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 don't care how many billion people I offend. The planet Earth would be a fuck of a lot better off if Chinese "medicine" were to be forever forgotten. The sharks and the tigers and the elephants (that are left) would thank us. And from beyond the veil of extinction, the White Rhino might just rest easier, knowing they weren't wiped out in vain.

Since I know this thread is full of glossophiles then I hope it's OK to share this ... it's a guy in a shop who seems to be able to speak far too many languages.

@JeSuisPoulet

I think I am right in saying we had a higher rate than Spain when they let in UK tourists, so it does seem a bit rich. I also wonder why they haven't put similar measures on Belgium, for eg? IMO it is all about showing how reliant Spain is on our tourism. EU would be wise to remember many of those holidaying now are unlikely to be back if they loose their jobs in the next wave and post Jan funds will be stretched in most families due to rising food costs amongst others.

Yes I am sure there is something like this going on.

There is an article going about how the decsion was taken because 10 people came back from Spain and had Covid.
Bar the fact that nothing is sayng that those people actually got the virus after one week hols in Spain, how can we square that with the 16 cases of covid from one pub?
In one case, 10 cases is enough to shut the birders. In another 16 cases isn't enpiugh to shut pubs down.
Go and figure....

I think the 10% unemployment has been known for a while now....

Furlough was only there to avoid massive unemplyment and people with no job happening at the same time than the lockdown. Can you imagine 10% of the population looking for a job at the same tie than the lockdown? That would have been the perfect recipe for people not to follow any of the self isolating rules....

DGR
I like that.
I also very much like the way he finds out where people are from and what they speak
positive and non assuming

The problem is which 10%

If it's the usual suspects then the Tories and Daily Mail can carry on as if nothings changed.

But if it turns out to be a different makeup if 10% - say naice folk that are worth doing something for

How many airline pilots ever thought they'd be P45d ?

@DGRossetti

I don't care how many billion people I offend. The planet Earth would be a fuck of a lot better off if Chinese "medicine" were to be forever forgotten. The sharks and the tigers and the elephants (that are left) would thank us. And from beyond the veil of extinction, the White Rhino might just rest easier, knowing they weren't wiped out in vain.

I'll be harsh but I think you need to go and educate yourself on that subject DGR.

For example on the fact that most 'new' medication are actually stemming from chinese HERBAL medicine.

For example on the fact that most 'new' medication are actually stemming from chinese HERBAL medicine.
but that does not take away from the fact that any system that grinds up endangered animals should cease
I include all bushmeat and amazonian soya in that category

I'll be harsh but I think you need to go and educate yourself on that subject DGR. [] For example on the fact that most 'new' medication are actually stemming from chinese HERBAL medicine.

If it wasn't obvious I was aiming the DGR shit cannon at the Chinese "medicine" that requires tiger penises and shark fins and other arbitrary parts if endangered species then I apologise for any ambiguity I may have engendered.

Herbs ? Love them. Can't get enough of them. Bring 'em on.

Not caught up with the thread but surely there has to be an element of 'because we can' with the Spain quarantine. We're a sovereign country, we can do what we want to protect our people and all that? Look how good we are 'we're not afraid to act' blah blah blah?

@TokyoSushi

Not caught up with the thread but surely there has to be an element of 'because we can' with the Spain quarantine. We're a sovereign country, we can do what we want to protect our people and all that? Look how good we are 'we're not afraid to act' blah blah blah?

We could have done that in the EU. FoM was always wrapped in derogations for security etc.

We could have done that in the EU. FoM was always wrapped in derogations for security etc.

Don't let pesky facts get in the way of prejudice

If it wasn't obvious I was aiming the DGR shit cannon at the Chinese "medicine" that requires tiger penises and shark fins and other arbitrary parts if endangered species then I apologise for any ambiguity I may have engendered. And indeed the endangered animals that are eaten, even farmed for eating, and possibly acting as a middle species to pass a pandemic to the human race. All this is wrong but a bit like eating dog penises which for some reason is a particular favourite of the TV travel special on China, the wrong is only a tiny fraction of the rich cultural heritage in relation to both food and medicine. To make them illegal would piss of a few rich individuals who gain guanxi through conspicuous consumption of extremely expensive luxury goods but not the majority of Chinese society, and certainly not the diaspora, or those of us who really value and enjoy Chinese culture. It is the social construction of an othered Chinese identity that uses these practises to define a “race” out of all proportion to their importance as cultural practises or as in the case of spreading a pandemic to the human race fails to place the culpability on governance not an entire culture.

When a local Chinese takeaway, not a particularly good one admittedly (partly because it caters to the British taste for the orange gloop that is as little a part of Chinese food culture as dog penis) had the temerity to advertise on Facebook recently the comments filled up with more than thirty dog and cat meat, dog penis and bat curry “jokes”, an entire shared racist rhetoric.

Emilyontmoor

Not sure if I've been savaged or agreed with or neither there ?

Well I am agreeing they are awful practises but this was a discussion of the othering of a billion people and it isn’t what first comes to my mind even in terms of the evils that are actually cultural let alone at the door of the CCP. It is a bit like people leaping to the cause of Tibet in the past whilst barely appreciating, or even having heard of, the ethnic and cultural cleansing of the Uyghurs, a traditionally peaceful and moderate Muslim society (with women leaders) as opposed to a feudal medieval theocracy. We know the full horror of it now but the medieval theocracy has effectively marketed an acceptable western face and took some power over the process of the social construction of their othered race. I would argue it is not actually a particularly accurate social construct if you actually start to investigate Tibetan Buddhism and society....

To take it back to Brexit the complicated reality is very different to the emotions that get evoked by the social construction of the othering. Though there it is the EU or Remoaners or anyone else the Brexiteers have in their sights to blame

However I can’t agree that race is a biological construct. It is a social construct, the framing of stereotypes of the othered.

That may be true and very interesting in academia, but it is shared physical features and their difference from standard Caucasian that marks them out on the street. It’s also those that drive a whole identity as, e.g. “black” too, in a positive sense. Those and the physical characteristics of speech, accent and language. Your average man on the street is not going to stop and ask which of the various ethnicities within China someone is from, or even those within SE Asia, before deciding which insult to hurl. It’s a bit much to expect the average person to know everything about every different people around the world. Then as you imply there’s politics thrown in for good measure on top. My head will explode shortly.

However I can’t agree that race is a biological construct. It is a social construct, the framing of stereotypes of the othered.

Hence the weasel word "ethnicity".

It's a cruel trick of nature (or alternatively, part of natures Grand design) that the genes that affect physical expression in humans (skin, eye, hair colour for example) are the most superficial (or so the panel on a Monkey Cage put it a while back). Meanwhile the really heavy hitting genes are invisible under the superficial ones.

Just clarifying that I don't agree with our shitty 'because we can' attitude at all, I just feel that's potentially at the root of it.

Found you! - PMK

I can think of nothing good about Johnson's First Year. Nothing.

So much bad that I'd still be typing whilst getting kids to bed, so I won't.

@ListeningQuietly: 'squirrel breeders' indeed :(

Fingers and toes crossed that they deport him .....
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8567779/English-Defence-League-founder-Tommy-Robinson-flees-country.html

The hilarious John Crace on someone else who fled the country - Grant Shapps ! 😂😂

www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jul/28/times-tense-grant-shapps-family-holiday-then-spanish-pm-rang

If traditional Chinese medicine favouring animal parts is purely for the elite, then why is Hong Kong rammed full of traditional medicine shops selling all sorts of pickled animal parts ?

I travelled through Xingiang province about 15 / 20 years ago and was very aware of the Han Chinese intolerance towards the Uighur population even then.
There is nothing new about China's prejudice towards its minority ethnic peoples.

And don't get me started on their attitude towards animals and wildlife in general 🤨

Kon Tikki The registered TCM practitioners who are part of the TCM regulatory bodies in Hong Kong and throughout the world do not use animal parts. As far back as the Tang to do so was deemed to go against nature and the point of TCM is to work with nature. That is the cultural heritage. The problem is that an industry has sprung up on the back of rising affluence in China that trades on the demand for the expensive luxury of “medicines” containing ingredients that come from rare species. The demand is generated from marketing them on the basis that they have “traditional” benefits, but that is not necessarily, or even often, rooted in actual tradition. The pickled parts you see in traditional medicine shops in Hong Kong are not endangered species and most are roots. Sharks Fin and Bird’s Nest are sold openly as food and it isn’t that Hong Kong isn’t up to its neck in this new industry illicitly underground, it is just stall holders would not be so stupid as to be open about trading in illegal goods. As I said in my original post it is just another evil market that has sprung up as a result of unleashing a market economy that was freed of traditional constraints and not regulated in the way that more mature developed markets in other cultural contexts are. Prior to 1976 there was no industry because there was no market. However how does the evil of that industry compare with the mass infection of the rural population with HIV as a result of farming them for blood? Or the trafficking of women from South East Asia to meet the demand for wives generated by the massive gender imbalance caused by the one child policy and all those disappeared daughters?

If you travelled to Xinjiang twenty years ago then you are a rare westerner to have experience of Uyghur culture. And you are lucky to have done so, and seen the historic Mosques that elsewhere on the Spice Road are being restored (sometimes badly) as part of a rich cultural heritage but are now being destroyed on a massive scale in China. However the persecution has been building for the last twenty years. The same is true for other minorities such as the Mongolians. And many many other minority cultures have been dressed up in dayglo neon and commodified for tourist consumption. But whilst all this was going on it was the cause celebre of Tibet that was prominent in the western consciousness. It took a million people being herded into camps for it to start to appear in western MSM.

Seen on Twitter for the German speakers ... I can make out a word or two, but don't know if it should be sung ...

Pizzakarton

Eventually cronyism is a risk to ever citizen in the country. Something we'd do well to bear in mind in the UK.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/28/trump-president-diplomats-ambassadors

The US ambassador to Iceland, a dermatologist and major Republican donor, reportedly became so paranoid about his security he asked to carry a gun and to be taken everywhere in an armoured car.

Despite the absence of particular security concerns, the embassy in Reykjavik advertised in the local press for bodyguards, to placate the ambassador, Jeffrey Ross Gunter.

Gunter’s alleged antics are not an isolated case. A record share of Donald Trump’s ambassadorial appointments have been political, mostly rewards for big-money donors, and his nominees have frequently stood out for their lack of qualifications or aptitude.

A report to be published on Tuesday by Senate Democrats on the current situation at the state department, titled Diplomacy in Crisis, said: “While it is true that every administration has its share of questionable appointments, the Trump administration’s choices have gone beyond the pale, jeopardizing the department’s ability to safeguard our nation’s interests.”

(contd)