Friday 29 January 2016

Inflammatory Weekend Discussion Points

"We thought contact with western capitalism would make honest businessmen of Russian oligarchs. The reverse appears to be the case"
Discuss.

"Since there is no vaccine against the Zika virus and no abortion rights in Brazil unless the mother's life is in danger, all Brazilian women of child-bearing age are at risk because of the social, cultural, religious or political situation in their country and have the right to claim asylum"
 Discuss!

33 comments:

Demetrius said...

Simon Jenkins. It was indeed a nice idea. Robert Maxwell was all in favour of it.

CityUnslicker said...

Letting in lots of Brazilian girls of child bearing age, there have been worse ideas.

Weekend Yachtsman said...

Hard to believe anyone would believe the Simon Jenkins assertion.

The world just doesn't work that way.

Anonymous said...

"Letting in lots of Brazilian girls of child bearing age, there have been worse ideas."

.. as long as they are not called de Menezes, they'll be perfectly safe.

Steven_L said...

Letting in lots of Brazilian girls of child bearing age, there have been worse ideas.

Maybe Frau Merkel thought along similar lines about all those nice desperate young arabic men?

Blue Eyes said...

Simon Jenkins, he is the one who (like so many) obsesses about conservation and moans about a lack of housing, isn't he? Salt, large pinch thereof.

Infectious diseases, hmm, I take a fairly hard line. Not quite Farageiste on denying entry (ho ho) to HIV people, but...

Anyway, I want to throw in Mr Hammond's remarks into the mix. Is he an outrider or an outlier?

Blue Eyes said...

Oh, on the subject of Brazilian girls, my friend's brother was getting married to one and as soon as she applied to the Home Office for permission she got thrown out. She had been here for years.

dearieme said...

Weekend discussion point: I saw that Sam Cam on the telly last night. She claimed never to haver seen a vanilla pod. I ask you!

Electro-Kevin said...

The Brazilian women might offset the 70% African males coming to Britain and rebalance the gender gap in the EU.

Plus there would be less pubic hair to clog our drains.

Anonymous said...

Brazilian girls - hmm OK but only those of European extraction.

On Jenks, ex graun' and he's always been unable to or, in his purblind obstinacy able to realize any distinction and it is a quite enormous chasm between;

a. open and free markets, ie Laissez faire economics and,

b. what we have in Europe - Politicians running a mafia styled controlled economy with rampant Statism/Crony capitalism/corporatism , and where Russia would fit in very nicely.

Jenks, with his red blinkers and polarized pink tinted goggles on, can't see all of that.

Anonymous said...

1) I love the idea that 'the Russians' have caused the introduction of greed, corruption and psychopathic behavior into our actions and institutions. Like it wasnt there before. The Russian approach is to use out weaknesses against us; toleration for immigrants results in them bombing refugee camps to force the flow of migrants into Europe, Lavrov highlighting the unfortunate and obscure case of 'our girl' (a russian migrant child) raped in Germany merely stirs the pot further.

We shouldnt have interfered in Ukraine (or Iraq, or Libya for that matter)
That was their business, their neighbourhood, their puppet.

Now we've got Syria, a soon-to-be-fucked Turkey and huge dislocated populations from north africa and mid east. We are looking at professional chess players, with decades of planning, squaring up to Gay-boy Dave, a German milk-maid and a french ponce.

We are fucked.

Message from the past, to the future; Remember this well - Dont Fuck With The Russians.

2) In the week where a heterosexual couple are refused equality with homosexual couples - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35436845 - its no surprise that the UK sees abortion as a human right.

Misogyny writ into our constitution with many like-minded posters here.

Verily we live in the end times.

Anonymous said...

@ Anon @ 1.39 am (obviously just back from a night on th lash)

You are not the first to caricature the Western democracies as effete/degenerate/ineffective, Decline & Fall etc, it is th staple fare of totalitarian regimes over the centuries. And of those who rather admire them in their disciplined toughness and ideological purity.

But somehow it never quite works out as they expect.

Blue Eyes said...

Indeed @8.49, I would rather be an effete Frenchman than a macho Ruski, even now while France is in les doldrums.

Electro-Kevin said...

Blue Eyes - Effete Frenchman or macho Ruski ? That would depend entirely on the era to be lived in.

Perhaps your choice presages the type of era we could be about to live in.

I know which one I'd want beside me in a bar brawl... more to the point the one I'd rather not be standing in front of !

Blue Eyes said...

"Gay boy Dave" is holding an in/out referendum, something which was so unthinkable ten years ago that Nick Clegg demanded it as put up or shut up idea.

"Gideon" has cut the deficit and kept the economy going, although not as much as we would have liked, and overseen a collapse in unemployment.

Obama, well I don't rate him, but if there was a choice between him and Trump...

Yes, you are right, the western limp-wristed democracies are in a much worse state than Russia, Saudi, China, et al.

Blue Eyes said...

EK, I am talking about now not some fantasy post-apocalyptic world which you seem to spend your days waiting for.

My mum has a Russian friend who lives a kind of upper-middle class lifestyle. Her husband works for a European company and gets paid an international salary so they are OK, but she is a university lecturer who works to keep busy rather than the salary.

She comes to London quite often because although she would never admit it in public, living in Moscow seems to be a fairly hateful experience.

Presumably you would prefer to live in a country where the national motto, if we went in for such things, would probably be "mind your own business".

Electro-Kevin said...

Blue - And I work with Russians whose view is quite surprising. When asked which is best out of our two countries the answer is not as straight as you may imagine - but they are here, which I suppose is the true test. The money makes sense, but then they have been gifted one of our country's best jobs.

Debt £1.5tn and climbing, personal debt climbing, new reports that Georgie has sold off record levels of British assets - houses beyond the reach of the average worker. Pensions being raided yet again. Power stations being closed down beyond sustainability. Slum conditions on Matt Allwright's Rogue Landlords and a report by Harriet Sergeant on the huge London underclass living 15 to a terrace.

I am in support of the rights of the effette, the gay, female emancipation - but how does this reconcile with the gender/religious imbalance which is being introduced through non selective immigration ?

The future is pretty certain from where I'm sitting and the only redemptive thing about it is that those who wished for it (anything so long as it is not stale, pale, male English) are in for a shock.

dearieme said...

"no abortion rights in Brazil": oh yes there are. It's just that it's the babies who have them, not the mothers.

Elby the Beserk said...

@ANON @ 8.49

Show me a civilisation that hasn't collapsed ...

Lord T said...

History shows that a large mass being integrated into anything drags everything down to the lowest common denominator.

Sure you can introduce one or two to that mass and they MAY change but introduce more than a few % and it goes pear shaped every time.

Yet that theory is still the basis for so many decisions.

Electro-Kevin said...

I was shocked but not surprised to read that Britain is lowest for literacy and numeracy among graduates in the developed world.

The exodus from the Middle East and Africa looks pretty apocalyptic to me - or have we become so inured to flotillas of crowded rubber boats arriving in Europe that the situation is now the new normal ?

The foil to my pessimism is the eternal optimist who says things were ever thus and that things are more or less under control.

No they weren't and no they're not.

Who really is the fantasist here ?

Blue Eyes said...

I would love to know what the Pessimists would do if they were in charge. For example, what can a UK government do to stop Eritreans heading to Italy?

MySaturdayNightName said...

BE @ 11.16 - deport them after detaining them. Make it clear the economic migration is neither wanted nor needed in Europe.
Refugees should be allowed but only married couples with families and on a temporary (lets say 10 years) basis. With that they are free to work, claim benefits, be housed, educated, receive medical care etc... but after 10 years they must return.

This would create a generation of western educated (saved), medicated and lets be honest indoctrinated people in middle eastern countries. Britain could surf this wave for another century and keep herself afloat.

dearie me @9.50 - Wonderful!

Anonymous #2 and Anonymous #1 - I think the point being made here is that Russia have rehearsed every possible scenario and have contingencies in place for all of them. Dave, Angela and Frankie are using fractured, immature and unintegrated policies crumbling under financial and social upheaval, against a wholly professional and well rehearsed political, military, social and psychological behemoth.

This is not a fight we should be engaging in; We need another century to resolve the European issue and become a cohesive and coherent force but Europe may not last that long.

As for abortion..... lowest, basest, most fiundamental method of self-destruction. A Sin in the truest sense; destruction of the self.

My2ndSaturdayNightName said...

Nearly forgot - Trump is Reagan and Sanders is Carter.

You realised it here first.....

Electro-Kevin said...

Blue:

A) What's not to be pessimistic about ?

B) Italy's borders are Italy's our borders are ours (or so they should be)

That they are no longer our borders is partly why I'm pessimistic and their restoration would cure the Eritrean problem. But the main reason I'm pessimistic is that you think this will turn out alright, that you think the country you were born in will resemble the one you will die in - and that many like you will vote Yes to remaining in the EU.

We had a Labour politician on QT get away with stating that the incidents in Cologne were pretty much the same as any Friday night in Birmingham. Well if gangs of men crowd around unconsenting women whilst fingering their vaginas and anuses then I suppose she's right.

If that language appalls you then you've been taken in by the lies and, of course, the image is new to you.

At this very moment the EU itself is disassociating its failed policies on migration from the abuses of European women buy pushy young blokes - some of them doubtless Eritrean.

Soon enough effette Frenchmen are going to go seriously out of fashion, I think.

Don't blame me, Blue. It's your thinking that's got us into this fix.

Electro-Kevin said...

PS, "Pessimists"

Pessimism isn't a permanent state, nor is it a state which applies to every subject. Clearly things get better and worse in the world all at the same time.

It is easy to label an opponent to the political flow in the negative (in the wrong, outdated) and if the political landscape were re-tilted then I would be the Optimist and you the Pessimist. Alas people who control the politics control the language too.

The monopoly on Optimism is to the Europhile's advantage. It is easy for them to sound fresh and positive. This has huge media appeal and is the insurmountable peak that the sceptics find in their way.

I have noticed that 'fantasist' and 'pessimist' are dropped into the discourse freely but need to be challenged.

PS, I don't know which way you will vote on the EU, Blue. I merely observe that people with similar thoughts tend to be pro.

Blue Eyes said...

Brilliant. BE it turns out has been running the country for the last few years. You heard it here first.

So EK, your comments would be more persuasive if you didn't assume that everyone who debates with you a) agrees with idiot Labour MPs and b) is a naive idiot.

Please can you point me to anywhere where I have stated that I agree with unlimited migration? Can you please tell me where I have said that I welcome the attacks on women in Cologne?

I am actually quite offended by that comment. But I guess if you think I am a rape-apologist then I cannot stop you from thinking that.

I have never argued in favour of letting all the people in Calais in, nor all the people streaming over from everywhere via Greece and Italy.

However I am interested in actual suggestions as to what to do. Leaving the EU to prevent naturalised newcomers from having an automatic right to come to the UK is an actual suggestion. One that I am warming to, to be frank.

Ps I am not "blame" ing anyone. I asked quite a straightforward question. You and lots of others claim to be much cleverer than the UK government and even more cleverer than me. So I wanted to know what you clever people suggested. Instead you accuse me of being a rape apologist. What a pleasant chap you must be.

Electro-Kevin said...

"Obsessing about conservation or the housing shortage." Your words earlier in this thread.

Obsessing.

Dropped in so casually. To add to fantasy, Pessimist... so that the reader may infer that you are the sane one and those on whom you comment are not.

I don't claim to be cleverer than the UK government. They are very clever indeed. Far too clever in fact.

Sorry to be pernickety. But it was you who once pulled us up on "coloured people" instead of "people of colour". So imagine how it feels to have your sanity questioned.

I'm pretty certain you'll be voting In.

Electro-Kevin said...

That was in response (BE) to your incredible assertion that it was ME assuming that other people are idiots.

You're at it all the time. And I don't think I'm cleverer than you (I can't understand football for example) but I don't think you're as clever as you think either.

andrew said...

For me this illustrates how the internet is not like real life.

In the internet things happen 'quickly' - in mins/hours
In the real world attitudes take years to change.

Simon jenkins is right but wrong on causation.
The symptom is that there is a perception that dishonest russian businessmen are allowed to happily live in the uk and carry on being dishonest.
The effect is that everyone else's respect for honesty and the rule of law is slightly eroded.

The cause is that the authorities that are supposed to uphold the law have not prosecuted these people
... or our perception is wrong.

General respect for the law/government and other people is built up over many generations, but can be destroyed much more quickly.

On example of the general acceptance of the rule of law is self scanning in supermarkets. it only works if people voluntarily follows the rules and that is not out of fear of being caught.

I do not know how many shops in moscow allow one to self-scan...

Electro-Kevin said...

I do not self scan because it does one of my fellow countrymen out of a job.

That in itself is a form of theft.

(And most of the till workers I encounter in London are black !)

andrew said...

hm

iirc you are/were a train driver

you and your predecessors did stagecoach drivers out of a job

who did people who rented out horses out of a job

who did guides who walked the paths out of a job

who did animals who ate the unwary out of a job

etc

i dont self scan because I have no barcode :)

Nick Drew said...

I vowed never to fill up my own ptrol tank ...

that didn't get me very far

and if you queue for the teller in the bank, a 'helpful' functionary comes to chase you off, towards the machines!