George Floyd copper

Violence at protests is usually instigated by Special Branch infiltrates.

 

Also the Estonian national sport (along with uphill skiing). Weird lot these Balts! It used to be the case years ago, that if you saw a black bloke in Estonia, he was a basketball player. Nowadays, and quite rightly so, things have changed.
They are now footballers

 

Never heard of uphill skiing that’s a new one on me.

 

Michael Jackson?

 

Yeah they are, my lads mate is Latvian and is looking for a Basketball scholarship.

 

Yeah they are, my lads mate is Latvian and is looking for a Basketball scholarship.

 

An old colleague of mine was a female basketball player from Latvia, and ridiculously hot at that. Nearly made me get into the sport until I realised it was a pile of crap.

 

A small price to pay for a date with a hot filly.

 

A few of your posts, @Offside, lead down interesting paths:

The following gives some more information about this, and related items:

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/facts-about-slavery/

It does show that humans, of whatever kind, have always had a tendency to overlook uncomfortable aspects of their actions, provided that these actions benefit themselves. Not so far removed from the comment above of protestors wearing clothes made in sweat-shops.

It is also not so far removed from sportsmen such as Joshua and Hamilton quite happily making money for, and taking money from, whites (or entities with pasts that can be criticised) both directly and indirectly. And just for argument's sake, what if Joshua's suggested boycott of white businesses leads to such financial difficulties for said businesses that they have to either reduce staff, or close? Can we hope that none of the people he wants to help will not be hurt instead by this? (I know there are enough other customers around that this scenario is unlikely, but it is a possible conclusion to his suggestion.) Bandwagon jumping rather than joined-up thinking.

One could add to this the information, along with the resulting controversy, that the debt incurred by the UK in implementing the Abolition of Slavery acts in 1833 was not cleared until 2015. Thus anyone who has paid tax in the UK between those dates has, in a way, helped in the abolition of slavery.

I know this caused a fuss when the Treasury board tweeted this snippet of information earlier on, but here is another instance where one just has to put aside one's modern sensibilities, and look at the issue dispassionately. If you, today, have an asset making money for you which the government wants to take away, are you going to just give that asset away? Or will you expect compensation? As uncomfortable a truth as it is, slaves were assets like any other, machines if you will, making money for their owners. The only way the practice was going to be stopped, relatively peacefully, was to pay compensation. At least, I don't think there was going to be another way, given the make-up of Parliament.

And any woman could justifiably point out that women continued to be regarded as, and treated as, property for more than a century after this date.

If there's anything positive to take out of all this, we as humans have been steadily improving in our behaviour since the beginnings of recorded history. But the progress occurs over centuries and millenia.

RCB

 

What a pair of virtue signalling twats.

 

This has just happened in Scotland , the Statue of Robert the Bruce as been Vandalised . The monument stands in Stirling to commemorate his victory at the Battle of Bannockburn .

 

I think the minority you’re referring to that’s asking for things like Fawlty Towers to be pulled is TV executives.

Nobody else seems to have actually demanded this in any way and it’s getting a huge amount of airtime. It’s the TV executives that seem to me to be trying to shirk any amount of bad publicity. And the bad publicity that this has generated has been used as fuel against the people that weren’t making that argument.

The original point that was being made (or what’s left of it) gets completely scrambled by these kind of ‘guilt aversion’ actions. There’s a far more reasonable discussion, full of nuance and sensitivity, to be had on representation within media that we now basically can’t have because the bosses at the top have pressed the ejector seat button.

That attitude has also cost a lot of ground on way more serious discussions on real social change. We’ve got stuck in these petty, stupid issues that are at the end of the day of little consequence - while any actually important stuff flies off the radar completely.

This isn’t helped on the other side either - if you cede any kind of ground or sympathise in any way with the point then you’re ‘virtue signalling twats’ as the post above mine so eloquently puts it (for what it’s worth, yes it’s a bit crass, but ultimately the gesture is in solidarity with the initial roots of the protest - ‘virtue signalling twats’ isn’t really helpful here).

It’d just be great if people weren’t pretending to be furious about things they don’t actually care about and actually crack on with sensible discussion. These kind of ‘slippery slope’ arguments aren’t helping things either, from ‘what are you going to demolish next, the pyramids?!?!’ to the many guises of comparing white people to Nazis - they force people to take ever more ridiculous positions that they don’t firmly believe, but to win a farcical argument. Way too many people are just pre-occupied with their ‘side’ ‘winning’.

 

The fawlty towers comments was exactly what I was on about. Its gone past the reasoned debate stage to someone somewhere deciding a TV programme offends someone. It's a shame but haapens with most that warrant discussion these days. It detracts away from the facing of the real problems to begin with but then that seems to be the role of social media these days.

 

He was a good king for the Scots. There's an apt German saying that translates as "There's no herb (i.e. remedy) for stupidity!"

As seems to happen so often, a valid protest gets corrupted by others with their own agendas -- some who just want to cause mayhem, others with more sinister ideas. The idea is nothing new -- recall the Soviet involvement in the "Ban the Bomb" movement, for example -- but the level of vandalism and sheer violence is, and is very worrying.

RCB

 

I think that theres a really misguided notion of 'all black people having the same opinion', on this issue, or all black people being subjected to the same life experiences. And I think there are two base topics here that have been converged. One is around the idea of where racism does exist in this country and what should be done about it. The idea that black lives matter being representative of that discussion, of the idea that equality of treatment and opportunity should be agnostic of skin colour. I cant see how any right minded person would be against that idea.

But then theres an ideological movement around it, which seems to be a far left, anarchistic, political agenda. Saying 'black lives matter' has become conflated with 'the black lives matters movement'. I think they're 2 different things. And I actually think there ARE moderate, balanced views in the black community that arent being heard.

I had a really interesting conversation with a black work colleague today which was prompted by her remarking on the 'ridiculous removal of Little Britain' - her words. She shared her view that shes worried by the cancel culture because it completely misrepresents what she believes the topic to be about, that it detracts from the real issues that need to be resolved. It seems to me that the cancel culture is driven more by angry young white liberals than it is black people.

 

People being offended on behalf of people who should be offended. I wager the last thing on George Floyds mind when he was having the life squeezed out of him was how offended he was by two white dudes blacking up on tv. this was never about Little Britain, Fawlty Towers or Trish Goddard getting the piss ripped out of her on Bo Selecta, its more important than insignificant comedians supposedly offending a grief tourist here and there.

 

Latest in Stupidity , Liverpool today .

 

Talk about not knowing what you're protesting against

 

Spot on. The whole things a mess. But I’ve not seen a single remark like this countered with fact.