Are the Tories velvet glove fascists?

First topic message reminder :

In my opinion, the UK under our extreme right-wing government is rapidly degenerating into velvet glove fascism.

Like all fascists, Hitler was against trade unions and socialists. Similarly, Michael Gove vilified primary school teachers and dinner ladies, many of whom went on strike for the first time in their lives on 30 November last year, as “militants itching for a fight”. Gove has plans for military cadets in every school (Cameron Youth?) and a return to children sitting in rows reciting lists of kings and queens in history lessons, rather than learning to think. Hitler also realised how important history was to indoctrination when he ordered the mass burning of books. Tories close libraries.

Hitler made sure that he controlled the media. The Tories have cowed the BBC by threats of fragmentation and sharing the licence fee with others, such as Murdoch. The BBC, which was required to be impartial, has become just another mouthpiece for Tory propaganda. As soon as they came to power in 2010, the Tories instructed every minister to repeat over and over again the whopping lie that Labour, not Tory bankers, caused the global credit crisis. We have the repeated lie about everyone in the public sector getting “gold-plated pensions”, when the average is only £5,600 per annum. As Goebbels said: "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it." Cameron has proved over and over again that he’s a pathological liar.

Hitler divided and ruled the German people by scapegoating Jews and gypsies. The Tories are demonising those who receive benefits, one result of which is that disability hate crimes are increasing. Duncan Smith went on breakfast television on 27 May 2010 and made the chilling remark: "Work makes you free". That's an exact translation of the sign which used to hang over the entrances to concentration camps.

The Tories have plans to force 50,000 disabled youth to work for companies such as Sainsbury's and Tesco's unpaid. Cancer patients are being made to undergo work assessments while being treated with chemotherapy, and wounded soldiers are being sacked. (Osborne is willing to take money from the disabled and cancer patients, but not prepared to veto Hester's bonus from the largely state-owned RBS.)

The police are being trained to shoot people with rubber bullets and will be issued with water cannon, yet the Tories were so keen on helping Arab rebels in North Africa. Two unknown Scottish teenagers made a joke on 'Facebook' about organising riots, and they both received four years in jail. A prominent Tory TV presenter (and personal friend of Cameron) made a tasteless joke about murdering trade unionists on prime time television; nothing was done about it and the BBC continue to pay him £1 million a year of our money.

We don't have any concentration camps in the UK, but the principles are the same - propaganda, indoctrination, and divide and rule by demonising a section of the population. While Hitler gassed Jews, the Tories clearly don't care if benefit claimants starve to death. Even payments from the Social Fund, for those in the most desperate need, will no longer be available from job centres but will be at the 'discretion' of local councils, who will not have to ring-fence the money. All the ingredients of fascism are there, but it's just being handed out to us in a more genteel form than Hitler used - in velvet gloves.

Tosh wrote:It is ok to demonise anyone who is a Conservative, Liberal or New Labour but I cannot demonise those benefit claimants who consciously steal my freakin money ?

Yeah, someone needs to read the definition of fascism.

Funny this. I'm a working man, but I dont mind benefit claimants being hopefully saved from the gutter with the help of my taxes.

I guess Tosh, you just like to be different.

Funny this. I'm a working man, but I dont mind benefit claimants being hopefully saved from the gutter with the help of my taxes.

I guess Tosh, you just like to be different..

Inventing a position I do not hold does not make me different to you, so stop inventing a strawman, it is juvenile.

I object to my taxes being squandered on those claimants who are not entitled to benefits, and there are many.

Wake up and look at the real world, there is a whole underclass screwing the system.

Oh, and cut out the holier than thou rhetoric, it is nauseating.

There is something almost sickeningly religious about socialists claiming the high moral ground on altruism, it never occurs to them that an improved public sector would improve the lives of those genuinely in need.

Tosh wrote:

Funny this. I'm a working man, but I dont mind benefit claimants being hopefully saved from the gutter with the help of my taxes.

I guess Tosh, you just like to be different..

Inventing a position I do not hold does not make me different to you, so stop inventing a strawman, it is juvenile.

I object to my taxes being squandered on those claimants who are not entitled to benefits, and there are many.

Wake up and look at the real world, there is a whole underclass screwing the system.

All unemployed people deserve benefits.

There are no children going hungry for goodness sake, wake up to the reality that Britain has a welfare state that is the envy of the world.

Tosh. Do you live in a time warp? The Scandinavian welfare states are far better than ours.

Still you provide no evidence to support your claim that “no children are going hungry”, and yet you refuse to acknowledge the facts. You’re as blinkered as any religious fundamentalist!

Here's an extract from an article by Adrian Jenkins, previously posted for your benefit on 4 October:-

Low income parents are struggling to feed their children as benefit changes and rising food and fuel prices squeeze their budgets, a charity has warned. South Derbyshire Citizens’ Advice Bureau (CAB) said the problem was not only "shocking and increasing" but forcing the needy to approach food banks for help.

“Parents are having to really push their budgets further to find food for their children,” said Ashley Canner, the CAB’s primary care trust outreach worker and social policy co-ordinator. “We are worried, but it’s nothing to the worry we are going to be feeling next March and April when all the new changes to benefits come in.”
http://www.burtonmail.co.uk/News/Survival-battle-10082012.htm

I also posted this on 4 October:-

"A record number of people are turning to charities to help them feed their families. The Trussell Trust, which runs the UK's only network of food banks, fed almost 129,000 people last year, including 6,000 in Scotland."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-17867328

On 5 October, I posted evidence that a child had starved to death in the UK, but as it was only an immigrant, perhaps you don’t care:-
http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/care/child-starved-to-death-after-benefits-delay/6524052.article#.UG6xc5aTDzc.twitter

claimants who are not entitled to benefits, and there are many.

Evidence? No, I thought not. Maybe you’re assuming, like Josef Goebbels, that “if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” That won’t wash on this forum, I’m afraid.

Further reading:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Universal-Credit-Child-Poverty-Action/dp/190607660X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1350080381&sr=8-2

Bananas - 'e shits 'em!

Ivan wrote:

There are no children going hungry for goodness sake, wake up to the reality that Britain has a welfare state that is the envy of the world.

Tosh. Do you live in a time warp? The Scandinavian welfare states are far better than ours.

Still you provide no evidence to support your claim that “no children are going hungry”, and yet you refuse to acknowledge the facts. You’re as blinkered as any religious fundamentalist!

Here's an extract from an article by Adrian Jenkins, previously posted for your benefit on 4 October:-

Low income parents are struggling to feed their children as benefit changes and rising food and fuel prices squeeze their budgets, a charity has warned. South Derbyshire Citizens’ Advice Bureau (CAB) said the problem was not only "shocking and increasing" but forcing the needy to approach food banks for help.

“Parents are having to really push their budgets further to find food for their children,” said Ashley Canner, the CAB’s primary care trust outreach worker and social policy co-ordinator. “We are worried, but it’s nothing to the worry we are going to be feeling next March and April when all the new changes to benefits come in.”
http://www.burtonmail.co.uk/News/Survival-battle-10082012.htm

I also posted this on 4 October:-

"A record number of people are turning to charities to help them feed their families. The Trussell Trust, which runs the UK's only network of food banks, fed almost 129,000 people last year, including 6,000 in Scotland."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-17867328

On 5 October, I posted evidence that a child had starved to death in the UK, but as it was only an immigrant, perhaps you don’t care:-
http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/care/child-starved-to-death-after-benefits-delay/6524052.article#.UG6xc5aTDzc.twitter

claimants who are not entitled to benefits, and there are many.

Evidence? No, I thought not. Maybe you’re assuming, like Josef Goebbels, that “if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” That won’t wash on this forum, I’m afraid.

Ivan it is the Tories that put out these lies, look what they saying about everyone that is claiming benefits they are all scroungers does that include the ones that have been put on the Dole by scam..er..on and his cohorts the yellow tories by sacking so many from the public sector.

In an earlier post I pointed out that in 13 years of New Labour the highest tax rate was 40%

blueturando. Yes, that was in the good years, when almost everyone was becoming better off and being provided with better public services. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” seems to have been the prevailing philosophy.

Tony Blair has argued that in a rich society, the great majority (say the top 80-85% of the income and wealth distribution) is materially so well off that differences among them are not politically important. What matters is that bottom 15-20%, who not only suffer real deprivation, but whose social exclusion leads them into forms of behaviour that threaten everyone else. Colin Crouch has written that “the central policy conclusion that follows from this is that fiscal and social policies do not need to intervene much in market outcomes that concern that large comfortable majority; but that a combination of social and police policies have a good deal to do in relation to that bottom minority.” Peter Mandelson famously said in California in 1998 that he was "intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich as long as they pay their taxes".

As someone who believes in the redistribution of wealth, that’s not a policy I agree with, but it does explain why, in the boom years, the top rate of income tax remained at 40% (although the rich did have to pay a little more national insurance). However, after the global credit crunch occurred, Gordon Brown – unlike George Osborne – had the integrity to say that he would raise taxes, and so the 50% rate came in, with the intention that those with the broadest backs should carry the greatest burden. Even Mandelson has distanced himself from his earlier remark.

Sources used:-

http://www.social-europe.eu/2011/04/does-inequality-matter-in-rich-societies/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/jan/26/mandelson-people-getting-filthy-rich

bobby wrote:Dont Feed The Troll. Do you remember that one IVAN:)

This is something that I have been practising for some time bobby, although it is very trying.

Original with links here: http://wp.me/p2sftc-4mW - I'm assuming this is the best place to put this post, but Ivan feel free to move it if you think it belongs elsewhere. Big hat-tip to Shirina for the videos, which I found in her thread about leaving the US if Romney won the presidential election!

Fun samples of US right-wing idiocy with serious lesson for UK

I wrote late last year about David Cameron’s big Freudian slip during PMQs when he said:

We are making more money for the rich..

A few people felt I was making too big a thing of it, insisting that, as he’d obviously meant to say ‘we are taking more money from the rich’, it was unfair to zoom in on a ‘slip of the tongue’.

But I think it is significant when politicians let slip something, Freudian or otherwise, that betray what’s really going on under the surface – giving the public a much truer glimpse of their real purposes and nature than their carefully-spun speeches and soundbites ever will.

Well, (on a discussion forum that I’d recommend you join) I came across a few interesting, and amusing, examples of right-wing slips and outright idiocy by some US right-wingers that I want to share with you – both because they tickled me and because, while they don’t translate exactly to this side of the Atlantic, they do provide a very useful insight into the mentality and tactics of the right-wingers in the UK to help the massive state-stripping exercise in which they’re currently engaged.

The first example comes from June last year, as the battle for the US presidency was ramping up. Opinion polls were indicating that the race might be quite close, though in the end it wasn’t, and the Republican party were busy trying to push through a ‘voter ID’ measure that they claimed was to prevent electoral fraud, but in reality had another, darker purpose.

Republican Mike Turzai was giving a speech to a Republican gathering in his home state of Pennsylvania on measures that had been pushed through to help the Republican cause. I’ll quote his statement in a moment, but I would recommend watching the video, so you hear it with your own ears:



Yes, you heard it right (if you clicked). Republicans had claimed that their voter ID plans were to prevent voter fraud. But voter fraud is a minuscule issue in the US – as the Brennan Center for Justice says, you have more chance of being struck by lighting in the US than you do of committing voter fraud. In most places, electoral fraud runs at something like 0.00002%.

The real reason, as many suspected, was to exclude large numbers of poor and ethnic minority citizens from being able to vote – and the Republicans, of course, denied this. But then, Mr Turzai let it slip:


Mike Turzai (R) on the real reasons for Voter ID legislation

Voter ID, which is going to allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done!

And the truth was out. Fortunately, even the massive fraud perpetrated by the Republicans in Pennsylvania wasn’t enough, and Barack Obama won there anyway. But the attempt and the intent were there.

The next couple of examples are less Freudian slips and more overt stupidity, but they bear reading and I hope you’ll enjoy them (in a horrified and perverse way) as much as I did. They both concern statements made by the Republican party in Texas, and the first requires a little more explanation than the second.

A little background for the first, then. During the battle for civil rights for African-Americans, many states attempted to terrorize and intimidate black people into not exercising their voting rights or into casting their vote for candidates who did not represent their best interests. As a result, in 1965 the federal government passed the ‘Voting Rights Act‘ in order to outlaw ‘discriminatory voting practices that had been responsible for the widespread disenfranchisement of African Americans in the U.S.‘ Specifically, the Act banned any ‘voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure … to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color‘.

Sounds pretty good, right? Hard to imagine anyone outside of the ‘lunatic fringe’ of neo-nazis having a problem with it, isn’t it? Well, sadly not. The Republican Party of Texas, around the same time as the Mr Turzai was letting the truth slip out and for connected reasons, published a document that included the following statement:



If you’re thinking ‘WTF?’, I can’t blame you. But clearly, the Republicans had thought ahead, and realised that a Voter ID law was going to be subject to legal challenge on the basis that it was a de facto discrimination ‘on account of race or color‘, and wanted the law repealed to prevent the legal challenge if they implemented such a law in Texas.

That one is bad, but at least the Republicans don’t say why they want to repeal the law, so they’re being a little subtle. The next one, also by the Texas Republicans, doesn’t even have the merit of any kind of subtlety:



Yes, seriously. The Republicans oppose the teaching of ‘higher order thinking skills’ and ‘critical reasoning skills’ because they might change behaviour and challenge carefully ingrained ‘fixed beliefs’ and obedience to authority.

You couldn’t make it up! I’d recommend watching the video from which I took these snapshots:



as the comments and reaction of the presenter are worth seeing.

It’s not just that they think in private that they want to keep people stupid and unthinking because that makes them more likely to vote Republican, but that they’re stupid and arrogant enough themselves to actually say it publicly, that says so much about the right-wing mentality.

UK right-wingers tend to be just a little more subtle – perhaps more of the UK public generally has a little more of those darned ‘critical thinking skills’ – but the underlying attitudes and goals are largely the same.

Mr Turzai and the Texas Republicans wanted to ‘pull a fast one’ in order to exclude voters and improve their chances of winning in spite of their recognisably odious policies and morals. Here in the UK, the Conservatives are fuming because the LibDems are (if only out of pique) to help vote through a set of boundary changes that would be so favourable to Tory electoral prospects that they amount to part of a coup attempt.

The Texas Republicans oppose thinking skills because their worldview and policies are so abhorrent that only the easily-deceived or morally-bankrupt can agree with them. Here in the UK, we have Michael Gove’s determination to impose a fragmented school system and a return to a national curriculum based on parrot-like learning of a narrow set of facts, including a history curriculum that is almost exclusively about dead, white, male establishment figures. Is there really any doubt that his motivations are the same – to deaden critical thinking and inculcate students with a respect for the authority of the Establishment and for its worldview?

The Tories we are currently forced to suffer under are a little more urbane than the US version. A £25k a term public-school education will do that for you, at least. But their aims and (lack of) moral depth are no less detestable.

I hope you did have a little fun with the videos and quotations. But the underlying message, and the lessons for anyone here in the UK who actually cares about the wellbeing of everyone and not just a privileged minority, are deadly serious, and we need to recognise the Tories for what they are and do everything we can to make sure that others aren’t fooled by their base tactics.

Who said eternal vigilance is the price of freedom?

Answers.com>Wiki Answers>Categories>History, Politics & Society>History>US History

This is often misattributed to Thomas Jefferson, but those words were never uttered in that way by anyone of note.
The earliest statement that reflects this sentiment was made by John Philpot Curran in a speech upon the Right of Election in 1790 (published in a book titled "Speeches on the late very interesting State trials" in 1808). He said:
"It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt."

“It really was a good day to bury bad news.”

Extracts from an article by Mike Sivier:-

As the press went into overdrive about the vote to permit gay marriage, a House of Commons committee quietly axed amendments to the Justice and Security Bill that would have made it less damaging to your freedom. This is the controversial Bill to allow ‘secret courts’ in the UK, so cases that are potentially embarrassing to government can be held behind closed doors.

The House of Lords had amended the Bill last November after concerns were raised about the threat to civil liberties. The changes would have meant judges could only grant secret hearings – or ‘Closed Material Procedures’ (CMPs) – if other alternatives like the existing system of public interest immunity had been ruled out.

As it now stands, defendants – or claimants in civil cases – will be excluded from the hearings where their fates will be decided. They will not be allowed to know or challenge the details of the case against them and will have to be represented by a security-cleared special advocate, rather than their own lawyer.

In other words, if this Bill becomes law, the government would be able to do anything it likes, to anyone it likes, under a veil of secrecy. It’s a clear contradiction of the Conservative Party’s own pre-election commitment to a far more open and accountable Parliament, and also of the coalition agreement, which stated: “The government believes that we need to throw open the doors of public bodies, to enable the public to hold politicians and public bodies to account.”

http://mikesivier.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/uk-police-state-moves-a-step-closer-to-your-door/

As this measure takes us another step nearer to corporate fascism under the Tories, where’s that idiot David Davis now? I’m talking about the useless specimen who resigned his seat and fought a pointless by-election over the number of days of detention without trial. His concern for civil liberties appears to have vanished when his vile party came to power in May 2010, what a hypocrite.

If you click on the link and start reading the responses under the full article, you will soon come to a cynical character who is not unknown to some of us....

In September 2005, after he had heckled Jack Straw, 82-year-old Walter Wolfgang was told by some over-zealous stewards to leave the Labour Party conference in Brighton. It was only two months after the 7/7 bombings, and maybe some of the conference officials were feeling more security conscious than usual, but there was no excuse for the treatment of that pensioner. However, contrary to the Tory myth, Mr Wolfgang wasn’t manhandled. He said: “Do you want me to leave? I will leave, you don’t need to manhandle me.” He then followed the stewards out of the conference.

Tony Blair apologised for what had happened, and Mr Wolfgang received a hero’s welcome when he returned to the conference the next day. Nevertheless, Cameron seized the opportunity to make political capital out of the incident, describing it as "one of those moments which lays bare the full absurdity of the Orwellian New Labour project". And how Tory apologists milked that story over and over again for many years! Then we were told that when Gordon Brown wasn’t eating babies, he was creating a police state, while David Davis fought an unnecessary by-election which was somehow supposed to defend our civil liberties.

It’s all so different now though, isn’t it? In Witney on 30 November last year, Bethan Jones held up a banner which said “Cameron has blood on his hands”, while the man in question was turning on the Christmas lights in his constituency. She also shouted: “Disabled people are dying because of Cameron’s policies”. For that she was beaten up by the police, arrested and charged. On 14 March, Bethan appeared before the same Oxfordshire magistrate who had complained about the RSPCA bringing a private prosecution against some foxhunters. He said “I can think of nothing more alarming than saying that Cameron has blood on his hands”, and he fined her over £700.

This conviction occurred in the same week that secret courts were introduced into fascist Britain and Theresa May demanded the abolition of the Human Rights Act. Where is the champion of civil liberties David Davis now? Why isn’t he fighting another by-election? Does he think he might not win it?

Bethan Jones was only telling the truth. Cameron does have blood on his hands; the blood of 10,600 disabled and sick people in 2012. How many more people will die this year because of the appalling way this government treats the most vulnerable? Didn’t British soldiers fight in World War Two so that we wouldn’t fall under the control of a dictator who had already socially cleansed his own sick and disabled people, before he started on the Jews? Didn’t they fight for the right to live freely and not under coercion? Doesn’t the right to protest peacefully come under that banner?

The treatment Bethan Jones received for heckling Cameron was violent and far far worse than what happened to Walter Wolfgang in Brighton, but don’t expect any Tory hypocrites to acknowledge that fact any time soon.

Sources used:-

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4292342.stm

http://liberalconspiracy.org/2013/03/15/i-was-beaten-for-saying-cameron-has-blood-on-his-hands/

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/03/bloody-tories-shrinking-realm-public-discourse

"Blood on his hands", quite a statement to make Ivan, yet no mention of the despicable way the NHS treated the vulnerable up to 2008? No mention of the Iraq war, no mention of Afghanistan or Kosovo, no mention of surrendering to the IRA, no mention of ID cards for everybody or internment without being charged. Yes somebody owes an explanation, can't think of who was in charge at the time, though I'm sure somebody can enlighten me.

Please desist from comparisons with the second world war it's unbecoming from somebody who has political aspirations, you'll be joining the labour party next!

Nice to see your following me roc. Great record by the way. What has your health system got to do with the NHS over here and where is the comparison?

Rock. Maybe you weren’t aware that tlttf is a Tory troll who tries to deflect threads from their topics. He uses all sorts of tricks, from declaring an opening post to be ‘illegal’ or claiming that it has too many links. As you found out yesterday, he may simply use the glitch of a duplicated message to cause a distraction. We must try not to play into his hands.

He criticises my post about Tory hypocrisy over the treatment of hecklers by raising other issues that he thinks I should have mentioned. Well, naughty old me. I didn’t mention Black Wednesday, the Black Death, the siege of Mafeking or millions of other equally irrelevant issues. He has the audacity to ask what your health system has to do with the NHS; what the hell has the NHS (which he raised) got to do with heckling in Brighton in 2005 and Witney in 2012?

It’s frightening to see just how gullible some people are, believing the almost daily horror stories about the NHS being put out by the Tory-controlled BBC. Demonise then privatise is the name of the game; soften up the general public so they forget that the NHS recorded its highest ever patient satisfaction rating before the fascists slithered into power without a mandate in 2010.

Isn’t it funny how someone who, by implication, is against wars (but probably only if they start under a Labour government), is also against peace when it comes to Northern Ireland? Presumably tlttf would have preferred it if that conflict, which lasted 30 years, had continued ad infinitum. I wonder if Ian Paisley, who became Northern Ireland’s First Minister, considered that he “surrendered to the IRA”? I’m afraid that some of the garbage which tlttf writes would be too stupid for a comic (or even ‘The Daily Mail’). But look, I’ve fallen into his trap and been diverted from the topic.

Almost every week, Britain slides a little deeper into fascism. Iain Duncan Smith has been told by a judge that forcing people to work for nothing is illegal, so he’s bringing in a new law and making it retrospective. Theresa May can’t wait to abolish our human rights. Cameron wants to opt out of the EU social chapter so that we lose most of our employment rights. Secret courts have been introduced. Hitler burned all the history books in Germany, but Michael Gove is a little more subtle and is simply rewriting the school history curriculum to reflect his far-right ideology. And a peaceful protester can not only get seriously assaulted by the police, but then be heavily fined by a magistrate with a track record of political bias.

These are very frightening times, and I don’t see why the discussion of a serious issue should be sidetracked by irrelevancies, facetious remarks and lies from a troll behaving in his characteristic fashion. Please note that any further deviation from this topic will be deleted without explanation.

".... a peaceful protester can not only get seriously assaulted by the police, but then be heavily fined by a magistrate ...."

A British custom that can be traced back to the 13th. Century, when insulting your feudal Lord could have fatal results. Those were the days, eh Dave?



http://www.witneygazette.co.uk/archive/2013/03/15/Oxford+news+%28om_oxfordnews%29/10291461.Woman_who_disrupted_PM_s_Christmas_lights_switch_on_fined/

A bit harsh Ivan, I'm simply trying to work out exactly who the velvet gloved fascists are!

By the look of her she should have been jailed for 10 years

The milk of human kindness is unlikely to replace the venom in a Tory within measurable time.

tlttf wrote:A bit harsh Ivan, I'm simply trying to work out exactly who the velvet gloved fascists are!

If you are unable to see that this is a direct reference to the conservapileofshit Party perhaps you need to go to Specsavers! (rush one law though at superspeed, get a load of crap threw in your face for a second!)

blueturando wrote:By the look of her she should have been jailed for 10 years

If you are going to Jail her for 10 years based on her appearance, just think blue how long you would get for opening your mouth!

"The 28-year-old was convicted of the public order offence of using threatening words or behaviour to cause harassment, alarm or distress after a one-day trial at Oxford Magistrates’ Court". http://www.witneygazette.co.uk/archive/2013/03/15/Oxford+news+%28om_oxfordnews%29/10291461.Woman_who_disrupted_PM_s_Christmas_lights_switch_on_fined/
She need not worry about the conviction, more than likely by Friday of this week the Tories will be back in the HOC trying to fast track another bill through to overturn that law too!!! Oh wait they only do that when it applies directly to themselves.... :bom:

If fascism is being considered as one of the defining characteristics of the coalition perhaps the characteristics of the two leaders could be viewed as Folie à deux (shared psychosis)

JUST TO ENLIGHTEN YOU BOTH AND CHEER YOU UP THE YOUNG WOMAN IN QUESTION IS ONE OF THE MANY OF SCAM..ER..ONS CONSTITUENTS ONE THAT WILL NOT BE VOTING TORY AT THE NEXT GENERAL ELECTION ALONG WITH MILLIONS OF OTHERS.

Before becoming BOAC the company was called Imperial Airways

RockOnBrother wrote:
Any UK government official that wants to dismantle that system ought to be stripped of British citizenship, shipped over here, and die broke from medical expenses just like me and my fellow Americans.

And I know it’s now BA, but BOAC sounds so much more dramatic.

Hear hear!

Most people who have had anything to do with very small children will know how, when you tell them something, they will often say it straight back to you. That’s all very sweet when a child is learning from the adults in its life. However, it’s not something to be applauded when apparently mature adults regurgitate meaningless soundbites. ‘The Daily Mail’s lazy assertion – without any facts and figures to support it – that “welfare is a lifestyle choice”, has been repeated on this forum, parroted by Cameron, and news of it has even reached Australia:-
http://theaimn.com/2013/04/07/be-warned/

I find it frightening how easily people can be brainwashed. Hatred of benefit claimants has been legitimised by Osborne with his ‘curtains’ speech, by Cameron and by the Tory-supporting media. For the Chancellor of the Exchequer to equate arson and manslaughter with claiming benefits shows just how far down the road towards fascism we have gone. No doubt Hitler wouldn’t have been shy of using an example of wrongdoing by one Jew somewhere in Germany as an excuse to vilify an entire race. All those people who believe that what happened in Germany in the 1930s “couldn’t happen here” had better wake up soon. When Cameron and his vile scum have crushed the poor, the sick and disabled, who will they attack next?

History teaching in this country progressed from the rote learning of “kings and things” to acquiring skills on how to use and interpret evidence. Who needs to learn lists of facts when you can look up on Google any that you need to know? But that bloody idiot and Murdoch hack Michael Gove – the first Education Secretary to receive a motion of no-confidence from the National Union of Teachers in its 143-year history – is busy rewriting the curriculum so that children are made to learn facts about our glorious past, when we were subjugating and exploiting other countries. (Hitler was much cruder; he just burned the old books and commissioned new ones.) It would appear that Gove, instead of wanting children to think for themselves, is trying to use education to indoctrinate them with right-wing propaganda, making it even easier for ‘The Daily Mail’ to continue that process once they’ve grown up.
http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/culture/2013/03/michael-gove%E2%80%99s-history-curriculum-pub-quiz-not-education

You should be grateful for your country's history, it's because of that you have been able to live the lifestyle of your choice, or perhaps we should just go around apologising forever. Sad little left footer.

tlttf
Not sure what you mean there - but it's quite clear that Ivan is making a point about the way education is being changed to value rote learning above the development of thinking skills - maybe you have a point to make that refers to the previous post, instead of pointless abuse?

What abuse boatlady, it's our education system (dumbed down over the last 15years) that we're talking about, the education Ivan had has allowed him to be able to free think, to analyse and to come to his own conclusions. The fact that he doesn't want those ideals for the next generation is a political view that I disdain. No abuse intended, what's the problem with disagreeing with a clearly politically motivated point of view. Open your eyes and put the red flag away for the summer.

tlttf wrote:-
it's our education system (dumbed down over the last 15years) that we're talking about, the education Ivan had has allowed him to be able to free think, to analyse and to come to his own conclusions. The fact that he doesn't want those ideals for the next generation is a political view that I disdain.

Perhaps one of these days you’ll post something on this forum without making a bloody fool of yourself. You’re the classic example of a mindless right-wing moron capable only of reproducing parrot-fashion from the tabloid press trite soundbites like “lifestyle choice” and “dumbed down”. Your education certainly didn’t teach you how to think.

To suggest that I don’t want children to think for themselves, analyse and to come to their own conclusions is one of the most absurd things you’ve ever posted here, and there are plenty from which to choose. It’s precisely because I want those things – which I was lucky enough to have – that I object so strongly to Gove’s plans to re-introduce rote learning. He’s the one who is politicising education, he’s the one determined to dumb it down and stop youngsters thinking about the way this country is being destroyed by right-wing ideologues. Perhaps if you read the article (I realise it’s probably too long for you, and doesn’t contain enough soundbites) you might hesitate before sticking your foot in your mouth:-

http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/culture/2013/03/michael-gove%E2%80%99s-history-curriculum-pub-quiz-not-education

You might also like to read some of the comments which follow the article. One of them points out how “Gove wants to use history to 'tell this island story', whereas history teachers and academics know the importance of history's role in teaching children how to analyse and think for themselves.”

This country is mine just as much as it belongs to you or any other right-wing fools who want to turn the clock back to the 1950s or earlier. To me, this country is the people who live in it. Unlike Tories, I don’t hate all public sector workers, all immigrants, all people on benefits, all of the poor and sick and all wild animals. Right-wing politics is based on hatred, individual and corporate greed, and divide and rule. When taken to the extremes we are now seeing in this country, with the transfer of much of the state from democratic control to corporate unaccountability, it turns into fascism. As Nye Bevan said: “Whenever you scratch a Tory, you find a Fascist.”

In my opinion, right-wingers are traitors. Thatcher handed our oil to American companies and squandered any proceeds on keeping British people unemployed, so that she could weaken the unions. She removed our utilities from British control and they’re now mostly in foreign hands. The Tories today are more than happy if American healthcare companies buy up chunks of the NHS, as long as their corrupt party makes a fast buck in the process. Patriotism isn’t yearning for the past, the days when we all had white faces and showed deference to the rich and powerful. One of the most patriotic people I’ve come across is J. K. Rowling:-

“I am indebted to the British welfare state; the very one that Mr Cameron would like to replace with charity handouts. When my life hit rock bottom, that safety net, threadbare though it had become under John Major’s government, was there to break the fall.

I cannot help feeling, therefore, that it would have been contemptible to scarper for the West Indies at the first sniff of a seven-figure royalty cheque. This, if you like, is my notion of patriotism. On the available evidence, I suspect that it is Lord Ashcroft’s idea of being a mug.”

tlttf wrote:What abuse boatlady, it's our education system (dumbed down over the last 15years) that we're talking about, the education Ivan had has allowed him to be able to free think, to analyse and to come to his own conclusions. The fact that he doesn't want those ideals for the next generation is a political view that I disdain. No abuse intended, what's the problem with disagreeing with a clearly politically motivated point of view. Open your eyes and put the red flag away for the summer.

Sorry tittf boatlady is correct Gove is making things worse, any robot can learn and recite facts and figures, that stops the kids from thinking things through with the help of their brain and to learn in such a way that it will be there for the rest of their lives.

Nothing to be sorry for red, to recite facts and figures a person first has to be able to read and write, not a bad starting place for any freethinker.

I'm impressed Ivan, quoting from the new statesman and not the guardian. Your obviously moving in the right direction at last.

I find it frightening how easily people can be brainwashed. Hatred of benefit claimants has been legitimised by Osborne with his ‘curtains’ speech, by Cameron and by the Tory-supporting media

IVAN....I guess if your tell yourself something over and over again it becomes true in your mind...A kind of Rote learning for your politics

I am not sure what part you do not understand, but let me help you along a bit just in case you've got a bit lost on this one. There is no hatred of benefit claimants, but there is a dislike for people who 'play the system' and a dislike for the system that in some cases has created a benefits culture, where it is financially more viable to remain on benefits rather than seek employment.
Now do I have to repeat this a few more times so you can learn it by Rote, or will it be forgotten it by this evening and reverted back to the lie you so often peddle on this forum.

Even your colleagues in the Labour party are starting to understand the facts. Maybe if some of you Lefties put down your Latte's and Frappucinos for a minute, stop seeing these people as your 'pet' projects and maybe actually lived on a council estate to experience reality, then you might not be so blinkered to the truth

Former Labour welfare reform minister Frank Field said the party faced a huge challenge on welfare, adding: ‘We have been here before, and we ducked it before. ‘The real question is, as Labour now moves up towards the general election, are we going to have an alternative.’

Rochdale's Labour MP Simon Danczuk said Labour needed to talk about how it was going to reform the benefits system rather than just complaining about every cut.

He said. ‘We need to acknowledge some people choose not to work. We all know people who’ve chosen to live on benefits instead of getting a job.’
He went on: ‘Labour should now move from focusing on who loses out on benefits to how they’re going to get those who choose a life on dole into work.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2305549/Labour-disarray-welfare-shake-proposals-tough-reform-unravel.html

Fascists oppose free speech.....

WE all need to be realists and refrain from looking at society through ideological spectacles, the biggest mistake the Tories are currently making is decimating the National Health Service, but they will pay for it at the next election.

For the Labour Party, the mistake is the assumption that most working class people are against welfare reform, and in reality there are large sections of Labour voters and traditional supporters who want something done about those that feel claiming benefits is a good alternative to working for a living.

What is needed here is education, because what the government is doing is hitting hard working people - NOT scroungers.

For thousands of people on low incomes who go out each day and work, the welfare changes will hit them hard, infact more working people will suffer because of the reforms than unemployed people.

The government is attempting to spin and brainwash the electorate by having them believe it s only malingerers, the bone idle and fraudsters who have anything to worry about, when in reality nothing could be further from the truth.

As 100,000 millionaires get a hansome tax cut, and as bankers continue to get away with murder, a single parent on minimum wage with a spare bedroom is living in fear of how he or she will get by - this is modern Tory Britain.

For thousands of people on low incomes who go out each day and work, the welfare changes will hit them hard, infact more working people will suffer because of the reforms than unemployed people.

How will welfare changes affect the low paid ?

Fascists oppose free speech......

Tosh. They certainly do. Do you remember how Thatcher stopped the BBC from allowing the voice of Gerry Adams to be heard? Or more recently, how there was a news blackout on the passage through Parliament of the bill which in effect privatises the English NHS (not your one)?

How will welfare changes affect the low paid?

Because a lot of low-paid people have been receiving in-work benefits, especially housing benefit and tax credits.