Westministenders: A Year of Johnson

[RedToothBrush]

So having given the benefit of the doubt...

... whats your reflections?

Good (and yes do have some thoughts on the positive - challenge yourself on this one as its important) and the bad (and yes this is the easy bit but keep it within reason)?

I read and agree with some of what you write, BigChoc, but it isn't the only story to be told. The unsold tale of Asians in America is very different, and most Latino people don't want to be bracketed in any resenting failure group either. They plan to do better than their parents.

Just being non-white does not mean we all have much in common - except suffering racism to a greater or lesser extent

I'm half Arab (lapsed) Christian and have little in common with a Jamaican, Indian, Pakistani and they have little in common with each other
and our experiences in the UK are different to those in the USA - especially for black people

Indo-Asian immigrants have bugger all to do with the descendants of African American slaves
The attitudes of whites towards them is very different too

BLM is about African Americans, who suffer very serious disadvantage and risk of death because Walking / Jogging / Driving While Black

Other minorities may be sympathetic to them, but mostly don't share the same oppression or risks

e.g. Asian Americans have a totally different experience & cultural heritage - ntbo they were never enslaved - and tend to do better than whites, like Indians do in the UK

BCF I've warned for some time that either the left got hold of the issue or the far right would fill the void.

FWIW I think there are problems with the BLM movement. Not because of the aims of the original movement itself but because of how a lot of support is coming from white 'allies' who mean well but manage to miss the point completely and are using it for their own agendas and further their own ambition rather than actually solve the problem.

I must confess I've not been on MN a huge amount lately due to childcare reasons and I'm actively taking a break from the news (as I havent managed it in a long time) but I saw the current Brietbart thread and sighed. Its bloody depressing.

The whole thing about the culture war is that it forces you to choose sides rather than have an opinion about an issue because of the nature of polarisation.

BTW I am watching the story about Spain with curiousity. The decision today to double down after Spain asked for exemption to quaratine to the islands only for the uk to actively strengthen their line strikes me as highly political and about proving a point rather than being about covid and I wonder about the timing... Its almost as if the UK is trying to illustrate to Spain than it needs us more than we need it...

If Brits had been kidnapped centuries ago and transported across the world as slaves, treated brutally as property for several generations,
losing all their culture,
then their descendants would suffer similar dislocation and disadvantage - especially if the descendants of the former owners used a succession of laws to keep them down

Asians didn't suffer any of this and are connected & secure in their culture & history

USA whites don't feel threatened by Asians, don't have the same horrific history of slavery to suppress

A very brief read on the early years on the exploration of the American continent should tell you that it wasn't all based on slavery. The Confederate States, on the Atlantic coast were. But the people who explored the interior, and mapped it, measured it out and settled there to farm, and who can claim to have settled it, and then built the railways and roads that now cross do not deserve the trashing you seem to think they deserve.

I too wondered about the political element to the Spanish quarantine measures. It seems completely unhinged (thanks MN). Why piss off so many people? Is it a deliberate show of strength, or yet another display of Raab’s poor grip of geography? Who knows?

Red I thought the sudden announcement about Spain was a panic reaction, fear of acting too late as the govt must realise they did wrt lockdown.

imo, they are desperate to avoid a rise in cases again
Also see BJ's efforts to get obese people to lose weight

I don't expect a serious rise from summer holidays - although I may have to eat my words ! -
but I do see a risk if winter holidays are not stopped

This quarantine for Spain and the warnings it may be extended to other countries may also be nudging people to accept staying in the UK this winter

The left lost its way in identity politics
and right has expanded to fill the void

It was a Republican politician who recently said that slavery was a regrettable necessity for the USA, not me

I've never claimed that the USA was built entirely by slaves
However, slavery ruined the lives of generations of African Americans and particularly in the former Confederate states for many generations after slavery, with the KKK and Jim Crow laws, then the segregation laws.

The North tolerated this right up until the mid-1960s - and in fact committed its own crimes
e.g. during the Civil War, there were mass killings of African Americans in the NYC draft riots because they were blamed for the war, rather than the slave-owners

Portillo on World at One today was questioning the motives behind the Government’s treatment of Spain:

Really the Government lumping all of Spain together, creating maximum confusion and economic damage, almost looks like a deliberate attempt to wreck the recovery, not only of this country, but of Europe.

Listening It seems more of an Anglosphere problem, which they are trying to export

Here the CDU, SPD etc don't do gestures
In fact Germany's parties are quite socially conservative
e.g. equal marriage and adoption by gay couples has only been legal a couple of years, abortion only up to 12 weeks
CDU / Merkel opposed the small steps forward, but I still voted CDU because of competence - good decision !

However, there is plenty of space in the UK for the mainstream right to expand where the left is repellent
Much as I despise them, BJ & this govt are not remotely at the AfD level of neo-Nazis or even the Breitbart far right

So why are the GC fools flirting with fascism and Trumpism ?

BigChoc
Britain and the USA still have first past the post
get rid of that and a significant part of the problem goes with it
I can dream

I think Portillo is seeing conspiracies where there is only panic and confusion

I hear a whisper that my views are not the received wisdom here and you are clearly a defined cohort. I'm not here to fall out with anyone, and my political views are pretty much middle centrist. But I do take issue with the notion that if you're not with us you're against us, and that is the signal you are sending me.

Most people want to succeed in life, and would work like dogs to make sure their children are equipped to live a better life than they achieved... or is that somehow shameful?

I think Portillo is highlighting what an unmitigated shitshow it is.

Xing What on earth has that got to do with a particular minority in the USA being oppressed ?
And hence much less able to dig themselves out of the cycle of poverty that started with being slaves

I'm very much for meritocracy, but it doesn't work when you start off in chains

Even in the UK, your success in life is far too dependent on what wealth or lack of it you were born into
We don't start off on an equal footing, but there is nothing remotely comparable to the oppression that many black Americans suffer

As I've said, I actually vote right of centre in Germany, for the moderate conservatives
So I may even be to your right
It doesn't stop me being angry at racism and at the most egregious example of the USA, totally separate from working hard to build up careers or businesses

However, my original point was that regurgitating the ravings of the lunatic criminal Trump and praising the neo-Nazi AfD will repel many GC feminists on the centre and left,
That certainly includes me

I work with people from the African American population on the south side of Chicago.
They want better for their dc as well.
But the system is stacked against them and has been for centuries.
There is an impact of generational trauma stretching back many generations and many different forms of governance.

I have been on this thread for years through many different name changes there are people on different parts of the political spectrum on here. People have voted everything from Tory to Corbyn on this thread, they do tend to be more international in outlook and not fans of the current government though.

"The whole thing about the culture war is that it forces you to choose sides"

Fortunately I only have to do this on MN
In Germany I have a moderate conservative and a moderate social democratic party to choose from, both very sensible and competent

I'm not keen on the Greens, because of the economy, but they are not remotely like the delusional UK Greens
I'd never vote for the FDP liberals who are vile
Die Linke are too leftwing, even though competent

Sorry for any offense Bigchoc; none intended. I lived in the US for many years, and having whit-ish skin and a middle class existence, I knew a lot of black professional people. Accountants, lawyers, actuaries, artists and the rest, because I worked in investment management. They were angier than any white person about the race issues, because they had worked hard to cross the educational bar but were not about to admit anyone without credentials easily on the colour of their skin. They had worked hard to get where they were and they wanted the rewards.

No offence taken at all

Some people do pull up the ladder, look down on those who can't climb on their own and feel contempt
Same in the UK, for whites as well, who look down on those they grew up with, who didn't also escape from poverty
Some of all races remember their roots - and then we get fsm over summer !

My late mother's extended Arab family are almost all in the USA now and they are tbh very hard about black Americans,
very right wing Evangelical Christians who regard poverty as a moral failing

Completely overlooking the fact that mc professional immigrants with a full cultural heritage have a huge advantage over descendants of slaves

So why are the GC fools flirting with fascism and Trumpism ?

Because they dont understand that they are.

My thought about Spain is that the restrictions are fair enough as the r rate in places has jumped up to 2.5. It seems that spain is struggling with quick and efficient track and trace and that is problematic for the uk government. Not because Spain has more covid-19 than the uk but because we dont have 'eyes on' clusters in spain and we have a lack of international cooperation with spain and we have language barriers. So a British citizen coming back to the uk can start off undetected clusters whereas we roughly know where clustering is occurring in the uk so are better able to play 'whackamole'. The point of quarantine isnt to contain the virus when people return from Spain - its to deter them from travelling in the first place, particularly as the FCO advice means that if you do decide to go, you aren't covered by insurance.

So i thought fair enough with the policy, but its the blanket nature of the policy and the extension to the islands that makes me question whats going on.

When Spain asked for dispensation for the islands i think political opportunism has crept in. There is no reason to have extended quarantine to the islands but for political reasons.

It struck me as the uk flexing muscles at a key time in Brexit negotiations. The public will currently begrudgingly accept restrictions now because of covid. Spain is pretty desperate as 25% of tourists are British and the government saw they could exploit the situation. Its leverage where we have none.

There is a big difference between wanting to give someone a job just because of their colour

• which I don't agree with, but am not sure it ever happens except in a tiny number of cases -

and wanting people not to be locked up or shot in such large numbers for being black

Astonishing to see how differently whites can be treated in the USA
e.g. an armed group marching in to intimidate legislators is ok

or the outcomes and sentences in criminal cases
Nearly 1 million African Americans are in jail or prison

Some of the GC feminists’ may have always been right wing, or have travelled that way. And of course some right wingers may be taking up what appears on the surface to be GC feminist issues. There were regular warnings about that back when trans issues started to blow up. I haven’t been on there a lot lately, some of the academic nuances go a bit over my head. I don’t support it myself.

Views are not always pure though, how do you police them all? Thee have been suggestions that some BLM people are angry enough to simply want destruction. It comes on all sides.

Btw, British people were once alienated in their own land. Not enslaved, except occasionally by Irish and Berber raids, not by skin colour. English was almost forbidden for a time, certainly a sign of low class compared to Norman French, probably why it’s the mish mash it is. Welsh - meaning barbarian, their own name is the Cymry - was more recently. We do know something of it, among north Europe peoples.

"There is no reason to have extended quarantine to the islands but for political reasons."

I may be naive, but I thought it was because it would be difficult administratively to impose quarantine for only part of Spain
and people could claim they were in the other part

On an MN thread, I saw people very confused about which islands belonged to Spain and which to Portugal !

A blanket ban makes the rules / theoretical enforcement clearer
..... but of course enforcement looks non-existent anyway