UK far right trouble July/August 24

[bluethrunthru]

Brick a Mosque - try to burn a hotel down - or maybe just peacefully reach out - I know what gets my vote

Taylor Swift 'reached out to families of Southport stabbing'

Taylor Swift reportedly reached out to the families of the Southport stabbing before she took to the stage at Wembley Stadium tonight.

www.dailymail.co.uk

 

[Vic]

Meet Dave - now he has banished all the migrants he will be performing the surgery on your brains today because after leaving school aged 13 nobody gave him a chance until now - so breather deeply let the anaesthetic take hold you'll be fine

St George fought a dragon to save this country...

Is that an actor using old scripts by Colin from Portsmouth?

 

[Johnny Mars Bar]

I’ve got a really bad feeling that more and more civil unrest is on the horizon. A combination of an ever increasing gap between rich and poor, chronically underfunded services not being able to help people, people wanting help with everything and feeling entitled and social media and the press blaming all problems on immigration. A lot of people I have interacted with recently bring up immigration at every opportunity. Social media is getting very nasty. Woke this woke that, two tier this.

Footy starts this week, the nation can unite around a common cause - hating scousers and laughing at the rags.

Even happy for city to play their part by having the occasional empty seat visible on tv coverage.

 

[hammocity]

What happened to the idea that, instead of paying benefits and/or tax credits to low-paid workers, we pay them properly and employers can claim credits against business rates? Obviously it needs controls against fraud, and artificial depression of profits - and a limit on how much owners pay themselves - but could it work for SMEs, especially start-ups?

Naive in the extreme, so difficult to control and would be exploited by the unscrupulous. Min wage about 7 years ago was £5.50 an hour, now £11.42 which equates to nearly £24k pa for a 40 hour week.

What would you suggest? £15 an hour? All that would do is drive up wages for the more skilled workers, already we're seeing middle earner's on around £23 an hour, they'd be pushing for £30 an hour causing inflation to race out of control.

It would be great if everyone got fantastic wages but talented workers deserve more than those with limited ability. Just use PL footballers and League 2 players as an analogy or Tom Cruise and a support actor as examples, it's how economies work.

 

[Churchlawtonblue]

For comparison, the following people were jailed for six years for soliciting murder.

Another at the demo got 4 years for stirring up racial hatred. And I could easily downplay this by saying "6 years just for writing some words on a sign and chanting a few slogans."

And as the sentences were read out, outside the court was a small protest of around 40 Islamists who were claiming Islam was "under siege." Maybe they even used the phrase "two-tier justice system". You see extremists can never accept the consequences of their actions and always think they're the victims.

I understand why the sentances handed out are high, but this still doesn't sit comfortably with me, people putting slogans on placards and face book inciting hate is a crime for sure and should be punished, but for people to get 15mths, 4 yrs and 6 yrs for writing things when others are getting less than a year for actual violence and assault clearly isn't proportionate.

 

[halfcenturyup]

I understand why the sentances handed out are high, but this still doesn't sit comfortably with me, people putting slogans on placards and face book inciting hate is a crime for sure and should be punished, but for people to get 15mths, 4 yrs and 6 yrs for writing things when others are getting less than a year for actual violence and assault clearly isn't proportionate.

Is it not proportionate because the consequences are so much worse?

 

[Vic]

Naive in the extreme, so difficult to control and would be exploited by the unscrupulous. Min wage about 7 years ago was £5.50 an hour, now £11.42 which equates to nearly £24k pa for a 40 hour week.

What would you suggest? £15 an hour? All that would do is drive up wages for the more skilled workers, already we're seeing middle earner's on around £23 an hour, they'd be pushing for £30 an hour causing inflation to race out of control.

It would be great if everyone got fantastic wages but talented workers deserve more than those with limited ability. Just use PL footballers and League 2 players as an analogy or Tom Cruise and a support actor as examples, it's how economies work.

It's how capitalism works. I'll give you that.

Seriously, great sports ability and, to a lesser extent acting ability *, are bad examples as they are special talents. Unlike CEOs. It's executive pay that is "out of control", and bonuses paid for depressing employees' wages. I assume they're the ones you think would be unscrupulous i.e. commit fraud.

* See how women stars were usually paid less than men.

 

[threespires]

Brick a Mosque - try to burn a hotel down - or maybe just peacefully reach out - I know what gets my vote

Taylor Swift 'reached out to families of Southport stabbing'

Taylor Swift reportedly reached out to the families of the Southport stabbing before she took to the stage at Wembley Stadium tonight.

www.dailymail.co.uk

Any attempt to ease the pain of those families is to be applauded.

As far as Taylor Swift goes, she is in an interesting position. She has become more of a cultural phenomenon then a musician not least because of social media. She makes a big play of allyship to various groups and her legions of fans seem pretty capable of mobilising themselves quite effectively. Somewhat insanely she's probably one of a relatively small number of people on the planet who could influence the behaviour of social media platforms. Given Musk's behaviour and part in the recent UK unrest and his trajectory, you wonder why she and her fans continue to legitimise his platform?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting it's a pop stars job to sort the SM shitshow out when governments are failing to do so. I'm also aware of the shitload of grief she gets from the American right when she steps out of her lane as they see it. But bizarrely she finds herself, probably for a small window, with huge cultural heft. I wonder if she ever contemplates using it beyond enhancing her brand?

 

[Churchlawtonblue]

Is it not proportionate because the consequences are so much worse?

You missed out the word possible , there are no proven consequences are there?

 

[I'm With Stupid]

I understand why the sentances handed out are high, but this still doesn't sit comfortably with me, people putting slogans on placards and face book inciting hate is a crime for sure and should be punished, but for people to get 15mths, 4 yrs and 6 yrs for writing things when others are getting less than a year for actual violence and assault clearly isn't proportionate.

I get what you're saying, and I think if she'd said it at any other time, she probably would have got a community sentence. But a post encouraging people to burn down a mosque when people were literally trying to burn down hotels of refugees is different from the same post a month earlier when no-one was listening. Similarly, the Islamists got such a huge punishment because it was happening at a time when Islamic terrorist attacks were a very real risk and people were out there committing acts of violence (including murder) across Europe against people who were 'insulting' Islam. When sentencing these kinds of crimes, the likelihood of someone actually doing what the person is inciting is definitely a factor, and it's undoubtedly true that people were willing to do what she was encouraging at that time.

There's also the potential defence of hyperbole to make a point, which again, slightly disappears when people are literally doing what you said they should do. If I watch Jamie Carragher on Sky and then post "someone should give him a slap" you'd be hard pushed to claim that I was genuinely inciting violence against him.