[Rich]

So we're just over 2 months into Starmer's government. I want to argue though that the Britain the Starmer government inherited was already very much molded by Starmer's politics and even Starmer himself. First their is Brexit. Starmer along with the Labour party as a whole promised to respect the result of the referendum, but then in 2019 came up with the idea of a further renegotiation after which there would be a referendum on the deal that the Labour government wouldn't even promise to support. Starmer did this to squeeze the Liberal Democratic vote. This was electorally disastrous, gave Boris Johnson a comfortable majority and then allowed Starmer to blame Corbyn for the resulting defeat. Having got himself elected as Labour leader, by promising Corbynism without Corbyn, he then became a born again Brexiteer. Starmer bears significant responsibility for the super hard Brexit with which we have ended up.

I can't find a paywall free link for this, but its now being admitted that Boris Johnson was the most left wing leader of the Conservative party. Boris Johnson was to a considerable degree Starmerism with a nasty right-wing Brexit face. Actually the nature of Johnsonism was recognised some time back.

[Potemkin]

So we're just over 2 months into Starmer's government. I want to argue though that the Britain the Starmer government inherited was already very much molded by Starmer's politics and even Starmer himself. First their is Brexit. Starmer along with the Labour party as a whole promised to respect the result of the referendum, but then in 2019 came up with the idea of a further renegotiation after which there would be a referendum on the deal that the Labour government wouldn't even promise to support. Starmer did this to squeeze the Liberal Democratic vote. This was electorally disastrous, gave Boris Johnson a comfortable majority and then allowed Starmer to blame Corbyn for the resulting defeat. Having got himself elected as Labour leader, by promising Corbynism without Corbyn, he then became a born again Brexiteer. Starmer bears significant responsibility for the super hard Brexit with which we have ended up.

I can't find a paywall free link for this, but its now being admitted that Boris Johnson was the most left wing leader of the Conservative party. Boris Johnson was to a considerable degree Starmer9sm with a nasty right-wing Brexit face. Actually the nature of Johnsonism was recognised some time back.

Boris Johnson was politically unprincipled. Which turned out to be a good thing, because it meant he was completely pragmatic in almost every situation. He simply recognised that left-wing policies made sense in certain situations, so that’s what he did. Thatcher had been a conviction politician; Boris Johnson was a non-conviction politician. He just didn’t give a fuck. Lol.

[Rich]

Boris Johnson was to a considerable degree Starmerism with a nasty right-wing Brexit face.

Before going on, I have to say I feel slightly uneasy about my own post here, in that it risks slipping into left-rightwing essentialism. Since the French Revolution and arguably well before, politics has an incredibly strong tendency to coalesce towards a one dimensional ideological line, however the issues and the priority of the issues that define that line, change and can even reverse. The left, centre and right are what they at any particular place in time and space, not what any of us think they should be.

I think what should be emphasised is the unity of Boris, Starmer, Cameron and Blair, when it came to support for mass immigration, lockdown and war against Russia and Putin. Until near the end of the Tory government Starmer wanted even more immigration. Starmer wanted lockdowns, always sooner, harder and longer. Starmer supported the massive, Hugo Chavez style, energy subsides to hide the costs of the war with the Russia. Starmer and co's whining about the state of Britain that they inherited, is pure hypocicy, when Starmer supported all the key policies, bar Brexit that have brought Britain to where it is now and Brexit is the one part of the Tories legacy that Starmer has vowed to defend what ever the cost.

[AFAIK]

“Declarations is about declaring so you and everybody else can see properly made declarations.”
-Sir Keir Starmer on why other men have to buy clothes for his wife

[Rich]

To understand the rather dire straits of Starmer's Britain, we need to go back to Blair-Brown's Britain. This was foundered economically on 2 pillars, a massive banking industry that could extract vast amounts of wealth from the rest of the world's industry and mass immigration. The mass immigration served an ideological purpose in that they believed that through "White Replacement" they could create a permanent Labour parliamentary majority, but it was also part of the economic system. The Finance sector, squeezing its wealth from the rest of the world made a huge contribution to the tax base, allowing Brown and Blair to lower taxes on the rich, while massively increasing public expenditure. Then the party came to an end with the 2008 crash.

So we had the huge bail outs of the bank, by Gordon Brown to protect the rich elite as much as possible. This had a cost. There was also the massive costs of mass immigration, pushing up population levels, making us overall poorer but pushing up inequality so making the rich richer while the mass of us get poorer. Mass immigration pushes up the cost of housing, this has the knock on effect of massively pushing up the welfare bill. Putting us into the paradoxical situation that welfare becomes increasingly stingy at the same time as work not paying relative to welfare for low paid workers. This then fed into another paradox, yes we had austerity in that public services were cut to the bone and even into the bones, but there was no austerity in terms of the fact that we were running massive public deficits.

So the Tories appeared like a bunch of mizers, but in terms of the public accounts it was still spend, spend, spend. Then we had Covid and the international lie machine went into full swing, denying the costs of yet more massive spending under Covid. The costs of lockdowns will be punishing us for years if not decades.

And then if that wasn't bad enough the Liberals pushed into a lunatic struggle with Russia to return Crimea to Ukrainian control. Again the war mongers like Starmer completely denying the massive costs of this policy,

[Rich]

Fantastic to see Liberal Deep State operative Sue Gray brought down. Starmer rewarded her for her work in bringing down Boris Johnson. Boris Johnson's mission in government was to deliver uber liberalism with a Brexit face. His mission was reduce European immigration and replace it with massively more non European immigration. His mission was to deliver White replacement with a National Front veneer. Of course that wasn't good enough for the Liberal Deep State, they didn't want Uber Liberalism with a National Front face. They wanted Uber Liberalsim with an uber Liberal face.

Am I saying that Boris Johnson wasnt corrupt, a liar and a hypocrite? No certainly not. But its rather like the case of Richard Nixon. Was Nixons bugging of the Watergate very wrong. Yes most certainly, but no one's telling me that his predecessors Lydon Johnson and JFK didn't get up to far worse.

[Rich]

What a joke Starmer has proved to be appointing, the Cultural Marxist buffoon David Lammey as foreign secretary.

Lammy called Trump a "neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath" and "a racist KKK and Nazi sympathiser.”. I shouldn't have to explain to the Prime Minister that the Foreign Secretary is the top diplomat. He should be sacked immediately.

[ingliz]

@Rich

Why must we kiss America's arse? Trump is a doubly incontinent "neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath."

Of course, if eating shit is your thing, go for it.

[Rich]

@Rich

Why must we kiss America's arse? Trump is a doubly incontinent "neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath."

Of course, if eating shit is your thing, go for it.

Lammy is a cultural Marxist abomination, with his ridiculous comments on slavery reparations. If slavery was wrong, then its Africa that should be paying us reparations. They sold us stolen goods. We had to free the slaves we bought, therefore we are entitled to our money back. Just to note I have nothing against indiviuals making reperations, if Kier Starmer wants to put his hands in his pocket in order to pay reparations to Kemi Badenock, I have no problem with that. As for the Caribbean nations, they only exist because of transatlantic slavery, so what in God's name are they complaining about?

I'm MEGA not MAGA, expecting diplomats to behave diplomatically has nothing to do with capitulation to MAGA. The first thing that we should do is stop all new purchases of American arms, until such time as Trump completely climbs down on sanctions against Europe. We should be seeking emergency access to the European customs Union as well as looking for closer union on trade matters even if we're not looking to rejoin the Single Market in the immediate future. One meausre the Europeans should introduce is that a minimum percentage of ASML's machines should go to European FABS.

Trump has made his intentions clear that he wants to steal European jobs. If he wants a trade war with Europe, we should give him what he wants and give to to him hard. One measure that we should be considering is a complete ban on ASML sales to the United States.

[Tainari88]

Lammy is a cultural Marxist abomination, with his ridiculous comments on slavery reparations. If slavery was wrong, then its Africa that should be paying us reparations. They sold us stolen goods. We had to free the slaves we bought, therefore we are entitled to our money back. Just to note I have nothing against indiviuals making reperations, if Kier Starmer wants to put his hands in his pocket in order to pay reparations to Kemi Badenock, I have no problem with that. As for the Caribbean nations, they only exist because of transatlantic slavery, so what in God's name are they complaining about?
I'm MEGA not MAGA, expecting diplomats to behave diplomatically has nothing to do with capitulation to MAGA. The first thing that we should do is stop all new purchases of American arms, until such time as Trump completely climbs down on sanctions against Europe. We should be seeking emergency access to the European customs Union as well as looking for closer union on trade matters even if we're not looking to rejoin the Single Market in the immediate future. One meausre the Europeans should introduce is that a minimum percentage of ASML's machines should go to European FABS.

Trump has made his intentions clear that he wants to steal European jobs. If he wants a trade war with Europe, we should give him what he wants and give to to him hard. One measure that we should be considering is a complete ban on ASML sales to the United States.

I take exception to the highlighted part. You sound racist and nasty in that statement. I am against slavery as a general rule. And slavery is complex. Most nations and continents have had slavery as an economic tool for centuries and even millenia. So?

But exploitation for me has never been about morality anyway. It is about greed, and power disparities.

But you think yourself a realist. I do not think you are.

You have to think about the long term. And in the long term people systemically if given a free choice? Always pick the least exploitative option. If I can make more money for the same work somewhere else? I usually will do so.

And over time...pooling your money and being as democratic as possible in the workplace is far more stable over time.

So no matter what you think Rich? The way the world works is against your thought process on that highlighted part.

People will avoid being locked up, ripped off and exploited. They will find a way out. Eventually. No matter how natural the ones who feel the nature of humanity is being a selfish greedy bastard is the natural state of being human.

Being human means cooperating to make sure the ones who have to inherit your society and your Earth can do it with respect, dignity and a decent standard of living. If they can't do so? The lack of peace is going to be on the head of the selfish thinkers, greedy people and people looking for an excuse to deny and restrict rights to their fellow human beings.

Not expand rights. But restrict and take away. Scrooges of humanity I call those kind of people and socioeconomic classes.

They are terrible and unworthy of even minimal levels of respect.

[AFAIK]

West Africans were enslaving their people before Britain started buying slaves (and one of the reasons we bought slaves from W Africa is because it is easier to exploit an already existing market than to create a brand new one), they continued to sell slaves after we stopped buying and continued to enslave after we shut down access to their largest market at great personal expense. Why does the issue of slavery continue to be the white man's burden? Why are black Africans unable to acknowledge the role they played in this evil?

We're too clumsy to solve these problems anyway and it turns out Band Aid's charity Christmas single that provided millions of meals to Ethiopians during a famine has actually done more harm than good and Ed Sheeran wishes he'd never contributed to recent rerecordings.

[Tainari88]

West Africans were enslaving their people before Britain started buying slaves (and one of the reasons we bought slaves from W Africa is because it is easier to exploit an already existing market than to create a brand new one), they continued to sell slaves after we stopped buying and continued to enslave after we shut down access to their largest market at great personal expense. Why does the issue of slavery continue to be the white man's burden? Why are black Africans unable to acknowledge the role they played in this evil?

We're too clumsy to solve these problems anyway and it turns out Band Aid's charity Christmas single that provided millions of meals to Ethiopians during a famine has actually done more harm than good and Ed Sheeran wishes he'd never contributed to recent rerecordings.

Sorry, no matter what is said the bottom line is colonialism. Why colonize other nations unless you get more out of them than what you put in? The goodness of their hearts thing does not convince.

It is about how can I profit from this situation? That is the thought process.

Oh, because there was slavery before I stepped in? I guess it is ok, to profit from it somewhere else? No. Exploitation is exploitation. It does not matter if it is from any part of the world. Or from any ethnic group. Most of it is about greed and control. Control and greed.

[AFAIK]

West Africans are demanding that Britain pay them reparations for the harms that the trans-Atlantic slave trade caused. These states were enslaving their people and selling them to Arabs before the trans-Atlantic trade was established and continued to do so after it was dismantled. They were enthusiastic participants in the interim. Britain didn't engage in gun boat diplomacy to establish the slave trade, we used our gun boats to dismantle the slave trade. I reject the narrative that the slave trade is something that we did to them when it was clearly mutual.

[albionfagan]

West Africans are demanding that Britain pay them reparations for the harms that the trans-Atlantic slave trade caused. These states were enslaving their people and selling them to Arabs before the trans-Atlantic trade was established and continued to do so after it was dismantled. They were enthusiastic participants in the interim. Britain didn't engage in gun boat diplomacy to establish the slave trade, we used our gun boats to dismantle the slave trade. I reject the narrative that the slave trade is something that we did to them when it was clearly mutual.

As I understand it the reparation claims are more substantially being made by the Caribbean countries whose populations are almost exclusively the descendants of slaves. I'm yet to be persuaded, not because I doubt the moral arguments but because I fail to see how they work in the world economy. If you want 'fairness', you need wholesale economic change across the globe.

That being said, some genuine contrition shown by our leaders would be a nice step. I know they don't want to apologise because they fear that leaves the door open to being taken to court, but the mealy mouthed 'it was awful...but of its time' stuff is so patronising. If we can herald Nelson as a hero then we can apologise for our large part in a great crime against humanity.

[Tainari88]

West Africans are demanding that Britain pay them reparations for the harms that the trans-Atlantic slave trade caused. These states were enslaving their people and selling them to Arabs before the trans-Atlantic trade was established and continued to do so after it was dismantled. They were enthusiastic participants in the interim. Britain didn't engage in gun boat diplomacy to establish the slave trade, we used our gun boats to dismantle the slave trade. I reject the narrative that the slave trade is something that we did to them when it was clearly mutual.

Great Britain is one of many nations in Europe who's elite and wealthy definitely profited from slavery and from colonialism period. Huge amounts. You would think they would have done something useful with all that money they extracted from the blood, sweat and tears of so many enslaved people who had to be enslaved for the benefit of banks.

Banks who were set up to pay dividends to wealthy people.

It is a disgusting institution. To think many people still have to work for peanuts all over the globe and never are able to buy their own homes, or have a decent education, because some overblown wealthy people have to have more than they can spend in 100 lifetimes is a study in human egotism and excess.

There is enough people in the present day who work hard everyday that if you were to calculate how much money should be going to each man, woman and child in the entire globe? Poverty would be eradicated overnight. Instantly.

The issue is about rules that favor one class of human beings over another class of human beings. Because the entire system favors one class over another class.

Great Britain has to come to terms of its total immorality in exploiting Asia, Africa, Latin America, or the Americas, and the Caribbean and many parts of Europe by being into imperialism 100%. The cheap excuse is always the same type of excuse. Everyone was doing it. If we did not do it? Some other country would do it.

History does not work that way. You profited from blood, sweat and tears of other people. From all over the globe. Took advantage of their land and resources, paid them pittances, cheated them out of their due, lied about it for hundreds of years, and stole outright their ability to climb out of poverty, despair and surrounded them with pollution, closed opportunities and total lies and discouragement.

If you had to OWN up to what that implies psychologically? It would be enormous.

People who are brainwashed and think deep in their minds that they come from superior races, groups, nations and ethnicities and they are the center of the world while others are just there to serve them and born to serve and who will never ever amount to anything but to be enslaved because the purpose of class systems in these cultures is about greed, selfishness and egos on fire? Would be the end of all of it. The entire system. Precisely because it is never confronted and plans are never drawn up and executed to change it fundamentally is why the same system continues undeterred to the very present. Awarness is the bare mininum first step if there is any hope in hell of changing that mentality. Awareness.

Making excuses and denial is not going to change a damn thing. Ever.

[Rich]

No, actually it just means that Britain is currently governed by Red Tories rather than Blue Tories.

It’s all about the immigrants with you, isn’t it?

Keir Starmer has rightly come out and accused the Tories of operating an open borders policy after Brexit. I think we can forgive Starmer for a a little bit of hyperbole here. I remember years back, I went and checked Decky's favourite party's website. The website made quite clear that they saw Brexit as an opportunity to flood Britain with non Europeans. Although I predicted that the Liberals would use Brexit as an opportunity to flood Britain with non European immigration, even I have to admit I was surprised just how aligned Boris Johnson and Arthur Scargill were on immigration policy.

The Tories gave us Cultural Marxism with a National Front / BNP face. As I've said before Starmer's Britain started well before Starmer came to power. The only difference with the Tories was that it was covered with empty right wing rhetoric. If you're political then its quite right to be obsessed about immigration. This is not an issue that is going to go away any time soon. In the short term immigration can provide a palliative to company profits, GDP growth and the government finances, but in the medium and longer term population growth is extremely deleterious. Apart form the obvious effect on housing costs it has many other less obvious negatives.

The effects on overloading transport infrastructure is one. And these effects are not linear. Some very good points about transport made by two guys who are definitely not right-wingers.

Happy to admit I was wrong in my previous opposition to HS2, although I had already moved to a supporter before I watched this video.

[Tainari88]

Keir Starmer has rightly come out and accused the Tories of operating an open borders policy after Brexit. I think we can forgive Starmer for a a little bit of hyperbole here. I remember years back, I went and checked Decky's favourite party's website. The website made quite clear that they saw Brexit as an opportunity to flood Britain with non Europeans. Although I predicted that the Liberals would use Brexit as an opportunity to flood Britain with non European immigration, even I have to admit I was surprised just how aligned Boris Johnson and Arthur Scargill were on immigration policy.

The Tories gave us Cultural Marxism with a National Front / BNP face. As I've said before Starmer's Britain started well before Starmer came to power. The only difference with the Tories was that it was covered with empty right wing rhetoric. If you're political then its quite right to be obsessed about immigration. This is not an issue that is going to go away any time soon. In the short term immigration can provide a palliative to company profits, GDP growth and the government finances, but in the medium and longer term population growth is extremely deleterious. Apart form the obvious effect on housing costs it has many other less obvious negatives.

The effects on overloading transport infrastructure is one. And these effects are not linear. Some very good points about transport made by two guys who are definitely not right-wingers.

Happy to admit I was wrong in my previous opposition to HS2, although I had already moved to a supporter before I watched this video.

One has to examine Rich why so many people are so mobile in this era we are currently living in. Why do so many people just pack and leave? There are many reasons but the overriding one is economic.

High unemployment, and not being able to earn money to pay their monthly bills. They pack up and sell their belongings and with that money, go for a shot at economic stability in other nations.

No one examines why there are so many unstable countries.

They should.

Why is there such poverty too within the lower classes in the United Kingdom? Why are so many young people not fully employed? Why wages are not adequate for many? Why so many people live on benefits that are inadequate to cover all the bills.

Why is the system so dysfunctional? Immigrants are in the UK because the ex colonies of the UK are having trouble economically. And the UK signed agreements with many of its former colonies which stated that they are a part of the Greater United Kingdom.

Thus, Jamaicans in the UK. Thus Aussies in the UK, thus many people from India, Pakistan, and Hong Kong, etc and so on. Oh, woe is me, I have to look at an African face, a Pakistani face, a this or that face....that is not native British or English.

Blame imperialism and modern international capitalism that went out seeking trade routes and commercial business investments in far flung lands. For the purposes of making money.

The rich can flee the immigrant neighborhoods in the UK. The working class English and British can't do that. They wind up living next door to the immigrants and wind up marrying them. The working class English and British citizens. The lower cost neighborhoods over time are racial mixtures and people with similar conditions.

The rich English posh types live in segregated neighborhoods with people from their socioeconomic backgrounds. Safe mainly from the recently arrived crowds of immigration. They have a fraction of the immigration a place like the USA has or received in the past. A small fraction.

It is an offense Rich for you to see their faces living in your country? Why? Ask them why they moved fo the UK? And be brave and ask them if they think British or English culture is superior to their home culture? Or if the conditions that are economically based is the reason they left their native societies? Ask them human and respectful questions. Do not treat them like numbers. They are human you know.

[AFAIK]

Europeans also used and abused China ruthlessly but the Chinese never asked for charity and declined international aid. They recognised that these things undermine a nation and that trade was the path to prosperity. 76% of poverty reduction worldwide occured in China[1]. 50% of the progress towards the UN's millennium development goals occurred in China[2].

If we want to assist the development of other countries we should support the EU's Everything but Arms initiative that allows developing countries tariff free access to our markets, we should restrict migration so developing countries aren't impoverished by brain drains and brawn drains, we should stop subsidising overproduced agricultural commodities that undermine poor countries' ability to compete.

1- https://www.bjreview.com/Opinion/201510 ... 40381.html
2- https://econ.lse.ac.uk/staff/rburgess/wp/jep11.pdf (page 6)

[Tainari88]

Europeans also used and abused China ruthlessly but the Chinese never asked for charity and declined international aid. They recognised that these things undermine a nation and that trade was the path to prosperity. 76% of poverty reduction worldwide occured in China[1]. 50% of the progress towards the UN's millennium development goals occurred in China[2].

If we want to assist the development of other countries we should support the EU's Everything but Arms initiative that allows developing countries tariff free access to our markets, we should restrict migration so developing countries aren't impoverished by brain drains and brawn drains, we should stop subsidising overproduced agricultural commodities that undermine poor countries' ability to compete.

1- https://www.bjreview.com/Opinion/201510 ... 40381.html
2- https://econ.lse.ac.uk/staff/rburgess/wp/jep11.pdf (page 6)

China had mass starvation and Japanese invasions.

It is their history.

And they went with Mao and Maoism and they went with Marxism as in Karl Marx.

Then they did state capitalism.

With a Communist one party political state.

That is their history.

It is not the history of the Caribbean and tiny islands being fought over by European Empries fighting amongst each other to suck the goods, services and labor and land out of the islands. Sugar and Power, and all the rest shaped the Caribbean islands.

A long history of having all the wealth sucked out of it. And do not complain about what we did.

Act like China. Yeah, go for Marxism and not letting the British steal Hong Kong and so on and Taiwan and go and deal with the Opium wars. British drug dealing to take over markets in China. Become ruthless heroine and Opium dealers and traffickers like the East India Company based in London, England, do some shady shit. And be proud.

I do not think so.

You want part of the money and profits made by some tiny fraction of English drug dealers? Who were endorsed by the British government? No.

That drug money is ours. And we stole it fair and square.

[AFAIK]

China can make the case for reparations following the hundred years of humiliation but they don't because they recognise that to do so would be to perpetuate their humiliation further by remaining dependent on foreign powers. India and Ireland also have a strong case following the famines they suffered as a direct result of British rule.

It's strange that slavery is the pretext for demanding reparations when it's the area in which the empire did so much to redeem itself. We freed the slaves in our Caribbean holdings without resorting to bloodshed and we shut down the trade for all other powers saving thousands from dying during the perilous journey and saving countless more from enduring enslavement across the Americas and Caribbean.