Just Passing Through
Claymore
Why would you want to replace the monarchy? Get rid of it. totally. Not needed.
General Politics Thread
- Thread starter Watanabe Ken
- Start date
ayase
State Alchemist
Preferential as that might be, I think it's very unlikely. Presuming democracy doesn't collapse entirely, our system requires a head of state seperate to the PM. If that's not the monarch it would need to be a president, elected either by the people or by parliament. I don't particularly trust either to elect anyone deserving.
Dave1988
Stand User
This i agree with...
Vashdaman
Za Warudo
I mean, I agree with much of this, but Harry just clearly doesn't have that level of brutal self awareness, unsurprisingly for someone brought up as a prince and who still claims to believe in the monarchy. But to me, it does seem like what Harry is really trying to fight is the nastier elements of the British press, and I do think that's a worthy thing to want to do. I don't know, I haven't read his book, and likely never will, and while I do sympathise with your viewpoint ayase, equally I don't think it's quite fair to automatically assume they're playing the victim. I do think someone like Harry probably was a victim in many ways of the fetid and repressive system of monarchy he grew up right in the middle of. He had a privileged life undoubtedly, but I doubt it was a normal or healthy life and was probably a really warped way to grow up.
Eternal chibi
Dandy Guy, in Space
A privileged life is nice, but have you seen the articles lately about the mega rich suffering from mental illness? At the end of the day they are human like the rest of us.
Ultimately what we all need is something far more than money. It's love and sense of belonging and purpose. Money can solve many problems, but it isn't the essence of our being.
I sympathize with Harry and I think what he is doing is necessary. I also think he is doing this on behalf of his mother, who also set out to criticize the insituation.
He probably feels he is finishing what she started.
Ultimately what we all need is something far more than money. It's love and sense of belonging and purpose. Money can solve many problems, but it isn't the essence of our being.
I sympathize with Harry and I think what he is doing is necessary. I also think he is doing this on behalf of his mother, who also set out to criticize the insituation.
He probably feels he is finishing what she started.
Dave1988
Stand User
To be fair he is spot on... Living in stoke... You see this alot... To many careless people who think they can do what they want! We need more like him who says how it really is instead of using nice words!! Like alot of mps dp
Attachments
Dave1988
Stand User
It certainly is😂
There really isnt many like him about.. I dunno... I love his "i dont care who i upset attitude"... When others just tell you what you want to hear
I don't know the guy, but is he actually doing anything positive to change things other than griping about faceless strangers? Because moaning is a lot easier than fixing. Those screenshots without context also have substantial 'them' versus 'us and our community' undertones, so it's business as usual with the political divisiveness as per every other MP in power right now. To me, saying it in a ruder way doesn't make the underlying message of division any less creepy.
R
R
RadFemHedonist
Dragon Knight
Jonathan Gullis - Wikipedia
TBH there's some pretty bad stuff there... I can't possibly support deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda it's horribly cruel and also I'm in favour of work as an option for disabled people (such as people with down's syndrome) but this is likely just spin to justify taking away benefits from people who need them (I have a friend who's currently undergoing such an assessment and is extremely depressed and I am disabled too and being assessed and it's honestly terrifying worrying what might happen)
That's not the only bad stuff that's there - calling for teachers who criticise the conservative party to be sacked is also awful and I'd say the same thing if they wanted to sack anyone who criticised the labour party.
Dave1988
Stand User
To be fair he has put forwards alot of ideas for stoke... Restoration for old buildings... Keeping leisure centers open... New housing... Prioritising first time buyers and not letting investors taking the entire housing stock... Putting forward that stoke has got its fair shair of asylum seekers.. Currently 4th city with the largest amount.....and much more.. Some are starting to trickle through... Problem is he is not stoke on trent leader.. Only in charge of part of stoke... He has literally done alot more than the leader we have
Dave1988
Stand User
Problem is... Stoke is literally bursting... We currently 4th in the country to take most asylum seekers... We have shortage of houses here making it hard for first time buyers.. Hence its also pushing housing up...gullis is protesting this and asking the question why is stoke taking all of them?.. When they should be spread outJonathan Gullis - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
TBH there's some pretty bad stuff there... I can't possibly support deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda it's horribly cruel and also I'm in favour of work as an option for disabled people (such as people with down's syndrome) but this is likely just spin to justify taking away benefits from people who need them (I have a friend who's currently undergoing such an assessment and is extremely depressed and I am disabled too and being assessed and it's honestly terrifying worrying what might happen)
So yet another typical 'us versus them' politician then, only with a platform built on spinning his prejudices as 'honesty'. I don't identify as the 'us' so as one of the 'them' I'm not very open to that kind of rhetoric. First time buyers have it hard everywhere but it's interesting that the foreigners coming in are always viewed as a bigger problem than the rich folks buying up all of the land as second homes, long term investments and rental prospects (which squeeze people twice, by lowering the amount of housing stock available and keeping rents high). The second problem is much easier to fix but politicians are always strangely silent on anything affecting those whose opinions might harm their own interests. The blatant conflict of interest that elected officials have between advancing their own careers and improving the country stifles any chance of anything ever getting better for the rest of us.
Incidentally, my area has substantially more asylum seekers than Stoke (and not much less when represented as a percentage of our grossly overcrowded local population) and they have been no trouble at all. The issues with our country go a lot deeper than a few desperate people needing help.
R
Incidentally, my area has substantially more asylum seekers than Stoke (and not much less when represented as a percentage of our grossly overcrowded local population) and they have been no trouble at all. The issues with our country go a lot deeper than a few desperate people needing help.
R
ayase
State Alchemist
Apologies for the late response but it looks like controversy's in today, so let's go.
They can also afford to take breaks from work and immediately receive whatever therapy they like. As someone with experience with this country's sorry excuse for mental health services for average people who can't afford to pay to receive it privately, you'll have to excuse me if I don't shed a tear for those who can just stroll into The Priory.
Be prepared for a bit of a ramble here, since I think this issue goes to the heart of a major problem I have with the current political (and particularly journalistic) climate and its promotion of middle-class social causes célèbre over economics. You see it all the time now, particularly since identity politics caused the implosion of Occupy Wall Street (and was and still is being used by Starmer's Axis Neo Labour to keep hammering the stake into Jeremy Corbyn to make sure he stays down this time) but those convenient coincidences aside, political debate is constantly being shifted away from economic inequality onto issues much further up the pyramid on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. At the bottom is the freedom from want, of being able to house, feed and keep yourself warm without having to rely on charity or live in fear of rent day or the debt collector. That is where the attention and efforts anyone who genuinely believes in equality should be concentrated until we don't have anyone living on the streets and the appalling emergence not only of food banks but of "warm spaces" now where elderly people who can't afford to put the heating on have to go in order to not freeze to death in their own homes. No amount of love is going to fix that (and people working for charity is not the answer, because that's only keeping them poor and more likely to need charity themselves - imho nobody should be working for nothing) it requires investment.
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Overall I'm very much in agreement with this analysis of the situation, but I do maintain a slight apprehension when it comes to the British state (and therefore taxpayers) spending millions a day to provide for new arrivals when there are increasing numbers of British citizens being pushed into poverty. It's important to note that it's an economic rather than a cultural concern, I have nothing at all against people from other countries and cultures coming to live here (though it would be quite nice if it was reciprocal, but I think poor people from a rich country emigrating to a poorer, more sparsely populated country where they can perhaps be less poor and afford to own property is generally regarded as imperialism now, and only rich people from the rich counties are allowed to engage in that) but I do think the British government should primarily be here to look out for the British people, rather than trying to solve any other countries' problems (or create them, bear in mind I was vehemently against our involvement in the middle eastern wars and am just as against the billions currently being spent on facilitating Slavs to slaughter each other over clay).
At what point do we say that the governments of other countries should take responsibility for their people, or that the people should take responsibility for who governs them? If these regimes people are fleeing are so horrible, why do they not topple their leaders? Why don't we? Has everybody just become to cowardly to fight for their rights? Not looking to get put on a PREVENT watch-list or anything here, and maybe it's just the revolutionary in me, but I feel a lot more solidarity with someone whose response to tyrannical government is to pick up an AK47 than someone whose response is to get on a boat and leave.
They can also afford to take breaks from work and immediately receive whatever therapy they like. As someone with experience with this country's sorry excuse for mental health services for average people who can't afford to pay to receive it privately, you'll have to excuse me if I don't shed a tear for those who can just stroll into The Priory.
Be prepared for a bit of a ramble here, since I think this issue goes to the heart of a major problem I have with the current political (and particularly journalistic) climate and its promotion of middle-class social causes célèbre over economics. You see it all the time now, particularly since identity politics caused the implosion of Occupy Wall Street (and was and still is being used by Starmer's Axis Neo Labour to keep hammering the stake into Jeremy Corbyn to make sure he stays down this time) but those convenient coincidences aside, political debate is constantly being shifted away from economic inequality onto issues much further up the pyramid on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. At the bottom is the freedom from want, of being able to house, feed and keep yourself warm without having to rely on charity or live in fear of rent day or the debt collector. That is where the attention and efforts anyone who genuinely believes in equality should be concentrated until we don't have anyone living on the streets and the appalling emergence not only of food banks but of "warm spaces" now where elderly people who can't afford to put the heating on have to go in order to not freeze to death in their own homes. No amount of love is going to fix that (and people working for charity is not the answer, because that's only keeping them poor and more likely to need charity themselves - imho nobody should be working for nothing) it requires investment.
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Overall I'm very much in agreement with this analysis of the situation, but I do maintain a slight apprehension when it comes to the British state (and therefore taxpayers) spending millions a day to provide for new arrivals when there are increasing numbers of British citizens being pushed into poverty. It's important to note that it's an economic rather than a cultural concern, I have nothing at all against people from other countries and cultures coming to live here (though it would be quite nice if it was reciprocal, but I think poor people from a rich country emigrating to a poorer, more sparsely populated country where they can perhaps be less poor and afford to own property is generally regarded as imperialism now, and only rich people from the rich counties are allowed to engage in that) but I do think the British government should primarily be here to look out for the British people, rather than trying to solve any other countries' problems (or create them, bear in mind I was vehemently against our involvement in the middle eastern wars and am just as against the billions currently being spent on facilitating Slavs to slaughter each other over clay).
At what point do we say that the governments of other countries should take responsibility for their people, or that the people should take responsibility for who governs them? If these regimes people are fleeing are so horrible, why do they not topple their leaders? Why don't we? Has everybody just become to cowardly to fight for their rights? Not looking to get put on a PREVENT watch-list or anything here, and maybe it's just the revolutionary in me, but I feel a lot more solidarity with someone whose response to tyrannical government is to pick up an AK47 than someone whose response is to get on a boat and leave.
Dave1988
Stand User
Also the problem is.. Once you have paid into the system i.e all your taxes... Its hard to claim anything here... Trust me i know... I suffer anxiety and depression... At times its bad... I couldnt claim a penny.. One excuse i got was that theu lookes at my records and they told me ive paid in for 17 years straight so why are you claimong now? And another was that i could walk to the bus stop... So all in all i got zero points across the board... I couldnt claim jsa either again.. Bs excuses... So now im literally using my savings to pay for what i need.... But its fine... We will let others into the country and give them 4* hotel.... 3 meals a day and £45 a week to spend on gambling and fags.... The uk is just not for me... Trust me... Im trying to leave permanantly and still actually looking at leaving soon... Crime actually pays in the uk
RadFemHedonist
Dragon Knight
Ayase I'd agree with you a lot more (and currently regard you with much less suspicion), if you seemed to actually give a monkeys about the right to abortion, which frankly is extremely basic on any reasonable not-constructed-by-misogynists hierarchy of needs. When I last bought it up you basically said it was funny watching women and other pregnant people be denied basic autonomy over their bodies (that vile cheap seats George Carlin quote that you used). Don't pretend that's got nothing to do with the fact that you can't get pregnant yourself and therefore don't really have to worry about it to anywhere near the same degree as I and other people who can do. Those ****** cis male politicians in America who passed these vile laws deserve to be completely removed from all positions of power and influence in society so they can't rape and mutilate women by proxy anymore (and I absolutely include Trump in that). All that said I agree with much of the rest of what you said, but like... I'm sick of leftist men not giving a **** about how horribly women are frequently treated "bcuz the economy." I'm not some hardcore political identitarian but I'm not gonna just be cool with not having ownership of my own genitals and uterus while all the problems that affect men (as well as everyone else and banning abortion ***** the lives of poor women to hell) are sorted out first. (Still, solidarity on the ****** mental health system thing. Even as someone who really doesn't feel comfortable or safe accessing mental health services party bcuz of how beholden it all is to the state I absolutely agree that there should be way more support offered for most people aka those who aren't rich, than currently is accessible on the NHS etc.)
I really feel for you but they are mostly not keeping refugees in nice hotels and generally treating them like garbage in this country, not gonna argue there won't be exceptions, also the UK does bear some responsibility for our historical and current role in the political and economic destabilisation of other countries and regions of the world. I think @Rui is right about the "us Vs. them" aspect of it - the people arguing we should show more compassion to refugees as a country are generally (or at least often) the same people opposed to gutting disability and sickness benefits, because it's all part of the same issue of dehumanising rhetoric around vulnerable groups of people.
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