Be Excellent To Each Other

Hey! I'm only commenting on the stories that enhance my position that anyone but Corbyn would have been the correct choice!

"Tories condone racism and islamophobia"

Yeah, course they do Curio, we're buggers for that. You forgot to mention our penchant for killing first born sons too.

Lol. That gets a solid 8 on the groundless, hysterical bollocks scale, not bad for an opening salvo on at the start of the working week.

Not even touching the punchline to this.

I don't blame you.
Sausage roll btw? It's ok, they're Waitrose.

Continued commiserations re. corbyn btw; I realise schadenfreude isn't the most attractive human attribute but you'll hopefully forgive my hilarity as he staggers from one belm to the next appallingly handled situation or laughably ill advised appointment. He'll be gone in a year or so, possibly much less if he carries on promoting his loony lefty friends.

It's a bad time to be a labour supporter that's for sure lol. Not that there's ever a good time to be one of course, but still.

You missed homophobia, mind. Cameron should rightly be applauded for the gay marriage bill being approved on his watch, but it was in spite of his party, not because of them.

Clearly you haven't been following the London mayoral election then. It's been openly Islamophobic. Zac Goldsmith's only policy has been to say that Sadiq Khan is a terrorist sympathiser.

I don't live in London.

And bestiality. Oh, no, that's right... That's the one they're OK with.

Okay, well, Zac Goldsmith (presumably at the behest of Lynton Crosby) is being a bit of a tit.

Well that's Jews for you, you should listen to the Labour Party

You don't live in any of the towns the Labour councillers have been suspended from, either.

Surely you can appreciate this isn't a matter of mere geography, not having a dog in the fight (or whatever the saying is), but simply not being exposed to the ins and outs of the London mayoral campaign? I know almost nothing about it, as I've said.

Labours racism-fuelled latest implosion is IMO at least quite a big deal and grabs my attention, even by their, ahem, standards. It's really quite extraordinary, and utterly shameful. Increasingly, nothing really surprises me from these idiots now, what an utter shower they are. Can you imagine these wankers running the country and doing grown up stuff? I would not trust any of them to run a bric a brac stall at our village fair!

Less extraordinary than the recent works of Mr Hunt and Ms Morgan, though.

Ah, well, there we differ I'm afraid. Considerably.

I think a party suspending a couple of people for racism isn't quite as extraordinary as a man hell bent on privatising the NHS and causing the largest industrial action in nearly SEVENTY YEARS. This is a once in a lifetime stand against the NHS by someone who refuses to even consider a compromise, despite being called to do so by people from all the major parties in Parliament.

That weighted against Labour cracking down swiftly on racism within their ranks is exceedingly one-sided in terms of importance. Of course we know that if it had been, for instance, Boris Johnson, he of the 'picaninnies with watermelon smiles', it would have been laughed off as unimportant or misconstrued.

But yes, having your entire healthcare and educational systems and plans absolutely mauled and destroyed, whilst your own party tears itself apart over the EU, is far less important in a governing party than some racism from minor members of the opposition.

Madness.

Labour have 7000 councillors. They've suspended 3 of them. That's 0.04%
UKIP got 12.7% of the votes at the last election.

By my maths that makes Labour 300 times less racist than the British public at large.

(This is obviously a joke, you can't compare the numbers like that, and yes it's unfair to label all UKIP voters as racists. The point however is to highlight the scale of the numbers being talked about).

While I don't for a minute condone what any of them said, this has happened because scrutiny has been placed on the Labour Party, and they've cleaned out their closet. I don't doubt for a minute if you shone the same torch on any of the other parties thousands of councillors, you'd get an equal or higher ratio of people saying unpleasant, racist things.

Meh. Sorry Curio, normally I enjoy your posts as you know, despite our being poles apart. But you know, seriously, that just reads as shrill, hysterical nonsense and I wouldn't even know where to start. (To be fair, though, I do understand your anger, I would be too).

Not particularly wanting to be drawn on the junior doctors' strike, but you know my views - it's little more than just a grubby little dispute about money, however the BMA, unions (or you) wants to dress it up as 'a fight for our NHS' or whatever. Doctors refusing to give even emergency A&E cover...? Hang your heads in shame. Some of us are positively cheering from the sidelines; we remember the last Labour capitulation which saw GPs earning vast sums and being handed a 31% pay rise in one year under Labour, one year before it all went tits-up (but of course, we're paying them, just like we are the banks and all the other titanic cock ups http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6157219.stm Someone needs to stand up to these people)

@Cras

If you're comparing yourselves to the wacky world of UKIP councilors (and somewhat unconvincingly) claiming to be better and less xenophobic than them, well, that's quite some barrel your scraping, there. I rest my case!

Look, I think I'm about done with this intruding on private grief thing for now, so in the nicest possible way I'll just let you chaps suck it up for now. I'm sorry but I never denied I have feet of clay. As unhealthy as it is, I'm savouring all this like a big, fat bag of beef dripping fried chips, steaming with chip shop vinegar and with lashings of salt.

I wasn't. I was comparing labour councillors and UKIP voters.

0.04% of Labour Councillors are racists
12% of the public voted UKIP
0.13% of the UK population is in prison!

The percentage of UK people in prison is four times higher than the amount of Labour councillors who've said racist things! Can you see how meaningless a number that is yet?

This isn't politics, it's statistics.

So, the whole thing hangs on the premise that "0.04% of Labour Councillors are racists", just because they're the ones who've been caught out and expelled. The other 99.6% are all okay and you can bet the farm on that. Yeah, righto.

This absolutely isn't statistics, man. Not even at all.
It's laughable wishful thinking, borne of increasing desperation. Sorry.

But you're doing the same thing by saying that the fact that the other parties haven't sacked any means that they're not equally (or more) made up of racist councillors.

A party that's felt the need to examine its own and get rid of those that don't meet its standards is one that's doing its job. Should it have been paying more attention all along and got rid of them when their views first came to light? Absolutely. Doesn't change the fact that it's a tiny minority and they've been dealt with.

Saying "Well there's probably more" and trying to say that Labour as a result has a racism problem is crazy.

It's like deciding that I can't have cancer, because I've not been tested.

Schroedinger's racists

You do this sort of stuff a lot you know. It's very condescending

Mate. You're the one making assumptions about these 3 councilors being the only xenophobe tendency types in Labour, not me. I'm just the guy doing the laughing and pointing here (and am not saying there are NO racists, or 0.04% for that matter, in the Tory party because you know, that would be a bit silly).

I do like Schroedinger's racists though - bravo! *applause*

Flip's sake DavPaz, it's like you're following me round with a red fucking pen as against my posts. You don't like "swivel-eyed". I'm not allowed to smiley my own posts. I'm not allowed to say x or y.
Mate. If you carry on with this I'm seriously going to try and do ALL of these things in each and every post I make, just to see if you explode.

So... you're close to exploding?

Oh, wait. You said I'd explode.

Carry on.

David Silvester, the UKIP counciller who blamed flooding on gay marriage, was elected as a member of the Conservative Party who defected. Just last week, the Conservative party suspended a councillor over antisemtic comments. The week before that, one was caught growing cannabis. There's any number of such stories, because a corpus of ~5000 minimally vetted local politicians is sadly always going to contain some dickheads.

But sure, three suspended Labour councillors is statistically significant and a reasonable grounds to judge the entire party while the above examples from the Conservative party are isolated examples. Unless you want to conclude the Conservative Party is full of homophobic drug-dealing racists, that is.

So really, you're being swivel-eyed about this DavPaz.

I had to look it up. It... really only seems to apply to you Cavey.

The fanatical part that is. I haven't read closely enough to know if they're extreme.

/scratches head

Really? Mate, if you think that I, as your archetypal, middle aged 'small c' conservative, in my leafy little village, toddling off to Church each Sunday and helping to organise the village fair and suchlike, is "extreme and fanatical", well, you'd need to write off pretty much all of Cheshire and Shropshire as such, for one.

Of course, my post to DavPaz was a joke and good-natured parody, as he'll recognise. But, all joking aside, I do think it IS interesting that I am so perceived; this is an extremely left-leaning board and so I guess this is the genuine perception. Fascinating.

Anyone defending / agreeing with the Conservative party about anything is seen as a mentallist by the Beex circle-jerk.
Much like you think about anyone defending the Labour party

Well, I do admit to loathing Labour with a burning passion.
But what does always amuse me is when my detractors always start every sentence with "I'm not a Labour supporter but"; the Lady doth protests too much etc. I know what I am, what I'm doing and why I'm doing it - and will gladly tell anyone who wants to know, in very clear terms.

No. I don't. Because I think judging the actions of a party by 3/4000 of it's councillors is a bit silly. Do you see?

And how did you not understand that's what I was saying?

7087

Ironing.

Pretty sure it wasn't a response to you

Indeed. You raving Tory Maniac

Doc, I was responding to Russ' post.
Also I agree that making judgements about 99.6% of a party as based on 0.04% is flawed, which is what I've said. (In terms of my original post about Labour, I was more thinking of Livingstone's implosion - he is a major policy-making figure with gravitas, not x% or whatever - and Corbyn's very slow response to correct IMO)

Yup, that's better, normal service is restored.

lulz

Indeed, what about the other 0.36%?

(so sorry)

Heh.
Well yeah, there is that. Hoisted by one's own petard etc.

Cavey, do you not remember that Labour's previous leader is ethnically Jewish? And how he was constantly attacked by the Tory press using dog-whistle antisemitism (his father was called "the main who hated Britain" for being an eastern European Jewish refugee) during his time as leader?

Edit: the Tory press even this to have Ed Miliband smeared as some kind of crazy, weird foreigner for having two kitchens, FFS. Blatant dog-whsitle antisemitism.

Whataboutery aside, it's just another example of Labour somehow missing an open goal with the Whittingdale story (and other stuff as well). Every time they have an opportunity, it gets ballsed up. It's hopeless. The SNP are more credible then them right now.

Oh come on, that's going too far.