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?

Yup. It is going to be difficult to untangle to get anything solid.

I was reading an article a while back how as crime goes down, government want to cut the budget on police. So in theory, if crime rate was directly related to police spend, as spending goes up and down, then crime rate would follow the same approx curve, but would lag. But crime rate and police spend are not directly related. Because as you say, lets throw covid in.

The Fergusson effect yes. But that is not related to spend. That is withdrawal of policing from a segment of society. " The black folk are protesting, so stay away from the black folk". So a black woman phoning the cops because her ex threatened to kill her is probably not treated the same as in normal times.

And the list of variables goes on as you know. The type of policing, economic demographics, and how the police spent the budget.

And that is what defund the police was all about. Changing the style of police. From being heavy handed in tanks, going in guns drawn, to spending a reduced budget on cops with guns and spending more on the root causes.

And that last bit, the root causes would take time. And it can't really happen with Trump in the Chair. Because he tells the states to spend more on heavy handed cops or he will defund the state.

So yup. I agree. Accurate studies are near impossible to do.

@RedTagAlan

Yes, hard to disentangle police spending because even if high police spend drives low crime (which I believe), low crime also drives low police spend.

Another thing that makes it hard to assess 'defund' fairly is that it meant so many different things. From fairly sensible ideas like better mental health support given an eye-catching label, to pretty wild utopian ideas about police abolitionism.

(I actually think it was tactically catastrophic to give sensible ideas from the liberal centre-left 'eye-catching' radical labels during the woke era. It meant conceding a lot of very bad premises to the progressives, reinforcing the idea that there is only one acceptable paradigm from which to argue for positive change, and then when many of the crazier ideas turned out to be crazy, discredited the supposedly sensible left. I'm a centre-right liberal not a centre-left one, but I'd settle for good evidenced policy based on widely-shared principles over this pendulum swing between the worst left ideas and the worst right ones).

Yup. I am left, and I agree.

The people who should be driving police policy are the good cops who go into high crime areas and get good results, without breaking laws or messing with civil rights.

The people who should not be driving police policy are the politicians. Left or right. Their job is to get the money to the services that need it.

Why would he regret taking a stand against police violence? If you’re thinking that there is any similarity between the deaths of George Floyd and Harry Novak you are very much mistaken.

Because it happened in the USA, where they have very different issues.

Kano a rapper (from the uk and rich) got stopped because he was driving a very expensive Mercedes and questioned where he got it from, he was in the bloody advert for said car!

I think you are remembering a scene from a music video, although the rapper did advertise a Mercedes some years before that.

I remember when a young David Beckham was vilified and blamed for England crashing out of the 1998 World Cup after receiving a red card;

Beckham turned from media darling to one of the most hated men in England. He received death threats, an image of a Beckham effigy hanging outside a pub found infamy, while the Mirror’s headline of ’10 Heroic Lions, One Stupid Boy’ was followed by a David Beckham dartboard.

https://www.goal.com/en-gb/news/beckham-thankful-social-media-1998-world-cup-red-card/ngaxbyhnu5l61nlmgpi9cf3nh

No im not thinking of that music video, I remember it being on his instagram im pretty sure as I remember talking to my boyfriend about it

It wasn’t about George Floyd.

This.

I think you are mistaken.

I don’t think that Starmer has any self-awareness, whatsoever.

His previous Floyd performative nonsense can simply be added to all his other failures before, and during his time as PM.

History will judge our hapless PM very harshly.

“Empty performative gestures”. Like wearing a Poppy?

Starmer takes the knee for a drug addicted criminal from the across the Atlantic that dies during his rightful arrest, the world is a better place without the likes of George Floyd, regardless of skin colour l.

Yet, Starrner doesn't take the knee for a British boy murdered on the streets of Britain , virtue signalling was his only reason.

Not my leader. He couldn't care less about uk citizens and fools follow him.

Pretty sure it was

Anyone who took the knee for that man needs their head examined. He was a criminal with a violent past.

Benign? On the contrary, it’s an utterly corrupt organisation.

George Floyd wrote his own destiny. The world is a better place without him. What's next? Statues of Fred West/Myra Hindley? Can't belive fools knelt for such scum

Yup. I was thinking that as I was reading about the US sec of War, Hegseth, at the D Day thing. He had to be performative, but when he spoke it seemed to me he was really batting for the other side.

I think a closer equivalent to BLM though is #Me Too. BLM and #Me Too were concepts against social injustice, A very real actual factually true social injustice, that is still ongoing.

I wonder if a thread started here along the lines of " To think politician X must regret tweeting #MeToo ?" would get the same reaction as this thread.

And there are more "performative" things too. The Ice Bucket challenge comes to mind.

This doesn't work anymore.

Credit to OP for sharing this - but it’s so accurate.

With content.

That's an odd one.

From the top :

"I've banned European political leaders": I assume you mean the Dutch far right guy.

"I've banned Journalists" : RTE comes to mind. And I recall PRC state media lost accreditation ?

"I've banned freedom of speech advocates": Cenk Uyger and Hasan Piker just last week. Do you mean them ?

"I've Imprisoned British Citizens ": It's the courts do that, Beak the law and ...

"I've prosecuted our own veterens" : He was a prosecutor, and there are laws.

"I've denied a democratic vote to leave the EU " : When was the Brexit ref ?

"I've stood against the investigation into mass child rape" : See above re prison. The offenders are in prison.

And so on..

I think it’s madness to take on cruelty and wrongdoings in another country - should we all be debasing ourselves over what is happening in Palestine, to the Uyghurs, to trafficked kids, women in Asia etc etc etc etc

to add -we’ve failed to compensate the post office employees, or people wrongly imprisoned and many more - let’s get our own house in order first

Taking one from your list, so you think it is "debasing" to sanction PRC entities over treatment of Uighurs? So Sunak, Boris, the EU etc are all debased ?

Out of interest-why is your picture not complete?