Politics

[Isegrim 9800]

 

[Isegrim 9800]

 

[Dr Gloom 21954]

i just came here to post that. dark times for the british hedgehog community ahead 

[Rayvin 5223]

Is "build back better" a new political buzz term or something? I thought it was a Johnson slogan representing inadequacy, but i see Biden has latched onto it too, and sports it on his Twitter account.

[Dr Gloom 21954]

With Biden it makes sense because he’s following Trump. With Johnson it suggests he needs to rebuild after a decade of Tory rule, which of course he does. I’m not sure it’s the smartest political slogan in his case though - why shout about your own party’s failure?

[Renton 21638]

The Democrats used it first I think. Its now spawned a whole field of conspiracy theories and is being linked to the NWO. 

[NJS 4389]

I have to say that Biden has impressed me so far - still think he's too much of a centrist but he's made a good start. 

[Rayvin 5223]

1 hour ago, Renton said:

The Democrats used it first I think. Its now spawned a whole field of conspiracy theories and is being linked to the NWO. 

 

Because of course it has   People are hopeless.

[Dr Gloom 21954]

1 hour ago, NJS said:

I have to say that Biden has impressed me so far - still think he's too much of a centrist but he's made a good start. 

Social democrats aren’t all evil - they can do good things. They are able to build the consensus needed to win an election and they can improve lives of ordinary people. 

[Rayvin 5223]

1 hour ago, NJS said:

I have to say that Biden has impressed me so far - still think he's too much of a centrist but he's made a good start. 

 

Yes, same - suspending arms sales to Saudi is a good move. The thing about federal prisons isn't the big move that it's being painted as but is still 'good'. Apparently it was in place before Trump though so he's really just reverting back to what already existed.

 

Iran still looks like a problem area for some reason. Maybe that's a work in progress.

 

Branding climate change as a threat to the US Armed Forces is a masterstroke though  

[Rayvin 5223]

Just now, Dr Gloom said:

Social democrats aren’t all evil - they can do good things. They are able to build the consensus needed to win an election and they can improve lives of ordinary people. 

 

No one is arguing that they can't. The argument is whether they're ever capable of doing enough. And if you look at our failure to tackle wealth inequality and climate change across the world in general, it does rather feel like our options for governance are for things to get bad quickly or slowly.

[Dr Gloom 21954]

Just now, Rayvin said:

 

No one is arguing that they can't. The argument is whether they're ever capable of doing enough. And if you look at our failure to tackle wealth inequality and climate change across the world in general, it does rather feel like our options for governance are for things to get bad quickly or slowly.

NJS just said he’s too much of a centrist. I’m just saying the world could do with more Bidens and Starmers right now - vanilla, left of centre, consensus builders. We are crying out for boring centrists. 

Climate change is an area Biden is already taking seriously. He played a crucial part in getting the Paris agreement over the line, has obviously rejoined straight away, and has created a special climate envoy role for John Kerry - hopefully a sign that he isn’t fucking about.

[ewerk 30642]

10 hours ago, Rayvin said:

Is "build back better" a new political buzz term or something? I thought it was a Johnson slogan representing inadequacy, but i see Biden has latched onto it too, and sports it on his Twitter account.

He stole it from Neil Kinnock.

[Rayvin 5223]

3 minutes ago, Dr Gloom said:

NJS just said he’s too much of a centrist. I’m just saying the world could do with more Bidens and Starmers right now - vanilla, left of centre, consensus builders. We are crying out for boring centrists. 

Climate change is an area Biden is already taking seriously. He played a crucial part in getting the Paris agreement over the line, has obviously rejoined straight away, and has created a special climate envoy role for John Kerry - hopefully a sign that he isn’t fucking about.

 

Agreed, but Paris alone isn't going to be enough. The boring centrists as you call them are indeed stable hands, but that only appears to be good for slowing the descent, not turning it around and climbing back up. Are they the sorts of people who can take the radical action we probably do need to deal with the challenges we face? Probably not. If they're a gateway to those radical people then that's fair enough, but I'm not sure that evidence shows that they are.

 

Hopefully Biden will be radical indeed on certain issues while being beige on others. Climate change would probably be the only one he could be, but frankly that wouldn't be a bad outcome at all.

Edited January 28, 2021 by Rayvin

[ewerk 30642]

Would a ‘radical’ like Bernie Sanders have beaten Trump? Looking at the numbers Trump got I’m not so sure.

[Rayvin 5223]

No I totally agree - he wouldn't have. Maybe first time around, not this time.

 

Biden was the right move insofar as he was the winning move - but all I'm saying more generally is that it would be nice to have an option for something positive for society to move towards, instead of two different shades of decline - managed or full throttle.

[Renton 21638]

2 hours ago, Rayvin said:

 

Agreed, but Paris alone isn't going to be enough. The boring centrists as you call them are indeed stable hands, but that only appears to be good for slowing the descent, not turning it around and climbing back up. Are they the sorts of people who can take the radical action we probably do need to deal with the challenges we face? Probably not. If they're a gateway to those radical people then that's fair enough, but I'm not sure that evidence shows that they are.

 

Hopefully Biden will be radical indeed on certain issues while being beige on others. Climate change would probably be the only one he could be, but frankly that wouldn't be a bad outcome at all.

 

I keep saying this but I firmly believe Blair improved the lives of most people and reversed some of the policies of Thatcher. I would admit though that is somewhat anecdotal and there may be economic data that contradicts this (I.e. wealth gap increased). But watching the channel 4 programme It's a Sin reminded me what the NHS was like under Thatcher, with crumbling Victorian infrastructure and social stigmatisation. I'm old enough to remember it really was fucking horrific and it largely changed under New Labour.

 

But anyway, most importantly for us, Biden is an internationalist.

Edited January 28, 2021 by Renton

[Rayvin 5223]

26 minutes ago, Renton said:

 

I keep saying this but I firmly believe Blair improved the lives of most people and reversed some of the policies of Thatcher. I would admit though that is somewhat anecdotal and there may be economic data that contradicts this (I.e. wealth gap increased). But watching the channel 4 programme It's a Sin reminded me what the NHS was like under Thatcher, with crumbling Victorian infrastructure and social stigmatisation. I'm old enough to remember it really was fucking horrific and it largely changed under New Labour.

 

But anyway, most importantly for us, Biden is an internationalist.

 

Not doubting his accomplishments - just not sure it's enough that this sort of thing is enough when it is then reversed by a decade plus of the Tories.

 

Totally agree on the last bit on the internationalism - it's absolutely vital.

[ewerk 30642]

 

Johnson with his finger on the pulse yet again.

[Alex 35097]

4 hours ago, ewerk said:

He stole it from Neil Kinnock.

Was going to be ‘build back well’ but there was an issue around some of the hashtags 

[Rayvin 5223]

As an aside, is anyone following the Reddit driven takedown of the US financial market   Incredible stuff so far.

 

Some hedge fund shorted the stock for GameStop, which I assume is some soon to die video game retailer, and a stock trading subreddit took this as some kind of call to arms. The upshot is that huge numbers of 'average joes' have bought large quantities of the stock, thus exposing the hedge fund to, so far, $1bn of losses. It's now being covered across the MSM, Biden's office is monitoring the situation, and various stock trading apps are trying to prevent non-hedge fund buyers from investing further into Gamestop (i.e. they've made is impossible) which is pulling senior politicians into the mix.

 

The subreddit seems to think this is 'wealth re-distribution' in action, although they are also quite exposed here if the stock doesn't hold. And I mean, eventually there'll be some massive sell off - but even so, it's causing an absolute clusterfuck on WallStreet, and for that it's worth paying a bit of attention to.

[Meenzer 15552]

Aye, it's been a fun read these last few days. While it's obviously a lot to do with generally just fucking things up, I do have a lot of sympathy with the argument that this kind of thing is considered to be fine when it's "them" doing it but not when it's "us". Shedding a bit of light on that isn't such a bad thing.

[ewerk 30642]

The thing is that it obviously won’t be off. Unless there’s a secret Reddit plan to subsequently short the stock then surely a lot of them are going to lose money?

Though obviously it’s worth it from afar to see hedge fund cunts losing billions.

[Meenzer 15552]

It's got Ted Cruz and AOC to agree on something, so that's already a heck of an achievement.

 

 

[Rayvin 5223]

2 minutes ago, ewerk said:

The thing is that it obviously won’t be off. Unless there’s a secret Reddit plan to subsequently short the stock then surely a lot of them are going to lose money?

Though obviously it’s worth it from afar to see hedge fund cunts losing billions.

 

Yep - but they appear to have bought into the notion that bloodying the nose of the big guy is worth the loss.