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Friday, 6 February, 2009

Sarah McDermott | 15:25 UK time, Friday, 6 February 2009

Kirsty is presenting tonight. Here is her look ahead:

Dear viewers

The protests that started the week are over. The Government stood firm and condemned the unofficial action, but at the Lincolnshire refinery Total promised 100 jobs for British workers. Was the Total protest simply the manifestation of deep-seated fears and tensions? Is there an increasing disconnect between the problems facing the working class and the policies being pursued by the government? We have spent the day talking to people near the construction sites for the London Olympics where hundreds (thousands) of workers from other European countries are employed. And we hope to discuss our film with the Communities Secretary Hazel Blears and Bob Crow, leader of the Rail Maritime and Transport Union.

At the moment we are trying to set up an interview with Rachel Reid, the researcher for Human Rights Watch in Afghanistan who . A senior British army officer, Colonel Owen McNally has been arrested under the Official Secrets Act, reports say for allegedly passing classified information to a human rights worker in Afghanistan. Rachel Reid denies receipt of any such information on civilian casualties and moreover is furious that her name has been connected with the story, and that there have been insinuations that she and the officer were "close". In fact, she says that they only met twice, both times at Nato military HQ in Kabul. Caroline Hawley will be attempting to unravel this fascinating and complex tale.

There's been saturation coverage of the this week, with extraordinary pictures of children sledging and tossing snowballs, to bleaker images of stranded motorists and abandoned cars. We've all, it seems, been glued to our screens. We've always been obsessive about the weather... but this? Steve Smith will be pondering the snow magic, mayhem, and gloom.

Do join us at 10.30pm.

Comments

  • Comment number 1.

    I really do hope that you do not get the chance to discuss your film with Hazel Blears; the concept of discussion with the Vermicious Knid of Salford has me crosseyed.

    What light do you think she can possibly throw on the subject, apart from maybe going "off-message"? The woman is a Blairite and a populist opportunist, symbolic of the 1997 intake on Blair's coat tails.

    More interesting will be Bob Crow; you may not agree with him, but at least he wasn't in Star Wars, tickling Jabba's tummy.

  • Comment number 2.

    OYEZ, OYEZ, OYEZ!

    The dates are wrong on your headers; Her Eugenic Highness and barriesingleton may miss a chance to gasp.

    Is this deliberate?

  • Comment number 3.

    chinese currency manipulation?

    we all know the uk economy is toast. While we know chinese economy has 'shrunk' to 'only' 8 percent growth.

    yet the chinese yuan has sunk 30 per cent against the pound . which should suggest the uk economy is stronger than chinese economy.

    the yuan has 'sunk' against a lot of other currencies making the chinese economy 'more competitive' against what by any other measure are weaker economies.

    is this 'market forces'? some don't think so.

  • Comment number 4.

    Well, I'm really enjoying myself here, alone in the blogosphere.

    Yesterday I talked of Gordi modelling himself on James Maxton, a famous Scot of Red Clydeside fame, even to the extent of wearing his hair like Jimmy,while at Edinburgh Uni and then I wondered - was Gordi a forerunner of NLP? If so, they'll not be asking him for any testimonials.

    Maybe it was just a performance to gain a political platform, but it didn't sound like it then; so is he an even better actor than Blair?

    The only word that describes Gordi's tenure is: disappointing; deeply, deeply disappointing - and the most disappointing aspect of all is his continuation of Blair's siding with business, which is when all the alienation of the working class began, from a Labour point of view.

    So why go for Blears when you could have had John Cruddas? Would that have been too much of a true debate for wee Kirsty fae Killie?

    A thought; if Gordi was really an early adopter of NLP, does that make him crypto-Jewish, your Highness?

  • Comment number 5.

    Road Chaos
    You might like to ask how much salt and grit local councils had in there stocks this winter or had they run them down to save money, after all we don't have snow now in winter do we.
    The letter in today's Daily Telegraph would indicate that they took a gamble.

  • Comment number 6.

    ENOUGH ROPE TO HANG YOURSELF KASHI?

    You have a wonderful way with words K, especially when being vitriolic. If I were in the award business, you would be nominated. But see you not what has occurred? Some quirk of fate gave you a free run down this thread AND YOU COULD NOT RESIST! You reveal yourself as a fully screwed up member of 'GASP' (I have forgotten what it means - you must know - you invented it). And in running on, you lost your edge; so not-un-gaspish don't you think? And stop calling him Gordon - his name is James!

    Yeah - go for Cruddas, he is better looking and doesn't keep breaking into 'The Good Ship Lollypop' at the drop of an 'H'.

    Hey: have you spotted it? James G was the 'do nothing' Chancellor. From his own lips, he KNEW the world needed a global system of banking control. Ergo he knew the whole system could throw a wobbler.
    He COULD have prepared Britain BUT HE DID NOTHING. Where would we be if Naoh had not built the Ark?

  • Comment number 7.

    Listening to Hazel Blears was like listening to a recording. It's all about "The Conservatives would have been even worse". It was scary to see Bob Crow and Hazel Blears talking from 2 extremely opposite ends. Blears goes on about what this Govt. have done for "us". The proof is in the pudding and the pudding looks unappetizing and tastes terrible.Crow says that the workers should get 1st rights to jobs but ignores history when the Unions held the country to ransom. People hold many and sometimes contradictory values and reconcile them with compromises. Shouldn't Govt.s do the same? The interests and the well being of the MAJORITY in our country should come first but they have to be within our moral values which looks after the poorest but gives equal chances to everyone. The Privileged and the rich rely on a financial system that makes money out of money as they have a lot of it. The rest are prisoners of it. Hard work will rarely make you a millionaire but morally you are "honest"

  • Comment number 8.

    FAST TALKING BAMBOOZLERS

    Bob Crow got all confused about classes e.g. 'foreigners' and 'UK citizens', kept calling Hazel 'Helen', and Blears talked nonsense about how New Labour was investing in infrastructure when in fact, it's PPP/PFI public funding of Private Sector/Third Sector interests at the expense of the public (and its sector).

    Credit where due, I thought Kirsty Walk was impressively pensive and apposite for a change, she managed her guests skillfully and professsionally.

  • Comment number 9.

    POSTS #7 AND #8

    Look what we non-politicians can achieve in rational exposition, when we don't have to protect the party dogma, please the leader for the sake of our career and provide the media with a sound-bite BEFORE we even begin to address the matter at hand!

    A real pleasure to read both posts; though a small reservation where Kirsty is concerned. She was still practicing the subtle art of the 'unsaid' on a few words and could, perhaps, have wasted a breath or two telling Hazel . . . . oh forget that.

    If Hazel is the acceptable face (to Labour) of Labour, what must the backside look like? Or do we already know?

  • Comment number 10.

    MARKET MIASMA

    Barrie (#9) I suspect it's unfair to be too personal about Hazel Blears as she is, it seems to me, just putting what party PR image and communications 'consultants' advise them to do. It's pitched at a demographic, just not ours I guess.

    One just shouldn't take the words of 'hands off', 'light touch', Liberal-Democractic politicians who delight in 'devolving' so much to market miasma, seriously.

  • Comment number 11.

    Chief Ten Bob Fat Cat Hazel Blears may wonder why the working class has lost faith in politicians in general, but perhaps the following Corporate Nazi Corporate Ethnic Cleansing policy Blears supports goes some way to explaining it.

    They are going to demolish 500 perfectly sound terraced houses in east Manchester and replace them with 400 " Town Houses " and a new street plan. Obviously those " working class " already in residence there can't afford to stay there and will be in effect economically cleansed.

    Many " working class " people bought their house cheap with the help of their redundancy money when the mills etc closed down. Most of them paid off their mortgage ( if any ) years ago, were content to stay where they were and did not chase the false money of property speculation. Most of them managed to build up quite adequate cash savings to supplement their retirement income and still leave something to their children on death.

    They now find themselves in a position where what is offered for their " house " will in no way buy them an equivalent replacement in an area safe from future " regeneration ". Likewise interest rates have collapsed which leaves them on the breadline with no hope of being able to afford a new mortgage. Their only other alternative is high rent which will lower their relative standard of living.

    Working class people do not want alleged regeneration none of them can afford, far better to renovate the existing properties, but this is probably not allowed due to only two bedrooms being unsuitable for Asians with large families. A compromise could be knocking two houses into one as many Asian families have done in towns like Burnley.

    It would appear that the sticking point is that large scale government projects are only awarded to members of the international construction cartel. This means that there is a good chance that any new jobs created will go to immigrants, ( as Blears suggested many employment agencies will only employ immigrants they can fleece for living accommodation ).

    A far better way to renew our housing stock would be to let small scale local developers ( builders ) do the work even if the time scale could be longer overall. Small builders tend to employ local labour before people who can't fluently speak our language. I believe that local small builders were queuing up to buy and renovate empty good quality terraced houses in Liverpool, but denied the opportunity. It is probably the case that ( renovated ) much of our existing housing stock is far better than the crap that passes for new building these days.

  • Comment number 12.

    THE WHOLE FAIRNESS THING. (#10)

    Having such a fund of general bitterness to disseminate, JJ, I figured it fairest (have Labour dropped 'fair' for 'real help now'?) to have a go at those who are so self-obsessed as not to notice. Hence my choice of 'Lollypop Lady' Hazell. Unfortunately, ever since I blogged about visualising Hoon as a clown (massive flappy boots, red nose, comedy mouth and gangly-thin) my visualising chip has fused.

    Of course, I could always give you the House of Commons (snide) response of: Oh? And just how much 'personal about Hazel Blears' would you consider to be right? (:o)

    Sincerely - your wall-eyed, slap-head person of minimal hue - BS

  • Comment number 13.

    Barrie (#12) That's difficult to respond to as I may have been a bit hasty.

    I seem to have spent a lot of time trying to encourage others ito discriminate between a) constructive personal criticism (which I think is legitimate, benevolent and useful) b) the ad hominem and other logically invalid forms of argument (which is not) and c) the truth and falsehood (or probabilistic relevance of) propositions. This has nothing to do with ethics, morality or personal interests.

    Whilst Clarkson was way out of line in his Brown remarks and whilst I appreciate that what you said above was not an ad hominem, I bet some of the incorrigibles here will not appreciate the difference.

  • Comment number 14.

    WHAT'S THE LATIN FOR 'JOSHING'? (#13)

    I'm just badly behaved JJ. You have provided me with a lot of info, backed with a derived viewpoint, for which I am grateful. I find all aspects of this blog illuminating. I am glad the Blogdog has not gone for heavy censorship.

    I just re-read my #12. The 'bitterness' comment was ALL about me - honest. Though on another occasion, regarding another attribute, I might well be intending to hold up a mirror - but to whom? (:o)
    It so happens I have just written a poem wherein the first stanza has a BQ (bitterness quotient) right off the end of the bell curve. I was a VERY angry little chap.
    This led to an overactive justice gland.

    PS I am thinking of finding the term 'person of colour' offensive to 'Caucasians'. The implication being that I am a colourless individual.

  • Comment number 15.

    John McFall, a Labour MP and chairman of the House of Commons treasury committee, welcomed Mr Darling's move.

    "And if the government is establishing this and ensuring that boardrooms are looked at, that the role of non-executives is looked at, that corporate governance is looked at very very seriously, then that can help."

    So yes and what about governmental regulation of the banks Mr. McFall? Coudl that help too? Why did Tony Blair ask why anybody like the FSA would want to scrutinize "perfectly respectable banks".

  • Comment number 16.

    #13 Jaded_Jean

    Yes Barrie, I can see how the goose stepper in chief would "encourage others ito discriminate between... c) the truth and falsehood (or probabilistic relevance of) propositions. This has nothing to do with ethics, morality or personal interests."

    I can see how somebody who thinks that Hitler did "good and bad things" and that I am an "anarchist and Trotskyite" because "I paint Hitler as darkly as possible" would not want to encourage consideration of ethics and morality. You are both hazy about the Holocaust.

    So its a bit of a waste of time trying to sound like Aristotle with that track record.

    The "probabilistic relevance" ... please!

    Get a life. Real intelligence is expressed in simplicity and not pseudo froth.

    I think if you actually are a female you may still have a dolls house.

    I suspect you to be a fat middle aged bald man with a swaztika tatooed to his forehead.

    Did you enjoy the "televisual experience " of Newsnight?

    If not why do you post?



  • Comment number 17.

    Barrie (#14) I have still to watch last week's Question Time in full, but I watched part of it re-broadcast tonight whith Shami getting 'instrumentally angry/emotional'. She knows better. I have still to hear anyone in authority in the USA admit to any razor blade torture, and to the best of by knowledge, Shami is well aware of what begging the question amounts to, just as she knows how to play to an audience/jury. So long as our politics amounts to little more than a combination of theatrics and nefarious rhetoric, nothing stable can come of it.

    Whilst on the subject of Shami's performance, I've tried to get some of the more economically inclined (another environmentalist black art in my view) over in Stephanie Flanders' blog to give serious thought to what bankers must now face up to when assessing who to lend to, although based on my own and others' experience (see the Rushton and Jensen Editorial in 'Medical Hypotheses' (2008) linked on 30th Jan), I'm not sure many will have the courage to face up to any of this, let alone post rationally on the matter.

  • Comment number 18.

    THE FULL SET (#15)

    Tony ended up with the full set: wealth, possessions, fame, the world as his stage, and God as his constant companion.
    I think mythology tells us that only a pact with the Devil brings all that. Perhaps that is why he looks so stressed.
    Blair is emblematic of all that is wrong with the 'Western' world's idea of the good life.

    One thing is sure: he will never feel he has enough.

  • Comment number 19.

    Why does Shami have a CBE? I always enjoy John Guant's attacks on her when he does Sky papers (woops, hope I'm not starting wheels in motion) - she may sue one day as he gets quite personal about her. But he's right, she's unelected and enjoys a position in policy-making that really isn't warranted. She seems to treat the UK like a case study in a sociology seminar, I never get a sense of terroir from her. And her desparate confusion over whether or not (she wants) to be visually attractive is painful.

    Why haven't we heard from Amnesty International in this debate, or have we?

  • Comment number 20.

    doctormisswest (#19) "Why does Shami have a CBE?"

    Might it be because (like so many honoured these days) essentially, she's an 'anarchist'?

  • Comment number 21.

    SELF ASSESSMENT

    I have just watched Nicky Campbell throwing lit matches into a box of fireworks, called 'The Big Questions'. Across an audience of every bizarre mix, they had one thing in common: lack of philosophical self assessment. How delightfully apposite that a country obsessed with money should have introduce 'Self Assessment' in the tax arena, but utterly neglects philosophical development in our young, the better to approach a deranged world.

    Objectivity is predicated on a philosophical approach to life. Our disastrous style of governance, with its wondrous range of transient, tottering policies, is only possible because we do not learn the skills of true understanding; self or other.

    In a recent post, I pilloried Hazel Blears as Labour's crass 'face'; I see Ed Balls as education's comedy appendage.
    In passing, The two Balls stepped up to No. Ten with cameras on them and, without hesitation, Ed swept past his wife to enter first. Quite an education.

    I doubt the 'philosophical way' will arrive any time soon. As for chivalry - wass 'a?

  • Comment number 22.

    Trade Goods Not People

    The responses of Gordon Brown and the UNELECTED Peter Mandelson this week have shown that they are committed to the idea that living, breathing human beings can be traded across nations in the same way as inanimate objects. They have scant regard for the communities they tear apart. They regard living breathing human beings as numbers on a spreadsheet, to be shunted around the world to suit their political beliefs and to please multinational corporations. They have no respect for us as human beings.

    We all thought that trading people had died out with slavery 200 years ago, but Labour, their globalist friends and the EU have breathed new life into the dehumanising trade of people. Any political party that supports mass immigration and believes that people can be traded across nations in the same way as inanimate objects, is a party that is an enemy of the working class.

  • Comment number 23.

    thegangofone (#16) "Real intelligence is expressed in simplicity and not pseudo froth."

    These matters have been explained very clearly and very simply, but you clearly still do not understand what has been explained to you. In case the impediment was personal/stylistic, you've been provided with links to independent sources which should enable you to see for yourself where you've been going wrong. Yet you persist in posting personal abuse and distortions of what's been said. Any rational reader of this blog will, by now, be curious as to why you persist in behaving in such an irrational manner.

    Mu advice to you is that you give yourself some time to seriously question whether you understand these issues as well as you think you do.

  • Comment number 24.

    #22 CaringHumanist

    Very well said, I agree with you.

  • Comment number 25.

    22/24 I agree too but where do we go, which group do we join to try and alter the course of history?

    I have been looking for an organisation to join for several years

    the only thing I've come up with is Civil Liberties (not Liberty I hasten to add). The site is some 'comfort' as it informs of EC documentation that we never hear about.

    The EU is a monster unleashed. We have not voted for these policies and we are going to be helpless to stop them.

    I don't want to vote Tory or UKIP, I'm not a Tory but what is the option?

  • Comment number 26.

    CaringHumanist #22

    May I just add my support to your post and add that, in case we have forgotten, Mandleson is not the only unelected one. We must not forget that Brown is also UNELECTED.

    doctormisswest #25

    "I don't want to vote Tory or UKIP, I'm not a Tory but what is the option"

    Difficult isn't it? I've spoilt so many ballot papers and it apparently gets me nowhere. Possibly Barrie has an answer with "Spoil Party Games". Bring back the Witen?

  • Comment number 27.

    INTENSIONAL OPACITY

    doctormisswest (#25) "I agree too but where do we go, which group do we join to try and alter the course of history? I have been looking for an organisation to join for several years"

    So long as you are not 'insulted' and don't have to affirm any propositions which you don't already hold true? So long as you don't have to change your behaviour?

    Please note: Looking is an intensional idioms of propositional attitude.

    Anything with 'Civil Liberties', 'Human Rights' etc in its banner is very probabably a vehicle of anarchistic (i.e pro free-market/light-touch regulation/laisez-faire) anti-statist subversion.

  • Comment number 28.

    Anybody seen this morning?

    Always been a bit of a cheat it seems.

  • Comment number 29.

    RESISTANCE AS A WAY OF LIFE (#25)

    Orwell's 1984 is often referred to with reference to our controlled state, but far more telling was the inevitable ending.
    Smith was born to resist - it was in his bones; he was defeated, and 'absorbed'.

    However, those of us who cannot help but resist (e.g. School, the institution, despised me - just a few teachers respected me) are doomed to live Winston Smith's life over again.

    Personally I will not join anything with a whiff of dogma or hierarchy (I am fearful that might be anarchy!) and to that end, stood for Parliament in 2005, as the simply a rallying point for those who wanted to SPOIL PARTY GAMES. I am still hopeful that we have a sprinkling of mature (paradoxically reluctant) individuals who would make an excellent government, if drafted into office by popular pressure.

    There is one great snag: human nature. The iconic image for the next 8 years is Obama/Blair. I have printed it out, and when framed, it will hang above my toilet with on of the Archbishop and the Pope (staff to staff) and a (No. 1) fool-with-an umbrella, choosing to keep his cigarettes dry, while a lady soaks.

    The way things are going I will run out of wall before shuffling off.

    Every good wish, Doctormisswest.

  • Comment number 30.

    SPOIL PARTY GAMES (#27)

    Help me out JJ. I have a nagging feeling that 'to spoil' is a psychological verb; particularly when transitive and used in the idiom of with human will.

    This would mean that 'SPOIL PARTY GAMES' (a sound-bite condensation of 'I request/suggest/implore/demand that you s.p.g.) is lax if not reprehensible?

    What would be my options? 'Expose'? 'Foil'?
    Or is the error in the use of 'games' (particularly as a double entendre) inviting a psychological verb, almost by default?

    FOIL PARTY FUNCTIONALITY, UNCONDUCIVE TO EFFECTIVE GOVERNANCE.

  • Comment number 31.

    NOWHERE TO HYDE - THE OTHER HALF OF 'MANSE-MAN' (#28)

    I wrote only the other day of 'split Brown';
    the saint on the roof and the fiddler in the basement. When the two halves of Brown meet, he will crumble to powder.

    Blair is similarly divided, but I suspect that, deep doen, HE knows.

    heaven help us if this is a trend . . .


  • Comment number 32.

    Hhhhmmm the EU might have it's uses



    Vote?! I won't be voiting for anyone, they all look rubbish.

  • Comment number 33.

    #22; TRADE GOODS NOT PEOPLE;

    A few points here;

    It's really no surprise that unelected people get to a position of influence in our system of democracy; we live in a constitutional monarchy; the Queen is not elected, no Prime Minister is elected, merely the leader of the party who wins a majority at a general election; Chief Constables of Police are not elected - do you think the new Met chief would have had a chance at an election? - So if you want people to be elected, you need a written Constitution and all that goes with it.

    "the idea that living, breathing human beings can be traded across nations in the same way as inanimate objects.." this idea is still a reality in places like Saudi, Yemen...; but I don't recognise it in the EU, apart from the vile trafficking trade.

    "We all know that trading people had died out with slavery 200 years ago.."; no it hasn't, see above; nor had it died out 200 years ago; I have a colleague whose grandfather was a bonded servant in Ireland, whose master sold the bond to a farmer in Carrickfergus; as this was 200 miles north east of his home and he and his family had to make their own way there on pain of outlawry, they decided to run for it and landed in Stranraer on the 16th June 1886; that sounds like about 123 years ago to me, and this was no African; this man was Irish.

    Labour never was New Labour and vice versa; post 1997 we must recognise this era as New Labour, ie in no way shape or form the Labour Party.

    "Any political party that supports mass immigration ... is an enemy of the working class." Who are the party that supports mass immigration - do you mean by their actions rather than by their words? Do you realise the EU allows free movement of labour? We are in the EU, so you have to vote UKIP or BNP and become an isolationist, inward looking, backward country, like Britain was before the Romans, attending the Witan, speaking Anglo Saxon; the Americans have taken over English, after all; it could start with, "We demand as a first step, road signs in both English and Anglo Saxon!"; you do know, though, that the Angles and the Saxons were Germanic immigrants.

    Whatever you do, please don't spoil your ballot paper. Think a bit and vote.

    Newsnight could invite Clare Short on to explain her campaign for a hung Parliament ; it would be fine if we could vote directly for that one.

  • Comment number 34.

    POLITICS

    Barrie (#30) To spoil is a physical act (e.g. food). However, I suggest something more positive is called for to repair our mess which passes for politics, as most of it is so 'hands off' that they may as well not be there (but for what they get out of being 'hands off' to some who do well by that).

    Incidentally, the talk of transparency that we've heard over the last decade or so is straight out out of the Quinean anti intensional opacity bag (i.e 'Pursuit of Truth' aka science). The other term, in vogue, but much abused, is 'evidence based (or driven) practice'.

    This took root, I submit, in our Home Office, in the late 80s. It's a great pity that some there (and others down the road in SW1P (the DFE), made such a pig's ear of it. Now Obama is preaching it too, is that all though?

    Some of our dissenters here really haven't got a clue.

  • Comment number 35.

    WHATEVER HAPPENED TO SHAME AND EMBARRASSMENT? (#33)

    By the time we dissolved our little business, took the money and ran; commerce was without any concept of shame. For sport, I would ask some supplier who had let me down totally: "How do you feel about that?" and they would reply: "How do you mean exactly?". I don't think any shame is left anywhere.

    This means that the perfectly reasonable addition of 'NONE OF THE ABOVE' (or similar) to the ballot paper, can never be prized out of the Machiavellian grip of Westminster.
    They know, only too well, the resounding vote of no confidence - in the current political stitch-up - that would be cast. That's British democracy.

  • Comment number 36.

    #23 , JadedJean

    The vast majority of scientists know that genetic variation is greater within a race and than between races.

    There is therefore no scientific basis for your race "realism".

    Yet you persist in trying to put forward your hideous and irrational ideas. In your world your understanding surpasses Nobel level
    scientists.

    Any rational reader of this blog will have noted that you think people "who paint Hitler as darkly as possible" are "anarchists and Trotskyites" who are motivated by "party political reasons".

    I would have thought you and other logins/posters seek to discourage posters who do not share your vile views so you can "politically educate" the masses.

    You don't believe in democracy - but I do so its quite logical to put forward a view point - even if it were unpopular, and I think its not. "Demos" n'all.

    Most people would not deign to talk to you. I don't want to but do want to make sure that readers get the big picture about your "profound" views.

    You don't believe in democracy. You are not a Nazi or the BNP.

    Therefore it would seem quite illogical for you to post.



  • Comment number 37.

    Go1 #36

    In terms of persisting in putting forward irrational ideas and illogical posts it's you that takes the biscuit.

    In this liberalised democracy you 'believe' in so devoutly there must be free speech - unless you disagree in which case the perpetrator should be imprisoned.

    I'm sure other readers see very clearly your own particular 'big picture'.

  • Comment number 38.

    BEYOND COMPREHENSION

    thegangofone (#36) "The vast majority of scientists know that genetic variation is greater within a race and than between races."

    Let me tell you something about science and scientists: in many ways, outside their own areas of expertise, they generally don't know what they are talking about any more than lay-people - the vast majority of scientists do not work in these fields, but those who do, say the things that I have been saying. That is why I gave you the relevant links like this and .

    Now, it's obviously up to you, you can take what you think to be the word of large numbers of scientists who don't know any better than you because they don't work in the area or study the professional literature, or you can take the word of the experts who do work in these fields of research. You have no idea what my competence is in this field, so be careful what you assume, as it may be wrong.

    Some advice:- you need to learn a lot about logical fallacies (especially the ad hominem in all its forms, as populism is basically one of them) as your postings on these matters is irrational. Your repeating what is not true over and over again will not refute what the research actually shows, it will just show that you don't (or can't) read the research (perhaps like so many of those other scientists you seem to appeal to?).

    Tragically, knowing, learning, and thinking, like believing is an intensional idiom of propositional attitude. This is perhaps in the end, why education is best seen as the selection of behaviours, as only those receptive to correction can benefit from higher education, and most people do not look for criticism.

  • Comment number 39.

    #33 kashibeyaz
    ""the idea that living, breathing human beings can be traded across nations in the same way as inanimate objects.." this idea is still a reality in places like Saudi, Yemen...; but I don't recognise it in the EU, apart from the vile trafficking trade."

    Peter Mandelson's "get on your Easyjet" remark last week shows that he sees the people of the EU as things to be moved around to wherever he finds convenient. He thinks you can just trade a few Italians here for a few Brits there, like how a farmer would trade cattle. He believes in trading people, but of course as a master of spin, he politely calls it "free of movement of labour".

    ""Any political party that supports mass immigration ... is an enemy of the working class." Who are the party that supports mass immigration - do you mean by their actions rather than by their words?"

    The actions of Labour show that they support mass immigration and the trading of people, otherwise we wouldn't have been experiencing such high levels of immigration in recent years. For example, they could have imposed restrictions on the 2004 EU entrants like what most other countries did, but they chose not to. The responses of Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson last week show that they are very committed to it.

    "Do you realise the EU allows free movement of labour? We are in the EU, so you have to vote UKIP or BNP"
    Yes, I realise the EU is very keen on people trading/"free movement". So if that means I should vote UKIP or BNP, then that is what I will do. So don't worry, I won't be spoiling my ballot paper come election time.

    Strange to see that some people here say they don't want to vote - nothing will ever change if you refuse to vote for change and spoiling ballot papers just helps to maintain the status quo.

  • Comment number 40.

    CaringHumanist #39

    I sympathise with your views and I also revile Mandleson et al. However, you urge that I should use my ballot paper to vote rather than spoil it. Problem is, there is no one to vote for. I understand that spoilt papers have to be counted and registered so have always believed that the more this happens the more the politicos become aware of the level of dissatisfaction. I spent some years 'strategic voting', in other words voting against. But that ain't right either. So, if there is no-one to vote for what do you suggest I do? UKIP is in disarray and BNP (if they were to field a candidate in this area) is a negative organisation. All I can do to register my protest is spoil the paper.

  • Comment number 41.

    #39 CaringHumanist

    Yes I'm afraid to say I won't be voting, for the first time ever. I've always voted religiously, as the suffragets fought for my right to do so. But I'm totally disillusioned with all the political parties here now. If an independent stood I might vote for them, but it depends what their policies would be. I read someones comment here that it doesn't make much difference anyway in most constituencies, as only a few voters in hung constiuencies, make the difference as to who holds power. I'm so sick to death of soundbite politics, I could almost right the script myself. The interviewers always ask the same obvious questions, why don't they go off on a tangent, so that the party line can't be followed?

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