frankPodmore

frankPodmore, 15 days ago (edited 15 days ago)

This is an utterly bizarre defection. Going to be a lot of consternation in her local CLP if they’re expected to go doorknocking for a prominent Boris Johnson supporter!

EDIT: Per The Guardian, she’s not standing again.

frankPodmore, 15 days ago

Yeah, I signed up to one of the group-buying schemes that Sadiq Khan brought in, in theory to make it cheaper to put solar panels on your house. The company that got the contract ended up going bust, so no solar panels for me! At least I got the deposit back.

frankPodmore, 16 days ago (edited 16 days ago)

Another perfect encapsulation of how some people on the left prefer opposition to power.

Labour are on the very brink of government, actually in government in many parts of the country. What better moment to resign over something over which Labour not only has no control now but will still have little control over even if they do win?

frankPodmore, 16 days ago (edited 16 days ago)

It won’t change anything, as you say, but it would be controversial both domestically and internationally. For starters, politicians generally won’t say anything specific about even apolitical, uncontroversial crimes, in case they prejudice any future trials. Obviously, this is neither apolitical nor uncontroversial.

Also, it wouldn’t actually silence his critics on this, precisely because it won’t change anything. The war will continue, so people would just start demanding that he demand issuing arrest warrants for Israeli government ministers who come to the UK, or trade embargoes, or whatever.

frankPodmore, 15 days ago

See? This is exactly my point. Even the mere hypothesis that he might say something about genocide has led you on to another demand. I’m not criticising you for this, nor am I saying that it’s a bad thing. My point was simply that acknowledging genocide wouldn’t do anything to silence his critics over Gaza, and I feel I’ve demonstrated that.

frankPodmore, 15 days ago (edited 15 days ago)

It’s just not true that he’s not said anything. Not saying the exact thing you’d like is not the same as saying nothing. Literally the first result when I searched Ecosia was ‘Sir Keir Starmer calls for Gaza “ceasefire that lasts”’. This was obviously not the first thing he’d said, because it was a shift from his previous position that it wasn’t the right time for a ceasefire (and, indeed, his previous egregious comments that seemed to defend Israel shutting off the water supplies, which he also either walked back or clarified, depending on your level of sympathy). Finally, here he is yesterday reiterating his position that the Rafah offensive must not go ahead. Obviously, these examples both collectively and individually show that you are wrong when you say ‘he’s not saying anything’ about Gaza, as he has said quite a lot about it and, as the example from yesterday shows, keeps saying more things in response to new developments. I sincerely do not see why you think you can have this discussion when you’re making such flatly inaccurate claims about it.

We know that people wouldn’t stop criticising him over Gaza because, a couple of months ago, people were saying ‘All we want is for him to call for a ceasefire’. He did. Now they say ‘All we want is for him to call it a genocide.’ If he does that, they will say ‘All we want is [new thing]’. I’ve proved this point already: I raised a hypothetical way someone might continue to criticise him, and you instantly took it up and agreed that it would be a valid criticism.

Seriously though, please go and do some research so that you can criticise Starmer for his actual position on this. I agree with you that his position is, and has been, the wrong one. Where I disagree with you is 1) on the facts, which I have proved; 2) on the likely consequences of any comments he might make about genocide.

frankPodmore, 16 days ago

Extra weird hang-up to have, because the films have always had English and American accents side-by-side, even though there’s clearly no England or America!

Anyway, it’s really no different to them calling their ships X-wings and Y-wings, even though they don’t use our alphabet.

frankPodmore, 16 days ago

You’re right and it’s very weird, because it’s not at all interesting to think of films this way. Basically, the form it takes is:

None of this film is real!

But… I knew that already? It’s a film?

frankPodmore, 16 days ago

I kinda think that if you can imagine a one-line fix to a plot hole, it isn’t really a plot hole.

I remember someone insisting to me that there was this huge plot hole in the film of the Fellowship of the Ring, because Merry and Pippin don’t get told about what Frodo and Sam are actually doing until the Council of Elrond, but still willingly run around risking life and limb to help them. Now, not only is this not a plot hole in itself (I’m pretty sure I’d help anyone fleeing a demonic horseman, just on principle, never mind if that person was my lifelong friend/cousin), it’s also quite obvious that they could have been told everything offscreen. The audience didn’t need to hear all that explanation again, five minutes after we first heard it.

A lot of plot holes people like to complain about are basically of this nature. ‘Can you imagine a fix?’ Yep, easily. ‘Did the audience need to hear it?’ Nope, because I could easily imagine it. ‘Well, there you go, then.’

frankPodmore, 16 days ago

Sorry!

In the original cut they did use the Latin alphabet, so this is, incredibly, yet another thing George Lucas did to make the first film retroactively annoying.

frankPodmore, 16 days ago

This is a very good point. Many people voted for David Cameron back in 2010 and 2015 because he presented himself as a nice, normal, middle-class dad - essentially Tony Blair Mk.2 - but the mad fringes of the Conservatives dragged him into Brexit, then took over the government. This simply couldn’t have happened under Labour. Even if Blair Mk.1 had been as weak as Cameron and allowed himself to be pushed around, we wouldn’t have had anything of the enormity of Brexit or the Rwanda scheme.

frankPodmore, 17 days ago

Yeah, that’s what the electorate is crying out for: Corbyn’s Labour, but homophobic.

frankPodmore, 19 days ago

Yep, smashed it. I voted for him and I’m pleased for the guy. Not many people have had to put up with the level of shit he’s had. I hope the Tories will recognise there’s no electoral mileage in banging on about cars and dogwhistling about Muslims, but if they were capable of that, they most likely wouldn’t be Tories.

The polls were still way off, though. A 10% lead is great, but it’s not a 20% lead!

frankPodmore, 19 days ago

Yeah, I was worried their misinformation, combined with understandable frustration with some of Labour’s actual policies, would swing it to the Tories.

frankPodmore, 19 days ago

A salutary reminder that humans can hallucinate things better than any bot.

frankPodmore, 20 days ago

I think it’s a category error to think of people as having (or having to have) a purpose. We just are.

frankPodmore, 21 days ago

PSA to everyone:

Remember to bring photo ID.

You cannot vote without it. Along with abolishing STV, the requirement for photo ID was brought in by the Tories as a deliberate strategy to suppress their opponents’ vote. Don’t let them get away with it!

frankPodmore, 21 days ago

True, but if they win that will validate the strategy and they’ll get worse!

frankPodmore, 21 days ago

Nope, not that either, because he’s standing down at the next GE.

frankPodmore, 21 days ago

It does, because it’s personally and professionally difficult to defect, which is why it’s so unusual. Even voters struggle to do it (as the blog discusses), so for an actual politician to do it is exceptional, especially when it’s not a question of saving his seat. For your thesis to be true, Labour and the Tories would have to be the same, but this would have to somehow not be evident to a Tory. This does not wash.

frankPodmore, 22 days ago

True. But I think if I wore, like, a Star Trek comm badge, that’d raise more questions than if I wore an Arsenal t-shirt!