politics is another perverse fruit of success. The movement grew during the decade of economic expansion and peace that followed the 2008 crash. As those benign conditions fell away, so did the movement. It is hard to care that Augustus Gloop is called “fat” at a time of double-digit inflation. It is hard to deplore microaggressions while Ukraine is enduring a rather macro one. The cultural left hasn’t been defeated so much as demoted: in salience, in moral urgency. Grievances that once had force now seem beside the point.

 

Something else has changed. Liberals have stopped pretending there is no problem to confront on their left. I shouldn't overdo the praise here. It is still hard work getting liberals to state their position on, say, gender or free speech. To avoid losing friends, or upsetting offspring, their stratagem is to question the relevance of the subjects. “The culture war is overblown.” OK, but what do you think? “The right wants to distract voters from economics.” True, but what do you think? “Marxists are good on this intellectual manipulation. ‘Hegemony’, they call it.” Yes, listen, I know, but what do you think?

 

Ducking the issue like this is harder now. For one thing, voters won’t wear it. Cause and effect are hard to establish in elections, but some Democrats believe “defund the police”, or at least their failure to disown it more firmly, cost their party a landslide in 2020. The victory of Glenn Youngkin as Virginia governor a year later is read as another warning. (The Republican had run, in part, against progressive teaching.)

 

From Biden to the mayor of San Francisco, the party is firmer now, in word if not deed. This is of a piece with the behaviour of liberals elsewhere. The pressure that told on Penguin came as much from the cognoscenti as from the Daily Mail. The wrath that consumed Sturgeon was in large part internal. The culture war is within the left: between old-style liberals and those who view them as complicit in social injustice. (The zealot always hates the doubter and the schismatic more than the outright infidel, so conservatives get a relative pass). Liberals once denied this fight. Enough of them to matter have joined it now.

 

The worst fate that can befall a movement — short of outright defeat, which it often precedes — is to become a joke. One reason the far right never captured interwar Britain was their failure to shake off a certain air of silliness. It was there even before PG Wodehouse invented the would-be dictator Roderick Spode (the “7th Earl of Sidcup”) and his fearsome Black Shorts.

 

The cultural left isn’t there yet. It retains huge sway over thought and speech. Even when Penguin climbed down, it did so in the language of a human resources training session. (A company whose business is good writing referred to “very real” concerns “around” old books, and so on.) There is a change in the air, though. It is not just conservative eyes that roll at the latest progressive edict now. It is not just conservatives tongues that cluck. If it continues to over-reach, the cultural left will endure a much worse fate than being hated. It will be teased.

Edited 1 March 2023 by ClaphamFox

[leicsmac]

16 minutes ago, ClaphamFox said:

In light of recent discussions about censoring Roald Dahl and the meaning of 'woke' etc, I found the article below interesting. It basically argues that the rise of identity politics is not the relentless historical force that some claim it is, but rather a specific cultural trend, borne of certain socio-economic circumstances, that has already peaked and is now petering out. Arthur Brooks, a social science professor at Harvard, was arguing the same thing the other week. Many will undoubtedly disagree with the analysis, but it's an interesting take. 

 

The cultural left has peaked 

Janan Ganesh

 

Exactly when the tide turned, I don’t know. Perhaps a year ago, when Joe Biden in his State of the Union address said he would “fund the police”. Or last week, when Penguin bowed to pressure to keep Roald Dahl’s sometimes cruel work in print. Or the fall of Nicola Sturgeon over, among other things, a gender bill. Or the resilient sales of JK Rowling.

 

These are disconnected events, yes, except in one respect: you wouldn’t have counted on them happening in 2020.

 

The cultural left, it is increasingly clear, peaked that year. “Peaked” does not mean “vanished straight after”. Progressive norms and language remain ascendant in lots of domains. But the year of “defund the police” and vigorous statue-toppling looks in retrospect like the high noon of something, not the dawn of it. Even the word “woke” has a derisive connotation now that it didn’t back then. Were I to use it in this column instead of “cultural left”, it would be cheap and ad hominem: an epithet, not an argument. That wasn’t so true in 2020.

 

So what happened? Why is a once-rampant movement on the defensive?

 

First, the context changed. It is natural to assume that young people grow angry and subversive when things are bleak. But dissent is more often a fair-weather pastime. Rebel Without a Cause came out during the Eisenhower boom. The unrest in Paris in 1968 took place deep into the Thirty Glorious Years of the French economy.

 

Well, identity politics is another perverse fruit of success. The movement grew during the decade of economic expansion and peace that followed the 2008 crash. As those benign conditions fell away, so did the movement. It is hard to care that Augustus Gloop is called “fat” at a time of double-digit inflation. It is hard to deplore microaggressions while Ukraine is enduring a rather macro one. The cultural left hasn’t been defeated so much as demoted: in salience, in moral urgency. Grievances that once had force now seem beside the point.

 

Something else has changed. Liberals have stopped pretending there is no problem to confront on their left. I shouldn't overdo the praise here. It is still hard work getting liberals to state their position on, say, gender or free speech. To avoid losing friends, or upsetting offspring, their stratagem is to question the relevance of the subjects. “The culture war is overblown.” OK, but what do you think? “The right wants to distract voters from economics.” True, but what do you think? “Marxists are good on this intellectual manipulation. ‘Hegemony’, they call it.” Yes, listen, I know, but what do you think?

 

Ducking the issue like this is harder now. For one thing, voters won’t wear it. Cause and effect are hard to establish in elections, but some Democrats believe “defund the police”, or at least their failure to disown it more firmly, cost their party a landslide in 2020. The victory of Glenn Youngkin as Virginia governor a year later is read as another warning. (The Republican had run, in part, against progressive teaching.)

 

From Biden to the mayor of San Francisco, the party is firmer now, in word if not deed. This is of a piece with the behaviour of liberals elsewhere. The pressure that told on Penguin came as much from the cognoscenti as from the Daily Mail. The wrath that consumed Sturgeon was in large part internal. The culture war is within the left: between old-style liberals and those who view them as complicit in social injustice. (The zealot always hates the doubter and the schismatic more than the outright infidel, so conservatives get a relative pass). Liberals once denied this fight. Enough of them to matter have joined it now.

 

The worst fate that can befall a movement — short of outright defeat, which it often precedes — is to become a joke. One reason the far right never captured interwar Britain was their failure to shake off a certain air of silliness. It was there even before PG Wodehouse invented the would-be dictator Roderick Spode (the “7th Earl of Sidcup”) and his fearsome Black Shorts.

 

The cultural left isn’t there yet. It retains huge sway over thought and speech. Even when Penguin climbed down, it did so in the language of a human resources training session. (A company whose business is good writing referred to “very real” concerns “around” old books, and so on.) There is a change in the air, though. It is not just conservative eyes that roll at the latest progressive edict now. It is not just conservatives tongues that cluck. If it continues to over-reach, the cultural left will endure a much worse fate than being hated. It will be teased.

An interesting piece of polemic that nonetheless says nothing about the circumstances that caused the rise of "woke" in the first place and the necessity or lack thereof. Possibly because it would lead them to a place where they weren't comfortable with going - aka acknowledging that there was and is a problem there and while critique of "woke" is easy and often justifiable, perhaps, yet again, prejudices and those willing to apply them are still out there and haven't gone away and that perhaps merits focus?

 

In short, people of colour in the US and LGBT people in many more places are still being targeted specifically because of who they are, both institutionally and personally.

Edited 1 March 2023 by leicsmac

[leicsmac]

But then, given the backlash the article (correctly) describes, perhaps it is the long game that is the only way to deal with such prejudices?

 

If that is so, then I feel truly sorry for all of those who are going to have to suffer before education and the "better angels of our nature" change society for the better. It's bitter because people that don't deserve it are going to pay either way, I guess.

[LiberalFox]

It doesn't seem like a very good article to me, there isn't any fresh insight or original thought and it's pretty obvious which way the writer leans. There seems to be a lack of logical consistency. Like most opinion pieces, it's clearly targeted to appeal emotionally to a target audience.  

 

 

[Facecloth]

Looks like they've found a body in the search for the missing baby.