Then we agree accept on the need to ridicule people at every opportunity - that's seems ridiculous to me.

Laws and protest are very good things that are on a different cricket pitch from the need to ridicule people although, sure, if they're pubic figures then ridicule is very good

ridicule = ridiculous so I'm not sure what you're saying.

People who hold a set of beliefs that, apart from being obnoxious, are ridiculous and anti-science shouldn't expect them to be taken seriously.

Some gentle English humour - its allowed in this thread.

But being ridiculous is something others do while ridiculing them is something we do. The two are not the same. Not does not-ridiculing people at every opportunity mean taking their beliefs seriously.

When in position to shut down their crackpottery any right thinking person would have taken that opportunity.

Jalfrezi is right, they deserve to be ridiculed at the very least (KITN would have been my personal preference). You (Chez) let yourself down.

I did mess up I know that.

But in general I'm very much in the JC camp of not thinking personal attacks are a good thing in politics. They are cheap and easy but they are not a good thing. We have to talk to and deal with some very unpleasant people - often far beyond some ridiculous views.

They do it too! They are arseholes and all, nothing new here.

The racism or anti semitism has lasting effects on the culprits, not so much their anti catholic or anti Irish bigotry.

And my first ever interaction with yourself resulted in a personal attack from you.

Lol **** off.

Did it? I dont recall but it's quite possible, they are cheap and easy, pretty sure JC has also made some personal attacks. Recognising that turning politics into a personal attack fest is bad thing doesn't mean that we never ever do it. I enjoy a good bit of the mocking stuff as much as the next person but rarely take it seriously.

It's itself a bizarre idea that it's a choice between 'never make a personal attack' or 'personal attacks are a good thing'

So do as I say but......

No. It's just a strange idea that it's all or nothing.

It's like saying we can't correctly point out some food is unhealthy because we sometimes eat unhealthy food.

Wonder who'll replace Dugdale. Can't think of any outstanding candidates, which is pretty much why she ended up getting the gig in the first place.

SNP councillor...



A Scottish Labour spokesperson said: "Days after Nicola Sturgeon was forced to apologise for the comments of John Mason and the IRA this is another headache for the First Minister. The SNP need to explain why they think Mr Casey is a suitable candidate for local elections."

An SNP spokesperson said: “The posts in question are from several years before Mr Casey joined the SNP. Mr Casey previously acknowledged that the posts were in extremely poor taste and deleted them.”

This would be to do with Scotland's profoundly unacknowledged sectarian problem.

(Although it's a bit worse and wider than that. A friend of mine was refused a job with Waitrose in Glasgow because, she was told, 'Our customers won't accept English accents.')

Corbynistas tend to wear (red) T-shirts reading 'Exterminate All Blairite Scum,' so...

Where can we buy one?

Tory record on disability exposed by the UN, the UN ffs, I thought they just monitored them loser countries.

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&so...4Gv6dg&ampcf=1

Only a few are of that ilk. There's always some but that's nothing like the norm.

I'm pretty extreme. I've use my 'one-time' on TB ending up in court for war crimes and I hate what he did to the Labour party. In my view he did as much harm as Thatcher, not least because he was leader of the wrong party - at least thatch was a Tory!. Still, I wouldn't wear one of those shirts.

^^ agree

If you make common cause with those who do, you're one of them. And you've bought into a rather silly counter-factual, ahistorical groupthink, if you don't mind my saying so (or even if you do).

Tony Blair's time in office was nothing like as depressing and strife-torn as Margaret Thatcher's. Tony Blair brought in the Human Rights Act, the minimum wage and the Freedom of Information Act (all of which would have been anathema to Thatcher). He doubled real-terms spending on the NHS, against his grudgy Chancellor's wishes. He brought the Good Friday Agreement to a successful conclusion. John Major's earlier involvement is a little under-recognised, but actually getting the deal done was the tricky bit.

Gordon's private-finance initiative in public services was in my view inadvisable (in terms of both value for money and public-service culture). And it was just as well that the ID card didn't happen.

But there are no war crimes for which Tony Blair could be tried, which is why the ICC, the only competent body, is not making any such case. it is not for fascist, populist idiots on the internet or in the legal profession or academia to make up their own definitions of war crimes and then insist that their ideological bugbears should be tried. They are merely members of the 'Saddam Hussein Is The Father Of Righteousness, Blair Rates An Immediate Nuking' Society. (Hello acronym fans everywhere.)

In any case, Tony Blair's decision on Iraq made no difference. It would have happened anyway. The Americans would simply have put in another division of their own in place of British 1st Armoured. We know this because the US president phoned No.10 and made that exact offer, to save Tony Blair the political embarrassment. (Tony Blair was more popular than the president in the US and actually scored higher name-recognition in US polls, which is fairly extraordinary, so it did the president no good to be seen to make trouble for him.)

And, as Peter Mandelson has explained, after the US invasion Britain would in any case have faced a second request for troops, to help with the stabilisation phase, which was fully UN-authorised, and it would have politically near impossible to refuse this request. And it was during the stabilisation phase that almost all the trouble happened. So staying out of the initial invasion would have made next to no difference at all in reality -- it would only have made a difference in terms of UK-centric 'optics'.

And you don't want to take too much notice of Chilcot, because the actual findings in Chilcot's report did not warrant his shouty headline-grabbing conclusions. For instance, Chilcot's inquiry found that MI6 lied to the prime minister, but Chilcot smothered that in his media presentations. And the report itself was defective, claiming there was no obvious reason for the prime minister's letter to the attorney general which said Iraq was in material breach of UNSCR 1441. There was an extremely obvious reason, which was UN chief weapons inspector Dr Hans Blix's statement to the Security Council that Iraqi co-operation with inspectors 'could in no sense be called immediate', as required by 1441, and that Iraqi delaying tactics 'could be construed as a material breach of Resolution 1441 by those urging military action.' (The text of UNSCR 1441 enforces 'serious consequences', universally understood to mean military action, in the event of any 'material breach'.)

So Blair didn't need to intervene with the US after all but he prayed with George Bush and God told him to slaughter a million Iraqis for the benefit of a declining US empire.
It would have made a difference to a few people had the UK not done this - such as the Iraqis who were tortured and sexually abused by British troops, or the victims of 7/7 who thanks to Tony were made a greater target. You could add the victims of Isis brutality since they didn't exist in Iraq before this war (and didn't exist at all prior to the CIA training the mujahedeen but probably cant blame the BLIAR for that). Blair sanctioned and legitimised this, he lied to the country and to parliament for this to happen. I say war criminal, or the term means nothing.
We all now know (most of us knew anyway) this war had f all to do with Sadaam's military capability and everything to do with the Project for a new American century goal of regime change in Iraq (and Afghanistan lets not forget where the UK has just sent more troops). Just look at Blair's record since - as the Orwellian named 'peace envoy' he has done nothing to promote peace in Palestine. All he has done is take massive pay cheques from dictator friends he made during his time as PM, for networking, using his contacts to feather his own nest and the nests of some of the most tyrannical regimes in the world. Even most respectable voices on the right of British politics know and accept this war was wrong, I'm baffled why you are trying to defend him, this was the worst period in Labour party history.

Tony Blair: liar, murderer, hypocrite. That is all. And thanks for the minimum wage which nobody can afford to live on. Well worth the lives of all those people you killed.

Are you seriously trying to claim that ISIS wouldn't have existed without the intervention in Iraq?

Also, your claim about British troops torturing and sexually abusing Iraqis, how many victims were there and can you provide some evidence? And how did that compare, if at all, with the number of Iraqis abused, tortured and murdered under Saddam's regime?

Read again: Isis didn't exist in Iraq prior to the invasion. This was Blair's doing. Isis wouldn't exist at all if the US hadn't trained them to fight the Russians in the 80s, though tbf Blair was probably a self proclaimed Trot at that time so we can't really blame him for that. This isn't anywhere near controversial opinion, the expansion of Isis and general destabilisation in Iraq, Syria, Libya etc is the outcome of US + hangers on foreign policy.

Information about torture by British troops is well documented and easy to find, ever heard of google?
https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&so...PdZK3Q&ampcf=1

It would be hard to quantify since it was US and UK policy not to count the bodies. And to compare with Sadaam shows up the total failure of this conflict and the moral deficiency for those who still try to justify it. The usual line is now 'well yes Iraq was a disaster but we have to bomb these syrians now. There is no defence left. We said this will be another Vietnam and here we are.

Eh?

Are you seriously suggesting it would have?

Wat?

Given it's formation was prior to the invasion, then yes.

Well you can probably source either way whether Isis technically existed before or after the invasion, and if you want to be pedantic you can trace the roots back further but you end up in more or less the same place - US foreign policy. . What is blindingly obvious is that it would be nowhere near a position of power had Iraq not be invaded and occupied. Some such as Trump claim US de-escalation as the cause of the growth of Isis. There is some truth in this - power abhorred the vacuum created by the removal of the Baathist regime and consequently the occupying force.