....more armchair politics (Part 1)

I had no idea of the origins of their bonfire tradition. Thanks for the info Allan.

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Only one burning cross?

Pah, come to Lewes

The 17 crosses paraded at Bonfire in Lewes represent the 17 Protestants who were burnt alive in the town centre between 1555 and 1557.

Part of the reason ‘Bloody Mary’ got her name.

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Not often you get Stormzy and John Shuttleworth at the same gig. :+1:

Stu, feel free to start a CWS thread, mate.

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A post was split to a new topic: Musician’s widow sues BBC over his exposure to asbestos in studio

Ok, point taken :+1:

Not sure how reliable this is but stories popping up on Twitter that downing street are demanding supermarkets remove empty shelves to hide shortages. I much prefer the proposal to put a sign up saying ‘this empty shelf brought to you by Brexit’’

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FTFY

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The thing about cutting overseas aid, for me, is that we have a unique obligation given our history.

I struggle to work out what we should do about our chequered imperial history. The people today didn’t do the actual slavery and plundering, any more than the current Scandinavians did the plundering during Viking times.

But for sure, we’re better off. Not so much better off that we can afford to pay it all back, I don’t think, and it’s too late for all of those directly affected. And so we can afford to do overseas aid. The moral obligation is clear to me, and it’s something that we can actually afford.

But not according to the Tories. I so hate them.

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We have an obligation by being more fortunate. Shouldn’t need anything else

The issue is we’ve been giving aid to many of these countries for years, decades, and they don’t get better. Many of them are unfixable, they are patently corrupt and a significant chunk of the money doesn’t get where it’s supposed to go.

I’m not saying not paying is the right choice, but chucking it down a bottomless pit isn’t good either.

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We shouldn’t be cutting it, but neither should we link it to foreign and defence policy. It’s a fucking disgrace that the ten poorest nations receive the least amount of foreign aid.

Cutting aid of this nature just shows this lots cut of the jib. Scandalous and the MP’s persuader, cut the aid or we raise taxes. Wealth before health as usual.

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They seem like decent people. Maybe we should make them feel guilty for the plundering, raping and white privilege and then tap them up for some compo. Seems only fair.

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Heeheeheeheehee

Watch the scrolling commentary

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Maybe we could try and persuade them to do a bit of conquering for old time sake.

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We are far from unique historically.
Don’t bring history into it, we could end up looking favourable compared to some nations.

I fucking hate the idea of foreign aid.
Aid- like it’s some philanthropic goodwill gesture.
We collectively have an obligation to our fellow humans that was internationally agreed in the form of The Untided Natons resolutions that were ratified years ago. It would be nice if these could be honoured by at least one member.
We need to get away from the concept of Aid and start giving all people the quality of life we defined and all deserve.

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This is going to be a depressingly predictable shambles in its current form -

When Javid introduced the legislation to parliament last week, he said it would make the NHS “less bureaucratic, more accountable, and more integrated…"

When in fact it is designed to do the exact opposite.

Since it was set up, has any politician introduced any reform of the NHS which has made it clearly, demonstrably better ? I get the strong impression that it gets better as a result of the actions of the people who actually work in it. Every time a politician touches it they make it worse (that’s worse for us, of course, but may be better for their grasping mates).

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