Rogue One
After the strange Kings Speech, that looked like an elderly member of Just Stop Oil giving a hostage message after rummaging through his mums dressing-up box, we move on to the matter of civil liberties and our Home Secretary.
The Suella Braverman Pantomime carries on after a brief interval. In The Times she offered an article that could only be described as unhinged. Everything about it was bizarre and untrue.
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“There is a perception that senior officers play favourites when it comes to protesters.”
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Anyone who has been beaten-up, kettled or assaulted by the police any time in the last thirty years will find this difficult to believe.
You lying hypocrite. Not only do your disgraceful comments of the last few days completely contradict that, but your own party has introduced legislation that has dome more to set back civil liberties than any in two hundred years.
Sky’s senior Ireland correspondent has just committed a murder live on @SkyPoliticsHub 💥 #BravermanOut pic.twitter.com/uaZjiYfN9D
— Brendan May (@bmay) November 9, 2023
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She finishes by saying: “If the march goes ahead this weekend the public will expect to see an assertive and proactive approach to any displays of hate …” (this is code for ‘get stuck in lads’).
Yvette Cooper was right in saying: “Suella Braverman is out of control. Her article tonight is a highly irresponsible, dangerous attempt to undermine respect for police at a sensitive time, to rip up operational independence & to inflame community tensions. No other Home Secretary of any party would ever do this.”
So now what?
She has gaslit herself into believing some of her own propaganda. Such are the silos of the right and far-right they have been consumed by their rhetoric, high on their own supply. This is an invitation for opposition by provoking her base, and an invitation to the police (who she has undermined) to ‘crackdown’
The irony is the marches demanding a ‘Ceasefire’ are characterised by their eclectic diverse and civil make-up. That’s why they are so huge and why Saturday’s will be even bigger.
She faces a Prime Minister who is a dead-man walking, both conjuring culture war ghosts and ghouls out of the ether as they desperately try and defend the horrific violence raining down on people in Gaza, and cling to the last months of their political careers. Her actions are grotesque but I think it would be wrong to isolate her as the problem. She is the product of the Conservative Party – not an exception from it.
Finally she is partly right that ‘right-wing and nationalist protesters are met with a stern response’ – but what she fails to realise is that those forces are where political violence spring from in Britain, whether that’s the Loyalist mob of George Square 2014 or the ‘Britain First’ of Thomas Mair.
Trump said ”I could stand in the middle of 5th avenue and shoot somebody , and wouldn’t lose any voters .”
In the UK , It is looking more and more as if Suella Braverman could say the same – and not lose her job !
Either Rich! agrees with her mad ravings or he is too feart to sack her .
You would say this.
The reality is that since the graduate elites who run all our institutions have adopted identity politics and critical theory based beliefs, the whole of the UK (indeed the Western world) has become divided and dysfunctional.
The blindness to the barbarism of Hamas by the left, especially Gen Z has been astounding! How many chanted “From the river to the sea” didn’t even need know the name of the river?
Then there is the tolerance to the promotors of Islamism. Islamism is a secular marxist-theocratic movement that is oppressive and uses its interpretation of Islam as its authority.
Most if the readers of this probably don’t understand the difference between “Islamism” and “Islam”.
We never saw these protesters on the streets when 100’s of 1000’s of muslims were being killed in The Yemen and Syria by muslims. We do not need Islamist protests on Britain’s streets.
The Met police and police of big cities are led by idiots who believe critical theory social justice and identity ideology.
They have failed to do their jobs. Whilst they are being woke, they’re failing to solve crimes snd protect people.
They need to get off their knees, wipe the face paint off, get some perspective on hurty feelings style hate crime reporting, and deal with real crime.
We also need politicians who say what they mean and mean what they say.
Mealy mouth language helps no one.
“Most if the readers of this probably don’t understand the difference between “Islamism” and “Islam”.”
You must be new to this site, Steve. It is read and commented on by folks who are conspicuously better informed, and better read than you are.
I have some sympathy with you on the matter of identity politics – which was dreamed up by right wing plutocratic ‘think-tanks’ (meaning lobby groups) precisely to distract the left from the only struggle that matters – the class struggle against their sponsors – an important part of which is the anti-colonial struggle, which in a scottish context is what this site is about, and Palestine is a horrific example.
So it’s a lot more simple than your convoluted sociological gobbledygook: Just follow the money!
Ms Braverman, like so many of her plutocratic Tory colleagues, is defending her, and their own, class interests. That’s why she is there.
In addition, her family has, I understand, business interests in Israel, and has has family members in the (hilariously titled) Israel Defence Force.
Much of here vehemence (if not her evident madness) may derive from that.
Quite right ! You tell ’em , Suella …sorry , Steve !
@SteveH, your mouth is full of cock. Perhaps English isn’t your first language, though: “a secular marxist-theocratic movement”?!?!
I play Steve H bingo when I read his nonsensical hate filled diatribes.
Mark your card for Stevie’s favourite hate topics:
Graduates – tick
Immigrants- not this time
Transgender people – not this time
Neo-Marxists (aka anyone that Stevie boy disagrees with) – tick
2/4 – not bad from Steve but as my teacher used to say- could do better!
@John, a middling score, I agree. Nothing as sustainable as making your own fun. I thought that the British armed forces were run by a graduate elite, but that’s maybe not the preferred model; possibly the Wehrmacht, or the Golden Horde. I’m pretty sure Genghis’ brood never attended the Khan Academy, at least. Oops, I just checked Wikipedia’s page on Timur:
“He was a patron of educational and religious institutions.”
“His massacres were selective and he spared the artistic and educated.”
Sounds like a right woke neo-marxist theo-secularist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timur
Sleeping Dog I appear to have missed the obvious one – woke which he managed to squeeze in so I have updated Steve H’s score to 3/5.
This is not a form of bingo I would recommend playing as it carries a danger of depression and insanity if you read too many of Steve H’s comments.
@John, yes indeed. I have now diverted my mind to considering Timur the Woke allocating his captured artists and graduates to staff his Horde’s face-painting workshops and crèches. Apologies if I got your pronoun wrong, Timur.
“Islamism is a secular marxist-theocratic movement that is oppressive and uses its interpretation of Islam as its authority.” Perhaps the most stupid and absurd sentence I have read in a long, long time. Secularism is by definition non-theocratic: “Islamism”, I assume by which you mean Islamicism, refers to the study of Islam as a theocratic project. Most ‘God’ based religious practices are theocratic not secular. Of course one can study a religion without necessarily believing in it but your use of English is so tortuous as to induce pain. One wishes you’d have a think about the inherently contradictory content of your sentences. Further, if you took a slightly longer view of history you’d realise that Christianity -among other faiths- has been rather a successful in oppressing vast numbers of human beings who have lived upon this ball some of us call Earth.
You really are a sad pathetic troll,apart from being an uneducated fool to boot,typical chanty rassler!
You are correct John but please remember the Steve H’s of this world crave attention and try and distort comments to their twisted agenda to give them some sort of personal validation. Best to ignore such attention seeking nonentities completely.
To the barricades ! Down with the graduates !
Two “Gratuate Elites” in my family, both with first-class honours degrees:
One is packing chicken in a factory on a Glasgow industrial estate. The other is working evenings in a pub and day-shift in a cafe in Partick. Graduated in 2021.
It can only be a matter of weeks until they are both controlling large British institutions and dividing society as part of a master-plan of graduate-elite dominance. Hope the pay is better.
@Wul, the likes of SteveH may be coy about their preferred alternative qualification, but there’s still a lot of primogeniture about, and indeed, above, as well as the traditional British way of simply buying one’s way into office (and once, maybe again, military office too). As Catherine Bennett’s classic article spells out: Illiterate? Criminal record? Welcome to the House of Lords
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/11/illiterate-criminal-record-hereditary-peers-election-house-of-lords
I’d have to agree that ‘graduates’ is not a very useful measure of over-representation in the corridors of power, but who indeed are over-represented, apart from the above categories (nepotism, corruption), and obviously landlords, lawyers, the military, the sex abuser community, the Anglican clergy, men* and so forth?
*The House of Commons library says:
“With women making up 35% of the House of Commons, the United Kingdom is ranked 48th for the proportion of women in the lower (or only) house of parliament. Rwanda, Cuba and Nicaragua have the highest female representation.”
“ graduate elites who run all our institutions”. When I went to university (84-88) there were, indeed, ‘elites’ who turned up, as well as the rest of us from state schools. In terms of academic knowledge (excepting subjects like ‘fine art’, ‘philosophee’ or ‘divinitee’), the working class students typically wiped the floor with the ‘elite’. After all, the working class kids had to be academically excellent (top grades) to get in. The ‘elites’ slobber about for 3-4 years, got a Third Class degree, and then what?
The ‘elite’ graduates went on to jobs in their parent’s law firms or farms, the ‘Citee’, journalism of a sort (Daily Fail), and ‘management’ – they ended up running the country. It’s simply ‘elites’ who run all our institutions, many of whom never got a degree (nor a good one) – Charles, Diana, William, Harry, rinse and repeat across upper classes families.
Those people were “elite” irrespective of their degree, intelligence or chosen subject. The class system in operation. Education is a good thing and people who are against education are not to be trusted.
The unbearably sad thing is that fools like SteveH end up supporting the actual elites ( those with vast wealth, power, connections, corruption, media power) in their crusade to silence any dissent from the ordinary, caring, working people (with and without degrees) who will be marching because they want the bombing of children by a state government to stop. The same people, like me, who were sickened and appalled by the atrocities committed by Hammas in October.
How anyone can look at Braverman, Farage etc and see someone who represents “the little man”, “the decent British worker”, “respect”, “dignity” etc is beyond my understanding.
@Doctor McGrail, yes, that’s who. Not all families in the current elite of the British establishment trace their lineage and seat at the top table to the favours of William the Conqueror, but a good few of their ancestors were in the pro-slavery camp of MPs, lords and of course royals, and their grip on power was only cemented by the generous recompense these types voted in for their kind:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/14/as-statues-of-slave-traders-are-torn-down-their-heirs-sit-untouched-in-the-lords
To be fair, since that article, the Colonial Countryside: National Trust Houses Reinterpreted project has been actively making connections with these power bases of masonry and chintz and the political careers of those greatest of beneficiaries from the British Empire’s long-running slavery crimes (and of course, there are other forms of capitalist-imperialist exploitation).
Or, of course, you could just be some creep ennobled by the monarch or rewarded by Prime Minister. The recent lists include examples of intersectionality (corrupt *and* nepotistic, often) but this is no new thing. And Lloyd George’s gong-sales must cast a long shadow.
I can validate your comment from personal experience.
I attended Herriot Watt late 70’s and was not politically active.
I have since found out that a fellow student at the Watt around this time was Alastair Jack – never heard of him or met him in my academic, social or sporting circles.
Check out Jack’s background, then review his political contributions and tell me that his elite social background didn’t help him in his claim up the political ladder ultimately to the House of Lords. An anachronism of politics ending up in an institution that is an anachronism of democracy!
Steve H – I have broken my promise not to directly comment to you only because I read the leader of the SDLP’s comment on Suella Braverman. He described her as
‘aggressively ignorant’
a description which describes your posts perfectly.
A Scottish Labour MSP, in rather more planetary-realistic vein, has reportedly proposed legislation on ecocide:
“Labour MSP Monica Lennon’s member’s bill would make Scotland the first part of the UK to enforce tough penalties for ecocide – the mass destruction of the environment.
“She has launched a consultation which ends in February.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-67356905
She may simply be building her “brand” with this incitement (people like SteveH above will lap it up). Not caring if she’s sacked or not. Getting her USP “out there” for the next-but-one general election. Suella for PM anybody?
“Are You Thinking What Suella’s Thinking?” White-supremacist Brits, just like you, up and down the country, are thinking the same shit.