O/T:- ⚠️Impressed with the leadership [The UK Party Politics Thread]

[Lullapie]

I'm sorry, that was rude. Can't edit it now, but consider it retracted. Rest assured, I spent a full 5 minutes on the naughty step.

No worries . The PTA I was on was not there for a standard fundraising role, but you wouldn't have known that. I was using it as an example of my experience with education in NZ, without being directly employed as an educator.

[Lullapie]

I also lived abroad for 7 years Mud, and it was initially a wonderful experience. But when i look back I cringe at my behaviour. For the first few years I just hung around with other expats frequenting expat hotspots around town. I was unaware of my white privilege which got me the job in the first place and i was very arrogant. Towards the end of my stay i was incredibly lonely.

Living in other countries absolutely broadens the mind and I'd recommend it to anyone who has the means for a year or two. But the main thing i took away from my experience was realising how thankful I am to be from Britain and how lucky I am to be able to live here. It really makes you appreciate what you have back home. All countries have their problems.

Everyone is different of course.

It's not a good experience for everyone is it? It's often a major decision for anyone to take and can take many years before that decision pays off.

[Lullapie]

For sure, there are all sorts of reasons why England is a great place to live. A lot of them tend to be subjective though, like having family here or a footy club you love. Or simply feeling like you belong - that's a big one.

Personally, I'd love to live somewhere where the weather is nicer as that has a tangible impact on my overall wellbeing, probably more so than any other factor outside of my family. I'd also like to live in a country that isn't in decline, where cities are safer, where the health service works, and so on.

Having lived abroad in a relatively small country with a much smaller GDP per capita, I can safely say that a lot of things worked better there.

And on the subject of living broad - it isn't for everyone, but it's certainly one of the best ways to understand your own country better. Not just how things work (or don't), but all those little nuances of the culture.

Brilliant post SP. It sums up my views exactly.

[Lullapie]

Who are the 'far right groups' you refer to?

Meanwhile,

In August 2017 The Times published an article by Norfolk headlined "Christian child forced into Muslim foster care" about a foster placement in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.[9] The borough council complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), which ruled that the story was riddled with inaccuracies. IPSO required The Times to run the ruling in the front page of its print edition and in its online edition.[10][11][12] Norfolk has since said that with hindsight, he would not write the story again.[13]

The incessant referral to 'far right groups' and the threat they pose to society, is a constant that seems to come through from the left. Their insistence that everyone has to be 'on their guard' to prevent the modern day equivalent of Hitler coming to power in the world, reinforces my opinion of the politics of distraction.

If they keep pointing out the right wing menace, then we will be more susceptible to the left implementing their clandestine policies without question.

I think the new Labour government showed this with the summer riots.

[HeroPie1862]

Just remember folks

It was people like you and me that got hitler into power

It was the people that were lied to, and told immergrants were to blame.

It was the people who decided that the politicians ****ing up the country weren't to blame.

The nazis had some good ones (according to idiots here), that it was a working class, normal party.

It wasn't, every day people were brain washed into it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTlAYCGAHpc

[OchPie]

Depending exactly how you define it, I've lived in more countries than a lot of people have visited. I don't think there's anything about it that makes someone superior, but it can be an eye-opener and help put into context choices that are made (or sometimes, not even made) in your own society.

The "far right" being referred to is clearly the EDL and Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon, as well as some of the more fascistic tendencies of Reform UK and remarkably, the near-full fash that Robert Jenrick has recently embraced. Many of my Tory friends are horrified by what their party now is (just as many Republican friends in the US have been over Trump).

I was also confused as to how anyone could say the Sturmabteilung were "the good Nazis" (because they killed Communists in the street?), but then I remembered Strasserism arguably inspired quite a lot of the National Front.

Sadly, you don't have to look far to find the far right.

[slack_pie]

Just remember folks

It was people like you and me that got hitler into power

It was the people that were lied to, and told immergrants were to blame.

It was the people who decided that the politicians ****ing up the country weren't to blame.

The nazis had some good ones (according to idiots here), that it was a working class, normal party.

It wasn't, every day people were brain washed into it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTlAYCGAHpc

You could say the exact same thing for the communist parties that inflicted so much misery, bloodshed, and horror on their own people during the 20th Century. The gulag guards, Stalin's henchmen, the Stasi, the neighbours who informed on each other - they were all people just like us too.

We should be vigilant about extremists on both sides of the spectrum. Both the far right and the far left end up in the same place. The media and other people tend to see the "far right" everywhere these days, and my concern is that it's just becoming yet another way to end a debate with those they disagree with (like "racist", "bigot", etc.). Some people genuinely are far right/racist/bigots, but most people aren't. If those terms are used in a blanket way to label anyone who doesn't align with the liberal status quo, they start to lose all meaning.

[maddogslater]

A sensible reply slack, when people have little to hope for and little to lose, we end up with the nazis or communism

[HeroPie1862]

You could say the exact same thing for the communist parties that inflicted so much misery, bloodshed, and horror on their own people during the 20th Century. The gulag guards, Stalin's henchmen, the Stasi, the neighbours who informed on each other - they were all people just like us too.

We should be vigilant about extremists on both sides of the spectrum. Both the far right and the far left end up in the same place. The media and other people tend to see the "far right" everywhere these days, and my concern is that it's just becoming yet another way to end a debate with those they disagree with (like "racist", "bigot", etc.). Some people genuinely are far right/racist/bigots, but most people aren't. If those terms are used in a blanket way to label anyone who doesn't align with the liberal status quo, they start to lose all meaning.

It's a disappointment that communism doesn't work because as human nature constantly shows, when someone can get that much power, it's often taken advantage of, and when it comes to trying to point at Stalin as a left wing idealogy gone wrong, sure for the 1930's he was left wing but by todays standards he was actually pretty right - the laissez-faire economic libralism was basically a radically left position, but in 2025 nobody would recognise it as such, it would almost universally be regarded as a right wing position.

That isn't to say that his crimes weren't motivated by a left wing idealogy though, but things like the secret police weren't inventions of Stalin, it was due to right wing totalitarian backlash of the tsars who created the Okhrana, and they created the surveillance state that would deport folks to Siberia, and they created the first artifical famines in the late 1800s...

The worse oppresions of that regime weren't originally Soviet, it's tricky because the oppressions they were famous for were created by radically reactionary schemes in the 19th century, and that's a flaw that a lot of revolutions have - as it's much harder to lead a government in a perfect idealogy than it is to overthrow the leaders of an oppressive one.

And the far right is everywhere now-a-days, social media has enabled it; because of people like Trump, ignorance is a valid form of politics and it's nothing close to the actual discussions of old and it's full of hate and disgust for things people don't fully understand, lies are everywhere and people often believe them because they never do their own research and like to be spoon fed these "facts", and through that ignorance is where people are labelled racists and bigots - because they often are both racists and bigots.

Like people attempting to call me out for saying I heard racism around me - I've reported it now, it was racism, but attacking people who say something is racism is one way of silencing people, effectively bullying them towards allowing that behaviour to become normalised and it isn't okay - people should never be scared to call out bull**** when they see it, from both sides, but bullying - like from one **** on this forum, a major example tbh - is never okay, and should be frowned upon by both sides of the spectrum.

edit: TL DR the Stalin yap -

Stalin and Lenin inherited a state full of deeply oppressive machinery and they didn't dismantle it, they used it to further their own goals.

And Lenin actually attempted to justify the oppressions as temporary, and stated after the revolution had actually happened that they would be dismantled however they never were by his death, they both just reproduced and strengthened the tools the tsars used.

edit 2: And it is true, you can say the same - however right wing hate is becoming more accepted by populists and it can very quickly turn itself to oppression and should be refused at all costs - what we're seeing in ours, US and a lot of European politics is essentially what happened to lead to the nazis to power in the first place.

The only way you can stop facism is to call it out, and refuse to become apart of that system and preach it as unacceptable - which it is.

[MarcusCole]

It's a disappointment that communism doesn't work because as human nature constantly shows, when someone can get that much power, it's often taken advantage of, and when it comes to trying to point at Stalin as a left wing idealogy gone wrong, sure for the 1930's he was left wing but by todays standards he was actually pretty right - the laissez-faire economic libralism was basically a radically left position, but in 2025 nobody would recognise it as such, it would almost universally be regarded as a right wing position.

That isn't to say that his crimes weren't motivated by a left wing idealogy though, but things like the secret police weren't inventions of Stalin, it was due to right wing totalitarian backlash of the tsars who created the Okhrana, and they created the surveillance state that would deport folks to Siberia, and they created the first artifical famines in the late 1800s...

The worse oppresions of that regime weren't originally Soviet, it's tricky because the oppressions they were famous for were created by radically reactionary schemes in the 19th century, and that's a flaw that a lot of revolutions have - as it's much harder to lead a government in a perfect idealogy than it is to overthrow the leaders of an oppressive one.

And the far right is everywhere now-a-days, social media has enabled it; because of people like Trump, ignorance is a valid form of politics and it's nothing close to the actual discussions of old and it's full of hate and disgust for things people don't fully understand, lies are everywhere and people often believe them because they never do their own research and like to be spoon fed these "facts", and through that ignorance is where people are labelled racists and bigots - because they often are both racists and bigots.

Like people attempting to call me out for saying I heard racism around me - I've reported it now, it was racism, but attacking people who say something is racism is one way of silencing people, effectively bullying them towards allowing that behaviour to become normalised and it isn't okay - people should never be scared to call out bull**** when they see it, from both sides, but bullying - like from one **** on this forum, a major example tbh - is never okay, and should be frowned upon by both sides of the spectrum.

edit: TL DR the Stalin yap -

Stalin and Lenin inherited a state full of deeply oppressive machinery and they didn't dismantle it, they used it to further their own goals.

And Lenin actually attempted to justify the oppressions as temporary, and stated after the revolution had actually happened that they would be dismantled however they never were by his death, they both just reproduced and strengthened the tools the tsars used.

edit 2: And it is true, you can say the same - however right wing hate is becoming more accepted by populists and it can very quickly turn itself to oppression and should be refused at all costs - what we're seeing in ours, US and a lot of European politics is essentially what happened to lead to the nazis to power in the first place.

The only way you can stop facism is to call it out, and refuse to become apart of that system and preach it as unacceptable - which it is.

Try reading a proper History book.

Also the far right is everywhere only if you call everything you disagree with Far Right. Free speech is now Far Right; wanting equality before the Law, Far Right; wanting an investigation into how the establishment allowed and probably enabled pakistani Rape gangs, you guessed it Far Right.

[HeroPie1862]

Try reading a proper History book

If only you knew a single thing about me, eh?

A lot of what I stated there was directly from Stalins biography

Kotkin - Stalin, Paradoxes of Power 1878-1928

Kotkin - Stalin, Waiting for Hitler 1929-1941

A People's Tragedy - A History of the Russian Revolution

Edit: Feel free to read a book yourself, and your edit showed your ignorance.

[OchPie]

Free speech is now Far Right; wanting equality before the Law, Far Right; wanting an investigation into how the establishment allowed and probably enabled pakistani Rape gangs, you guessed it Far Right.

Claiming these things are only far right positions is itself a very far right position.

As is having concern about the victims of child *** abuse based only on the ethnicity of their abusers.

[HeroPie1862]

Claiming these things are only far right positions is itself a very far right position.

As is having concern about the victims of child *** abuse based only on the ethnicity of their abusers.

It's sad, but nobody gives a toss about the casual amounts of human trafficking that happens, but sure you bring a minority into it and let's use it to score political points.

The Tory party refused to investigate it themselves, and then decided to score points because of Musk tweeting about it, which is why people are in uproar about it currently - in no way do they actually care.

If they cared they'd have been upset 50+ years ago, my mum was abused in a care home, did anyone else defend her?

You can guess.

[magpie_mania]

I think the terms far-right and far-left are just used much too easily.

I saw this which is what I try to be but sometimes fail. The title is quite apt!

It’s not all black and white…

Not all principles, laws, political parties, or media outlets can be neatly classified as left or right wing, as most will use elements of both. Likewise, individual people, even those who describe themselves as being left-wing or right-wing, will often support one or two principles from the other end of the spectrum. This is a good thing - by avoiding strict labels and remaining open-minded, we can avoid having an over-simplified outlook and judge policies on their own merit.

[HeroPie1862]

I think the terms far-right and far-left are just used much too easily.

I saw this which is what I try to be but sometimes fail. The title is quite apt!

It’s not all black and white…

Not all principles, laws, political parties, or media outlets can be neatly classified as left or right wing, as most will use elements of both. Likewise, individual people, even those who describe themselves as being left-wing or right-wing, will often support one or two principles from the other end of the spectrum. This is a good thing - by avoiding strict labels and remaining open-minded, we can avoid having an over-simplified outlook and judge policies on their own merit.

I 100% agree with this, however sadly people want to be spoon fed and doing your own research has been politicised, even in this thread we've been called left wing for being educated.

That in itself is hilarious, it shows that one side of the spectrum truly depends on ignorance to work.