Be Excellent To Each Other

At least the slide into facism will be slightly comical and inept, rather than oppressively terrible.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/201 ... CMP=twt_gu

Really interesting article on leadership succession and moving on from the past. Campbell and I are accord with a lot of things here: not rebutting the attacks on the party's time in power well enough, getting the right message out and Corbyn being not electable. A long read but worthwhile.

Hundreds of redundancies at Asda HQ.

It will be both. Tragicomical.

Or comigic

I want a Trump nomination with Palin second on the ticket more than anything right now.

What's more terrifying is that they'd likely win.

Nah. You don't win a US election without swinging the moderates, and Trump has done an astonishing job of alienating even the moderates in his own party, let alone the swing votes. Sure, he'll have the tea party voting in droves - but then they're the sort that will turn out to vote anyway regardless.

That is indeed a great piece, really interesting read and well worth the small investment of time it takes to digest it.

I think there's been a bit of a swing towards the right over there recently, though, hasn't there?

plus there's the "better one of ours than theirs".

Oh, there has. And if the GOP had fielded a moderate they'd probably win in a landslide. But a far right lunatic candidate will push that shift right back in the other direction.

Bet you a dollar he does better than you think. The antimuslim nonsense is playing very well over there.

http://uk.businessinsider.com/donald-tr ... ?r=US&IR=T

e.g.

But those are polls of registered republicans. He's a great candidate for getting republican votes. But so is a potato in an American flag. He's got no chance of winning the swing vote, so he ain't winning the election

But you literally just said he was turning off moderate republicans. He's clearly not (or at least not that many). Make your mind up

However, this does show that he is massively unpopular with the independents. I don't know how much of the electorate they constitute though, or what their comparative thoughts on Hilary are.

If he wasn't turning off moderate Reps then he would have about 90% of their vote by now. As is, he might not even swing Iowa against Ted 'Fuckwit' Cruz.

NEC to take control of candidate selection in Bradford




Bradford West seems to be a lively place for Labour.

http://m.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/new ... rt_orders/

???

That's my gallivanting over then.

I'm in a similar situation, but instead of a judge, I have to tell the wife.

I'm often ignored.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politic ... orbyn.html

EDIT: It's all here, in all its hilarious, delicious entirety. I did wonder that claimed snippets like the "...ideally headed by a Tory" (perhaps I should apply ) were a bit of artistic licence on the part of the Torygraph, but no, they're all in here... enjoy...

http://www.itv.com/news/2016-01-25/reve ... d-in-full/

Crikey people, when even bloody Labour are saying stuff like this about themselves, I rest my case, I really do. So, it's "Good night Irene", as the saying goes; there's really not much more I can add anymore.

Latest Yougov poll info:



https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/01/19/co ... ting-fall/

-39 approval rating, huh? That's going swimmingly then.
No doubt will come along telling us all how we, the Great British public, desperately want more left wing parties or whatever it was a few months back...

I mean, you've just got to "lol" at the whole thing... car-crash stuff, truly.

http://m.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/new ... ace_in_UK/

Saddening news. Bradford very not integrated.

Mind you, I live a massively white area of the city.

Amazing.
'Straya

Not sure what to make of this, a man predicts he'll be murdered by cops and then gets killed:

http://fresnopeoplesmedia.com/2016/01/2829/

It does all appear rather conspiracy theory-esque, but I wouldn't put ANYTHING past the police.

So Oriel will keep the statue of Rhodes. I'm quite content with this, because if everything referring to someone with a dodgy past was removed there wouldn't be much of a city or university left. Better to have the birds shit on him and for us to use it as a jumping-off point for conversations about the legacy of colonialism then to pretend he didn't exist.

Course, Oriel always was the most right-wing college anyway.

Inviting strange people with weapons to stay at your house to protect you is perhaps not the best move. It's one possible explanation, anyway.

Legal aid cuts scrapped

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-35432581

It must really suck to be Chris Grayling

You're right. Removing the statue would erase him from all our history books.

He didn't say that at all.

Removing a statue of a genocidal racist =/= pretending he doesn't exist imo.

It suggests we can't handle our past, and would rather sanitise things as opposed to admit what went before us. To be honest, I'd quite forgotten he was perched up there until all this started, and I walk past Oriel every day. The vanity of the man is shown by its placing: Rhodes is posing above a line of kings and bishops.

I used to spend lectures gazing at a large portrait of the Kaiser hanging in one of the rooms in the nearby Exam Schools. I've yet to hear of a 'Bill must fall' campaign to remove the celebration of the guy who probably did turn a minor dispute in the Balkans into a World War.

To use an example from last year, yes the Confederate battle flag shouldn't be flying on state property (or indeed at all). But removing Confederate statutes and memorials placed by people a hundred years ago is just as wrong: it's part of the past, and we need to learn from it. These things are good ways to start the awkward discussions we need to have. And, importantly, we can always put up own memorials and statues to balance things out.

I agree with Kern.

Mate, our past is already sanitised. The atrocities of the British Empire and our colonial past is never talked about, not learnt about in schools. 44% of people are proud of the empire still! I just think it's tone deaf to have a celebration of Cecil Rhodes on display in this modern age. This does not mean I believe he isn't an important figure in history and he should be forgotten about.



Again I disagree. The confederate battle flag is a memorial of those states who wanted to keep black people in servitude and subjugation. As a black person I would not want to be reminded of that every single day, especially as racism is still such a massive issue in the country (and those states!)

I applaud this change as it's a small step towards making things right.

I think I'm with Myp here. What is the point of a statue? In my opinion it's to celebrate the achievements and to commemorate and congratulate the person and their deeds.

So we should only have statues for things we want to remember fondly.

If you want to start a conversation, have a plaque to commemorate the suffering caused (I must admit to not knowing the full story about what Rhodes did in Africa) instead.

How does removing the statue address this issue?

We should remove Liverpool and Bristol because of the slavery connections.

Indeed. But nobody alive today put that statue up. Our values are different, and no doubt our descendents might view our heroes differently. Should we remove everything that previous generations left us? At what point do we place a cut-off and decide that something is ancient enough to keep?
Keeping it Oxford related, I have my doubts about recent donors who have lent their names to two major new schools in the University, but no doubt in a few centuries' time the names will be as memorable as John de Balliol's or the Duke of Clarendon.



And I'm perfectly happy with that.

You're wilfully ignoring my point, I feel. The statue is a celebration of his life. It is inappropriate. You appear to believe I am in favour of a throwing the baby out with the bath water approach. I say there is no baby in this instance.

Your white privilege is showing here, I'm afraid.

*edited*

Given the Church's history, we should also tear down every example of Christian iconography

It's a line drawing exercise isn't it? People would think it a bit curious if Germany had kept every bit of their Nazi stuff everywhere just so they could learn from it but it's also appropriate to keep some reminders. It depends on people's reactions to the stuff on a daily basis as well, as I understand it the confederate flag causes genuine offence to a lot of people. Not sure how true that is of this statue in a particularly right wing college in Oxford.

If it were a statue of a religious figure who turned out to be a paedophile then yeah. If you want to compare apples with apples, of course.

And as Kern said, there's a massive difference between flying a confederate flag today, and leaving in place a statue to a confederate general that's been standing for 200 years.

I don't think it's about Age, it's about what's right, when the statue was put up, Rhodes was celebrated for (presumably) conquering Parts of Southern Africa. At that time, that was a good thing, the Empire was stronger and richer for his actions.

Now, we don't like what he did, so we shouldn't celebrate it or him any more, so maybe the Statue should come down, and perhaps some memorial should go up instead?

I can understand people are reluctant to see things changed, they like the history, the story, the safety etc. but times do change, attitudes change, so why not the landscape?

Also maybe the statue can be moved to a museum or something, where it can be viewed in context and explained why the statue was created, what Rhodes did, and why it was taken down and put in a museum.

The world changes. Just because it's stood for 200 years doesn't mean it should stand forever. Society changes and small gestures like these are helpful to move to a more inclusive and tolerant society.

King Edward the First signed the Edict of Expulsion, banning jews from the UK for over 400 years. Statues of him in many locations all over the country. Tear them all down?

Unfortunately those who unwittingly argue for the status quo in this thread are those whose ancestors were not affected by Rhodes's atrocities. I have been deferring to those in the black community who have been affected and they feel it is inappropriate. It is not an academic exercise for them, but a reminder that their families were slaughtered in the same kind of way that the Nazis exterminated the Jews - they were seen as inferior. That's how Rhodes and other colonialists saw black Africans.

If that's what the Jewish community decided they wanted then I would support that. It's not for me to decide.