To think that Starmer must regret taking the knee for George Floyd?

[Sausagenbacon]

Surely public figures must realise that making empty performative gestures will come back to haunt them at some point?

I would agree wholeheartedly that we’re being taken for a ride and that the British people have been let down for years by both parties.

The values in your first para are good ones. I don’t think BLM essentially stands for those. Just like I don’t think Unite the Kingdom essentially stands for uniting the kingdom, even if many supporters may do.

I totally disagree that BLM shaped public consciousness positively.

The idea they promoted was that hundreds or thousand of unarmed black men were shot by police each year, and polls show the public tended to estimate in that range. The true figure for 2019 was 13, per the Washington Post’s database.

That’s like whipping up Nowak riots across the country on the basis that Sikhs kill whites (or police leave whites to die) at a rate 10x or 100x the true rate. Utterly irresponsible and dangerous.

As for ‘white supremacy’ idea, this is about as credible as the idea that the major ills in society somehow all trace back to the Jews. It’s conspiracist and unserious.

I think Mandelson is a unique case. The man is imo, and always has been, an utter creep.

Why WOULD he regret it?

You seem to think there's some smoking gun or "told you so" that's inherently obvious to people. I don't watch Lord Dankula or attend Tommy Robinson rallies (and I doubt most people here do), so stop being coy and obtuse and just spit/spell it out.

No you're not going to call her a racist. Ain't happening.

He will probably deny he did it.

Why would he regret that? Strange post.

BLM is a corrupt organisation. If anyone has fanned the flames of racism, it’s them.

So I asked you where was defunding tried that led to a big increase in murders ? You posted a paper about something else that did not mention defunding, and now you say, quote :

"Minneapolis was the answer to your question."

You spoilt it by adding in "White Privilege".

This isn't hard, and I've explained it. You usually seem to post in good faith and want to get to the bottom of things so I assumed that is what you were after this time. If you want a squabble there are plenty of others who are after that.

I rather clumsily switched the order of my paragraphs. The order that makes sense is:

1. Minneapolis. That was my first sentence in direct response to your question.
2. This is a well-known effect.
3. Paper demonstrating the effect.

Anyway, are you contesting that there was a defund-driven rise in murders after Floyd? Because if you are then let's debate that.

Have you looked into it yourself in the few hours since you asked the question, or is this a vibes-based objection?

Am getting really tired of shit like this. I don't mean taking the knee, I mean posts like this.
I'm sorry to hear this.
I shall directly ask MN to delete it (and ask your permission next time i post).

George Floyd was a horrible horrible man. Some people say that he actually died from a drug overdose though?

It wasn't our police force though. These politicians would be bobbing up and down quite a bit of they took the knee for every police incident around the world. Why pick that one?

Don't be disingenuous. It was a huge, worldwide political movement at a particular moment in time, the fact it burnt itself out doesn't change that.

Your paper was nothing to do with defunding the police.

There are plenty of right wing articles saying what you claim, most appear to reference Fox news. And there is a lot of causation and correlation errors I see straight away in them.

I think this quote sums it up for me :

"Studies have yielded mixed results regarding the impact of police defunding on crime rates. Some research suggests that reducing police funding can lead to an increase in crime, while other studies have found no significant effect."

Source :

Defunding the Police: A Criminological Perspective (numberanalytics.com)

The politics were very questionable and some of our politicians foolishly bowed to social media pressure. It looked pretty pathetic at the time.

Don't people say police cuts are the reason crime is increasing in the UK. Boo hoo evil Tories?

Mate. I think genuinely I mistook you for a different user who is usually up for good, well-evidenced discussion. My mistake there.

You're arguing over the quality of evidence and you've brought:

1. One AI-written article (the tagline even says "AI generated").
2. But hey, AI can produce good work if used carefully. And RedTagAlan says he's hot on methodological robustness.
3. So, let's look at the links the article provides to support the very quote Alan was so impressed by.
4. Oh. One's a link to a study on export shocks in Turkey.
5. Oh, the other one's a 404 error.
6. Woah, hang on. Maybe they weren't the ones that convinced Alan. Let's check the citations. There are seven of them linked at the bottom.
7. Six of them are broken links or links to irrelevant papers. One is a new law that contains no research findings.

You've been fooled by the most transparent of AI slop.

Fair enough. I posted a really rubbish source.

You claimed murder rate shot up etc, and I can't find anything that positively says yes or no to that. I do live in a limited internet place though. But tbh, that's not a good excuse for me not refuting your claim.

So you win.

Thank you. I do appreciate that.

Here's some articles about Minneapolis. The story is a bit tangled as it tried a de-fund/restructure drive post Floyd but then tried to reverse a lot of it in a referendum that the defund side narrowly lost. However, there was a big attrition of police officers and a very large rise in crime including murder rates:
https://time.com/6180605/minneapolis-police-reform-george-floyd-murder/
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/09/25/us/minneapolis-crime-defund-invs/index.html

This is a study that looks at NYC and finds an effect (afraid it's only to the summary) https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15614263.2023.2235056

Floyd coincided with Covid so it can be hard to disentangle effects, but the Ferguson effect is pretty robustly documented (i.e. the effect of anti-police protests on subsequent policing intensity especially of black suspects/black areas, and rise in crime).

Well said.

You can’t find that a persuasive argument, surely?

Because some gestures are benign, any objection to others must be racist?

Well said! The murder of George Floyd was such a horrific crime to witness, that it resounded around the world. I remember people from the most far-flung places holding up placards in support of justice.

It was one of the most horrifying evils I have ever witnessed (and I stillrefuse to watch the whole video), and no well-thinking person would think anyone should regret supporting justice in that case.

It was live and in living colour. A prolonged, racist assault and eventual murder that we all got to watch. An event that reverberated around the world, for all to see, all at the same time.
Pretty much like 9-11 shook the world and most people I know wept for days, empathised, people marched, people and institutions held vigils...

It really isn't difficult to decipher the 'why'.