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grufty jim 1978 posts |
Jun 12, 2017, 23:11
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nigelswift wrote: What can you say? For years Shaun Woodward was a tory "mover and shaker". He was John Major's campaign strategist in 1992, and was later elected as a tory MP. He then defected to New Labour and served as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland under Gordon Brown (for 3 years... which is a fairly decent stint in that job). Point is... the guy is Establishment with a capital 'E' and has stood on both sides of mainstream UK politics. OK, that's not normally a ringing endorsement, but it's fair to say he's going to know a thing or two about Northern Irish politics. His assessment of the potential risks of the tories getting into bed with the DUP are sobering to put it mildly. It's an assessment echoed by a lot of voices on this side of the Irish Sea. And not just Republicans. Commentators across the political spectrum are concerned this could blow up in a very unpleasant way. Anyway, check out the radio interview here... LINK TO TALKRADIO WESBITE The first half covers the election in general; then there's some ads, but you can jump straight to 14:30 to hear his thoughts on a Tory/DUP alliance.
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nigelswift 8112 posts |
Edited Jun 13, 2017, 07:46
Jun 13, 2017, 07:44
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Today we're being asked to be relieved that Hard Brexit has gone and consensual politics is here, but I think the old boy summed up the reality on TV last night: The next 2 years are going to comprise Europe saying, over and over, "No, THESE are the terms". "Leave" have constantly implied we have a strong hand and we don't. We don't even have one in discussion with the DUP. Gove has just said "we must ensure Brexit is blah, blah, blah". I bet he knows better.
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Howburn Digger 986 posts |
Jun 13, 2017, 08:45
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nigelswift wrote: "So before this thread descends into a dead fox cub love in..." Just to make my position clear, I'm well aware Nature is red in tooth and claw and that foxes enjoy killing. My simple view is that people shouldn't and that posing afterwards like a junior Trump is no longer acceptable. Of course. I understand your position. Poultry farmers and sheep farmers have not got the luxury of such a position. But I totally respect yours. I know farmers who shoot foxes... but there isn't a single one that I know who would pose with the corpse for Facebook. The fox hunting ban was simply not what it appeared to be - right from the start. Here's an intriguing little snippet from Tony Blair from a couple of years back in the Telegraph (14.07.15). In 2004 Tony Blair made a bet with Prince of Wales. The Prince thought Labour’s proposed ban on foxhunting was absurd, and said as much, so Blair wagered that people would still be hunting after he had left office. “But how, if you’re going to ban it?” asked the Prince. “I don’t know,” said Blair, “but I’ll find a way.” The Labour prime minister, by his own admission, was never ideologically opposed to hunting. But the ban was necessary to satisfy a key block of his MPs who had pushed tuition fees through Parliament. This quid pro quo swiftly became politically costly, however, and Blair became convinced he had made a mistake when a woman he met in Italy, who was mistress of a hunt near Oxford, explained how deeply intertwined the tradition was with Britain’s rural economy. “From that moment on,” he writes in his memoir, A Journey, “I became determined to slip out of this.” In the end, the law was “a masterly British compromise” which left hunting “banned and not quite banned at the same time”. ***************************************************** Prince Charles compared the plight of the Beaufort Hunt etc to the plight of persecuted ethnic minorites such as Asians or Black People. The Prince of Wales back in 2002 had offered to leave Britain and simply ski for the rest of his life if hunting the fox on horseback with hounds was banned. This from The Scotsman (22.09.02). It is understood the Prince, a passionate hunt supporter, told Blair that he "would not dare attack an ethnic minority in the way that supporters of fox hunting were being persecuted." In an outburst overheard by a senior politician, the Prince is also alleged to have said: "If Labour bans hunting I’ll leave Britain and spend the rest of my life skiing." The politician was left in no doubt that Charles was serious. "It certainly wasn’t said in jest - he gave the impression that he meant it," the politician said. The Prince’s comparison of the treatment of fox hunters to minorities such as black and Asian communities has caused uproar in senior government circles. ****************************************************************** Sometimes you catch sight of a newspaper headline and your heart simply soars like a hawk. After his promise to spend the rest of his life ski-ing.... https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1988/mar/11/monarchy.fromthearchive Bliar and his Labour decided not to make a body count of dead Iraqui civilians killed during the Bush and Blair illegal war in Iraq. But Blair DID publish the figures for the amount of foxes killed in England by Fox Hunts during the first week of the Iraqui bloodbath. American and British troops posed for photos with dead civilian bodies in Iraq and took trophies from human corpses. A bit like the fox-cub shooter. But worserer.
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tjj 3606 posts |
Edited Jun 13, 2017, 14:02
Jun 13, 2017, 13:11
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Interesting post HD, I didn't know that about Charles, suspect it was said some time ago and has the ring of princely privilege and petulance. I'm very much against fox-hunting which only takes place in rural locations, simply because I've always considered it immoral to hunt a wild animal with dogs who then rip it to pieces. I accept they have to be humanely killed in certain circumstances to protect poultry and lambs. The fox is not the only animal who will kill a surplus of food - there is quite a long list. Whether it kills for fun is matter for debate. Domesticated cats do, as do ants and bottlenose dolphins, to mention just a few. And then there's humans of course. I came across an article in the that Unmentionable Rag Online written by a pest controller. He was writing exclusively about city foxes but says this about two 'types' of fox: "The first is rural. He’s quiet, and shy, and lives by hunting rabbits and pheasants. In my line of work, killing them is tricky. They steer clear of cage traps because they are terrified of anything that smells of man. But that trait also makes them unlikely to attack humans. The second is the town fox, a far more dangerous beast. He was born among men, grew up among them, and survives by stealing waste from rubbish bins or eating litter dropped in the streets. You’ll often see him walking boldly around after dark, and if people are stupid enough to leave food out for him in their garden, he’ll happily take it. To these professional scavengers, our modern towns and cities are like a banqueting table. It’s no coincidence that the rise of the urban fox — unheard of before the Sixties — has occurred alongside the never-ending explosion of the fast-food industry." I would say the same applies to rats in towns - they get by very well on what we leave lying around. Generally though, however much we fear rats, most of us think they should be killed humanely.
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Howburn Digger 986 posts |
Jun 13, 2017, 22:36
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tjj wrote: Interesting post HD, I didn't know that about Charles, suspect it was said some time ago and has the ring of princely privilege and petulance. I'm very much against fox-hunting which only takes place in rural locations, simply because I've always considered it immoral to hunt a wild animal with dogs who then rip it to pieces. I accept they have to be humanely killed in certain circumstances to protect poultry and lambs. The fox is not the only animal who will kill a surplus of food - there is quite a long list. Whether it kills for fun is matter for debate. Domesticated cats do, as do ants and bottlenose dolphins, to mention just a few. He was writing exclusively about city foxes but says this about two 'types' of fox: The first is rural. He’s quiet, and shy, and lives by hunting rabbits and pheasants. In my line of work, killing them is tricky. They steer clear of cage traps because they are terrified of anything that smells of man. But that trait also makes them unlikely to attack humans. The second is the town fox, a far more dangerous beast. He was born among men, grew up among them, and survives by stealing waste from rubbish bins or eating litter dropped in the streets. You’ll often see him walking boldly around after dark, and if people are stupid enough to leave food out for him in their garden, he’ll happily take it.[/i] Rural foxes do not live on rabbits and pheasants (most pheasants are bred, released and killed by motor vehicles. Sad fact but true. Tiny percentage make it to face the guns they are bred solely for.). Foxes rarely chase rabbits as they rarely catch them. Rural foxes live on anything they can get the easier the better... lambs, chickens, baby birds, ground nesting birds, rural bins and roadkill (never ever saw a fox eating a dead "roadkill" badger... but I have my suspicions why that is). I have seen rural foxes feeding out of bins in laybys, eating long bird-of-prey pellets (fur and bones etc). They don't like people and are really hard to shoot, they are mostly "winged" and die in agony over a few days. The dogs that farmers or game keepers took with them were to finish them quickly. That kind of fox control was nothing to do with the Ponce Charles scarlet-coated Reynard bummers. When I lived in Edinburgh I saw urban foxes regularly. I'd often see one down near Comely Bank which waited for the Green Man to cross the road (I kid ye not - 1997 was the year!). The city foxes loved fast food and bins around a nearby KFC were haunted by urban foxes. I have seen urban foxes eating dogsh*t off pavements and once saw one with its nose wedged in a McD McMilkshake McSlurry Cup. These kind of foxes are rarely shot because the people in towns and cities with guns tend not to use them for keeping urban fox numbers down. The guns are mostly unlicensed and in the hands of criminals. As for Dolphins killing for fun... Sixteen years ago I watched a pod of dolphins tossing a baby seal between them just off the rocks at Kintra beach on Islay. https://goo.gl/maps/J8Uwt1iaXVn I filmed it too. There was a real grace about the whole thing. I also once saw a Giant Panda eating a little baby deer on the BBC about ten years back... I could no more look at a Giant Panda after that than I could bear to play my old Gary Glitter records again or get my Jim'll Fix It badge out and wear it...
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Howburn Digger 986 posts |
Jun 13, 2017, 22:58
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nigelswift wrote: I think the old boy summed up the reality on TV last night: The next 2 years are going to comprise Europe saying, over and over, "No, THESE are the terms". "Leave" have constantly implied we have a strong hand and we don't. We don't even have one in discussion with the DUP. Gove has just said "we must ensure Brexit is blah, blah, blah". I bet he knows better. We can only have any kind of strong hand when we leave. In case anyone hasn't noticed, Britain's weakened hands have been shackled for decades. They will try and make us pay heavily yet again to take the cuffs off. For the last forty years while we were cuffed, Britain's Economy was being kicked to pieces. It really suited the 80's and 90's Tories and Blair and Brown just lapped it up. Then someone called "Game's A Bogey!", their phoney markets crashed and lots of poor people in Britain and Europe were made to feel real pain. The Thatcher/ Major pain was just a decade or two's softening up... Austerity was an EU order. "These are the terms - Austerity". That is where Austerity came from -> The EU. That is where our farming policy has come from -> The EU. Our fishing policies -> The EU. Industrial Policies -> The EU. Mining? -> The EU (All coalfields in Southern Scotland were shut overnight a few years back -> The EU). The Water Industry -> The EU (lots of English Water is now owned by private European Companies).The Banking Industry -> The EU (dodged a bullet there with the worthless Euro eh?). We have had our own nation's economic policies thrust upon us by the EU for decades. European Law dictates which Scottish ferries can run to which Scottish Islands (why?). As long as we were in the EU we had no strong hand in any of our nation's policies or the ability to make any decisions about what was best for Britain's Interests. Germany still mines loads of coal and builds stacks of new coal power stations. Europe sells us turbines that don't turn cause its not windy enough. I am glad some people have noticed a common theme.
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nigelswift 8112 posts |
Jun 14, 2017, 05:42
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Howburn Digger wrote: I am glad some people have noticed a common theme. If by common theme you mean the exit negotiations will be a continuation of perfidious Europe, no, I see a negotiation in which the Europe side has infinitely less to lose and is therefore bound to control. Howburn Digger wrote: As long as we were in the EU we had no strong hand in any of our nation's policies or the ability to make any decisions about what was best for Britain's Interests. It's a seductive line, the short version of which - "let's take back control" was put on the side of a bus. The actuality is that EU membership HAD to include the ceding of part of our sovereignty but was seen by successive governments as well worth it. I just don't see how a simple majority, 52-48, could have been deemed adequate, or adequately informed, to have brought it to an end. "Austerity was an EU order." It clearly wasn't as it is now ending and we're still in Europe. I concede that our regions furthest from the heart of Europe have suffered decline but who would trust the Tories to match European subsidies to those areas indefinitely? Already that nice Mr Gove is in post and slavering to do his worst.
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nigelswift 8112 posts |
Jun 14, 2017, 07:46
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Just turned the TV on. Puts our nattering on here in perspective.
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dee 1955 posts |
Jun 14, 2017, 11:52
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"Austerity was an EU order." It clearly wasn't as it is now ending and we're still in Europe Austerity ending? Are you having a laugh?
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nigelswift 8112 posts |
Jun 14, 2017, 12:04
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Well, Theresa says it is and that nice Mr Gove says it isn't. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/austerity-not-over-after-theresa-10613800 I guess a bit of it is over, but no more than their backers want.
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