[David9694]

I posted an earlier version of this a while back – inspired to do update following THAT discussion about all things ULEZ. 

The “manifesto”, in terms of transport, only mentions stopping HS2, but there’s plenty on the usual right-wing obsessions: Brexit, immigration, veterans and climate change.  I had another look because I worry about the ongoing decline of the two main political parties. 

If the Cons stay wedded to Brexit, then we will go into the next GE with all the widespread impoverishment Brexit has ushered in – not helped by Covid, Putin, etc. People generally vote according to their pockets.  I don’t get Labour’s current position on Europe either, but let’s see how that evolves, and even the Cons may also evolve, or even pivot, but time is already running out for them.

Several roads now lead to the horrors of a further lurch to the right in this country.  Let’s hope Labour get the GE landslide the polls are predicting – but we’re still at least a year out from the real campaigning beginning. 

A cycling angle? With the Reform Party and its ilk, Facebook Steve and Nextdoor Dave attain real political influence. It’s not spelt out in the manifesto, but you can see where this is probably heading and what it is likely to mean for cycling.  You can bet that this lot are very much “on the side of hard working drivers” etc. 

As you all know, Dave’s going to “sort the traffic” and no doubt show them lazy planners how it’s done: Steve thinks the Council are corrupt, the police blinkered and is, if he can fit it in to his busy schedule he’s going to “teach them Lycra’s a thing or two.” It won’t concern him that his Mondeo is 3 months out of MoT or that Mrs Steve sometimes drives the kids in it uninsured. 

As vulnerable road users, vulnerable people, we rely a great deal on the rule of law for protection. The rule of law means that we understand what the laws are, they are in general fair, and how they are applied and to whom is even-handed and consistent. 

The fascist position is broadly the opposite – it’s all off-the-cuff to support today’s particular agenda – that’s why the Iain Duncan-Smith “happy to see ULEZ infra vandalised” comment is, as an example, so very worrying.  In the Conservatives, here is a party happy to send signals to enable the mob to attack RNLI stations, beat up immigrants, shout at teachers, doctors etc. 

This right-wing stuff works by allowing/enabling significant privileged groups to to think of themselves as the downtrodden underdog and here is a way to fight back.  The pro Brexit campaign played on people’s ignorance, fears and prejudices exactly as this does. 

It’s all about freedom, innit, less regulation, less tax burden, and damn the climate.  There’s more polar bears now, so it’s fine.  Let’s have open-cast coal mining, lithium mining and fracking. The section on climate change stumbles around like a Friday night drunk, trying to explain he wasn’t being racist to the barman – a denier position emerges, unsurprisingly.

In places, the mask really slips: “We must keep divisive woke ideologies such as Critical Race Theory (CRT) and gender ideology out of the classroom.” – to be honest, I don’t even know what those two are.

The standard enemies are put up – the civil service, the BBC.  Amid all the thrust and parry, there’s nothing  about making a better, more inclusive and cohesive world to live in; arts, sports and culture don’t feature in this barstool view of the world: a dullard’s grim vision.

Don’t be a member of the wrong sort of minority would be my advice, should any of this come to pass. 
 

https://www.reformparty.uk/reformisessential

Topic

[mdavidford]

Point of pedantry order:

Point of pedantry order: issuing a travel alert doesn’t necessarily equate to telling you not to travel to the country. The advice just says to keep aware of what’s going on and avoid areas where there’s trouble.

[brooksby]

I read somewhere today –

I read somewhere today – honestly can’t remember on which site – that Malaysia is the first country to recommend that its nationals not visit the UK as safety cannot be guaranteed due to civil unrest.

EDIT: Now joined by Australia and Nigeria:  https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2024/aug/05/cobra-emergency-meeting-keir-starmer-far-right-riots-uk-politics-live-latest

Countries around the world have begun to issue travel alerts to warn their citizens about the dangers of riots in the UK.

On Monday, Nigeria and Australia joined Malaysia in publishing travel advisories about the widespread violent disorder in many towns and cities in England.

In its advisory, Nigeria’s ministry of foreign affairs said:

There is an increased risk of violence and disorder occasioned by the recent riots in the UK, stemming from the killing of 3 young girls … The violence has assumed dangerous proportions as evidenced by reported attacks on Law enforcement agents and damage to infrastructure.

World-beating once again!  Or just world-beating-up?

[Rendel Harris]

Interesting…without wishing

Interesting…without wishing to demean the lady or underplay the seriousness of the situation, there’s nothing journalists like more than dressing up to make it look as though they’re in rather greater peril than they are. Many years ago a photographer friend was sent to cover Desert Storm, I remember him being much amused by the insistence of the BBC’s Kate Adie on wearing her combat fatigues, flak jacket and carrying her helmet everywhere…when they were staying in an hotel in Dubai waiting to be allowed into Kuwait about 800kms away.

[Rendel Harris]

Encouraging to see that while

Encouraging to see that while it was maybe fifty or a hundred scumbags who set fire to the foodbank/library/community hub in Walton, 1700 people have donated towards its repairs and restocking (here if any interested). I think the average person in the street isn’t even apathetic but actively disgusted, just as ever one person starting a fire gets more attention than the hundred who rush to put it out.

Good for you for joining the protests even in the middle of your recuperation, hope it’s going well.

[Owd Big 'Ead]

What a grim weekend!

What a grim weekend!

Spent Saturday at the Stand Up to Racism counter protest in Nottingham, where both sides of the debate were allowed the opportunity to air their views under the bwatchful eye of Nottinghamshire Constabulary. Bar a couple of scuffles, nothing untoward happened. Certainly no riots, that’s for sure.

Even with the relatively fresh memories of the murders of 3 people going about their business last summer, by a man the far-right were keen to class as a newly arrived immigrant, Nottingham did itself proud, as a multi-cultural society and generally ignored those trying to cause division and hatred.

That was the good stuff.

Sunday, been to Wath-upon-Dearne between Rotherham and Barnsley, ex-mining country in South Yorkshire where even I was targeted for physical abuse, even though I was in a wheelchair following a recent replacement knee operation. The level of violence being meted out by the far-right and the local, feral youth was extremely intimidating, meaning a hasty retreat was required before our likely lynching took place.

Their target, a hotel partially housing asylum seekers. I pity anybody caught up in their onslaught today. As ever, South Yorkshire Police did as little as possible, ensuring the yobs could let rip. SYP still haven’t changed, whether it’s the miners strike, Hillsborough or the grooming gangs in Rotherham a decade ago. Utterly incompetent.

Overall, it’s good to see that the average man/woman in the street is apathetic to their cause, but I still think this has a long way to run and will be very interested to see the new governments response.

 

 

[Hirsute]

” That’s because it’s not the

” That’s because it’s not the far right, it concerned British people…  “

When Olivia Pratt-Korbel was shot dead I personally drove all the way to Liverpool to smash in windows, rob shops and set light to a library to show my concern.

[Hirsute]

New twist to the helmet

New twist to the helmet debate.

[David9694]

hawkinspeter wrote:

Although I had no part in the counter protest in Bristol last night (which easily outnumbered the EDL idiots), I was encouraged by their chant “We are many, you are few. We are bristol, who are you?”

The far right may be very vocal and they get a lot of media attention (Farage on the BBC all the time?), but there’s far more of us that enjoy having a multi-cultural society and welcome refugees despite the narrative that the mainstream media is pushing.

And on Twitter/ X.  I hope you’re right.
Apparently, Keir Starmer is carrying on with his August holiday, and maybe that’s the right attitude to take – let the police deal with a few rioters – as we find out the meaning of “we’re coming for Labour, make no mistake”. 

[hawkinspeter]

Although I had no part in the

Although I had no part in the counter protest in Bristol last night (which easily outnumbered the EDL idiots), I was encouraged by their chant “We are many, you are few. We are bristol, who are you?”

The far right may be very vocal and they get a lot of media attention (Farage on the BBC all the time?), but there’s far more of us that enjoy having a multi-cultural society and welcome refugees despite the narrative that the mainstream media is pushing.

[David9694]

I guess all the things

I guess all the things fomenting away for years under the Tories didn’t all just drop away on 5 July.  It’s quite the inheritance for Labour now. That’s all the rhetoric against for example “the boats” and migrants in general that have seeped into a few people’s minds with the help of a few agitators – “you’d better do what we say, or things will only get worse”.  I thought Newsthump covered it very well – “I’m so disillusioned with multi-culturalism I needed to steal some new trainers from Shoezone.”

White Van Man looks like a significant demographic when you look at the pictures.  Although they initially act as a crowd, when you look, for the most part individuals don’t help each other, in fact it’s often more about capturing the action on your ‘phone. 

I find myself bothered more by the individual acts of bullying of black and brown people than I do the larger confrontations with the police. White thugs been given permission to do this by certain political leaders. Bravo to the places big enough to mount a sizeable counter-protest. 

The cost of living crisis, the cutting back of the public services that help ease the passage in all our lives in recent years is really starting to tell. We went into the election with all the privations (and increasingly vague memories of promises of better things) from Brexit, and they are with us still. That said, I tend away from ideas that actual poverty (as opposed to perceived) is a significant factor here. 

Brexit didn’t solve anything, stopping the boats won’t do a lot, leaving the ECHR won’t solve anything: a cycle of worsening and more extreme ideas that don’t satisfy then follows, one after the other – see 1930s Germany.  There’s some nasty stuff on X that have all this charted. The position is  “everything that’s happened since the 1950s is universally bad – let’s go back 70 years. Here’s how.” 

A minor point – yeah, thanks for all the car-free pictures of ye olde Britain and the sly (and not so sly) references to it being a better world, etc. 

If you’ve just tuned in and are wondering what any of this has to do with cycling, go back to the Reform plc’s “draft contract” and look up what it says about transport.  Being a cyclist is the nearest (and my nationality and skin colour make this pretty distant) I get to being one of their target / out groups – worst case, they simply want you not to exist.

As I write, it feels like it’s gone pretty quiet from the political classes on most sides in recent days – perhaps they hope that the onset of cooler weather and the start of the football season will ease things.  After all, it’s only a few hundred people – young guys who are by no means full-time criminals or all that interested in politics, but are the opportunists, bored with their lives, who perpetrate if they believe no-one is looking, the pal who will look the other way in support of another fella.  As someone said on X/Twitter today, for every one of them there’s family who are glad that at least the little shit is out the house for a while. 

Behind the scenes, the govt need to severely disrupt the means by which the agitating is given legs, which I hope is happening.  More publicly, Labour seriously need to stay on top of this issue.  I’m not in possession of all the facts by any means but if this nonsense continues, Starmer and Co will need in my view to act decisively, comprehensively and robustly – which may explain the current quiet. 

[Rendel Harris]

ErnieC wrote:

that is what unfortunately happens with protests, they almost always turn violent. 

Really absolutely the opposite, there are thousands of protests every year in the UK and very few turn violent, and even when violence does occur it’s usually on a small scale involving a tiny minority of protesters. It’s a moot as to whether the current events should really even be described as protests, they are effectively groups of people whose intention from the outset is to riot, it’s hardly a case of peaceful protest turning violent.

[David9694]

ErnieC wrote:

brooksby wrote:

It doesn’t even have to be done as satire, which is the scary thing.

As far as I can see, you have a bunch of self-described patriots who demonstrate their patriotism by looting shops, burning buildings and throwing bricks at policemen.

that is what unfortunately happens with protests, they almost always turn violent. 

wrong on a couple of counts – virtually none of this is in any sense protest – there’s a “cause” put up to rally people to (could be almost anything) and then because it is aimless thuggery it soon turns violent and to looting and vandalism.

second point is that JSO protests for example are pretty peaceful by comparison – a bit of orange liquid, a disruptive sit-in – very little about singling out members of ethnic minorities and harassing, bullying and assaulting them. 

[ErnieC]

brooksby wrote:

It doesn’t even have to be done as satire, which is the scary thing.

As far as I can see, you have a bunch of self-described patriots who demonstrate their patriotism by looting shops, burning buildings and throwing bricks at policemen.

that is what unfortunately happens with protests, they almost always turn violent. 

[chrisonabike]

Perfectly consistent. Imagine
Perfectly consistent. Imagine forins coming over and rioting – who knows what they’d do?

Also “keep benefit fraud / cash-in-hand jobs and undeclared taxable income for local people!”

…obviously “local” means er… from the UK. Oh, the alleged killer was born here … er … we’ll have to get back to you with a “political” definition…

[brooksby]

It doesn’t even have to be

It doesn’t even have to be done as satire, which is the scary thing.

As far as I can see, you have a bunch of self-described patriots who demonstrate their patriotism by looting shops, burning buildings and throwing bricks at policemen.

[Author]

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