Posts by oldkeith

Hi MJ, nice to have you aboard

There's a few more pics of lovely Dovedale here, mostly pics of the countryside around the campsite. You can look at the pics there, or download them by clicking the three dots in a row on your r/h/s, which drops menu, just click download.

(I'd forgotten I still had them on there, but the old link in the 2016 thread, top of page 10, is broken).

You're welcome here, mate!

We got all sorts here, but they all seem to get along pretty well, most of the time.

An interesting lot.

Take time to read some of the back threads, and get a flavour of the place.

You'll like it!

A lot of truth there about mass indoctrination. I did psychology once, and part of that course was on indoctrination - brain-washing it used to be called in common parlance - and it was pretty interesting. Used by everybody from cults to the advertising industry and politicians to the military, in some form or other. And still is, of course. It follows much the same pattern as a sales formula.

Make the sucker feel bad or deprived or out of it in some way.

Offer your product as the solution.

Get the sucker hooked on your product, to the exclusion of all others.

Religion, of course, works exactly the same way.....

Quote from losingbaggage

Travel the so called third world and you will find swathes of people who don't give a shit about those outside their sometimes very small circle and some who truly want the demise of many others. Whilst poor or non existent education and plain old stupidity plays a part in this it would be wrong to rule out natural genetic protectionism an important and I think practical behaviour.

You don't need to travel the Third World to meet people like that, mate! There are plenty of them on our estate alone, and from what I can gather, a fair proportion of the modern British public in general.

From a logical point of view, what you are explaining in your post is perfectly valid. The very question "Do any lives matter?" is so generalised that it means nothing without some kind of a qualifier.

And what is meant by 'Matter?' It usually means something under consideration, or something being dealt with. Here apparently it is being used to denote personal concern.

Any lives only really matter to a few people who are in some way involved with any of those lives.

For example, there is a bad air crash out East, and 200 people are killed, all Indonesian and Chinese. Do any of us give a damn? Those people's lives mattered to their relatives and friends as much as ours would, but that is all, that is as far as it goes.

If they had all been a bit closer to 'our' tribe, say Australians or Canadians, we might have given them a feeling of passing sympathy, but that is about all.

If they had been Brits we might have stopped and figured whether we had any friends or relatives abroad out that way at that time, but discovering we didn't, well, they get our sympathy, but that's about all.

Why? Because they do not matter to us, personally. We can all (I hope) know injustice when we see it, and respond accordingly, but to coin a generalised statement which logically means nothing is just a crowd-pulling slogan.

Cats' lives matter too, but only to those who know them.

We didn't leave nowt on the plate as kids in the 50's. If you didn't like greens or such, that was tough. Because you got them first at the next meal, served up on an empty plate. If you didn't eat them you got beggar all else that day.

So nowt was left on your plate, unless you were badly ill. At school dinners, if you left anything on your plate and went to plate hatch, you were turned back by the teacher on duty, and told to eat it before you came for seconds or 'afters'.

We still clean up plates these days, but at least now we can decide what's on it.

But all ideologies are products of their time, and communism and socialism are no exception. They were originally brought into being at a time when the state of the poor of the world was seen to be very unjust by some intellectuals. At that time there was no thought given as to how we might be destroying the biosphere, and little other than human life even came under consideration.

All ideologies should be subject to positive change and modification, otherwise they become as stunted as those religions which stay dogmatically with ideas which were written down thousands of years ago, many of which ideas are no longer relevant.

Quote from likahamadoolihan

The picture of the murderous dictators and the flag of the murderous ideology is on the speakers platform and there is the former shadow chancellor, John McDonnell sat right there on that very same platform waiting to make his speech.

Are you forgetting that those flags are the flags of the brave people who thrashed the Third Reich?

It was the Russians who broke the back of the Nazi German Army, and chased them almost all the way back to Germany before we had even landed in Normandy. Europe owes the Russian people a debt in lives lost that can never be repaid. When you see the hammer and sickle, you see the flag of a brave people, Comrade, not the flag of their dictatorial leaders.

That's the International Marxists or some such. They always like to be in on the May Day scene, but don't do much good, except to scare off any Labour right-wingers who may have strayed on the scene and didn't want to get photographed with the Marxists in the background. All good fun!

We were always too grown-up to throw out people who marched under Communist flags, even though some Labour people used to squirm at the sight of them.

I quite like the hammer and sickle myself; it shows industry.

I quite like John McDonnell myself, too. He'd have made a better PM than Corbyn, a bit more statesmanlike.

Yes, we were always very liberal in who we let in on Trades Union rallies!

Quite apart from the workers, who marched under the various Trades banners, who always formed the bulk of the marches and gatherings, there was everything from International Marxists, through London Trotskies and deputations from the LSE, to the Tolpuddle Rememberance Society, to little groups of twittering awe-struck neo-liberals who almost shat themselves at all the big red flags.

(A few 'big lads' selected for their size would act as march stewards on the outside of the march, ostensibly to guide and help folk, but also to grab and bring down any manic violent lefties or right-wing agents provocateurs who would occasionally try to run out of the march and brick a window. These were usually taken down an alley and given a politically incorrect thrashing, and you wouldn't see them again).

Yes, if that was true it shows a mature and responsible attitude from both of them.

As a lad I worked with a chap who followed the speeches of Enoch Powell, and felt, even then, that he (Powell) was misunderstood. He said that Powell was only pointing out the possible dangers involved in mass immigration of any kind, which would eventually result in ghettos and no-go areas, presumably based upon the American model.

Powell was branded a racist because the majority of people coming into this country at the time were black, but if they had been from whatever country I have little doubt that Powell would have still made a case against them.

As a lad I wasn't that interested, as these people weren't taking my job, so like most I wasn't particularly bothered. Most folk aren't bothered about anything until the cold hand of reality touches their own shoulder, whatever the social problem.

Very likely. They probably didn't have long conversations about it, though...

Simple people like to have simple symbols to follow. It's like being in a religion. You don't need to think about it, just get out there and wave your flag and rage against the machine.

Having some kind of historical political philosophy confers a sense of respectability, so far as dictators are concerned. There are not a few states in Africa and elsewhere who like to present themselves to the world as democracies. It all depends upon which big powerful states you want to cosy up to, I guess.

You may like to know that most all of the old left guys I know voted Brexit too, including me. The far Left was against going into the EU way back in the 1970's, and voted against it then, including me. We saw it as joining a rich man's club, run by ex-Nazis, who would end up telling us what to do.

And isn't that what happened?

Who benefitted most from the EU? Germany, the country that had plunged Europe into war twice in less than a half-century. Who did best out of the EU? German Bankers and Industrialists, as you might expect.

All those deaths were caused by something called dictatorships, which has often gone under the name of some form of socialism, to give it a sheen of respectability. The pretence is kept up until it looks absurd, like the state capitalism in China today, or the nepotistic oligarchy in state capitalist Russia, which likes to call itself a democracy now it has shed the socialist cloak.

States, like anything else, are judged by what they do, rather than by what politics they pretend to follow. Ours, for example, is called a democracy. But don't expose state lies, or you may get taken for a walk in the woods...

A lot of elementary truth there, MM. It isn't just tribes or races or colours or creeds, either.

If we've ever gone into a new scene where we don't actually know anybody, we kind of look around, sizing people up, seeing who we feel we can maybe get along with. Whether it's a crowded gathering, or meeting a new class, or joining a new club, we all subconsciously seek out those we feel drawn to in some way. So this is some very natural thing.

The tribal thing is very strong, of course, and probably evolved through possession of territory. In Africa, for example, there was constant warring for land and resources, long before white folks got there. Same in ancient China and Japan, if you look at history. Colour is just a way of easy recognition of enemies and friends. And if the Treens have treated you and your people badly, all green-skinned people are enemies until proven different...

Quote from likahamadoolihan

Thought that pensioners were a demographic that the leftwaffa say vote Tory.

Not at all. Most of the guys I know on the left, including me, are older guys, and either vote Labour or Green. (The Greens are far more socialist than Labour, by the way. They just don't emphasise it).

By the way, some might consider your views, and some of those of RT, ageist... Just sayin'

The problem with statues is that they represent people who were often figures of their time, and to whom things we might not tolerate today were quite normal and acceptable.

To some degree or other, we are all creatures of our time. Therefore it is quite possible that at some future date people of that time will be disgusted and horrified at things we take part in, directly or indirectly, in our time, in the here and now.

Factory farming, pollution, and the widespread destruction of the planet are only a few examples of what they might blame us for. In another more specific example we might have future statues of Boris Johnson and his henchman Dominic Cummings (fused together in stone) defaced or even torn down for their major part in the now-revealed or strongly suspected deliberate decimation of 25,000 pensioners in care homes, who knows?

Almost anyone who has a statue to them may have done or said something that would not be socially-acceptable today, in probably every country in the world, if you look at their history and their writings hard enough. Even abstract statues might offend those people who do not agree with the known views of their sculptor, however long ago that was. The PC element gone insane.

Statues are there to remind us of the past, but little enough of that past was glorious, anywhere. So perhaps all statues should be kept in museums, to show visitors that they represent only the past.

I see even Boris has changed colour now, and is just trying to blend in

Magpies look pretty splendid around the place, but they are said to have some bad habits...

We have a pair hanging around locally, and they take possession of the neighbour's birdtable on his balcony at times. They are smart; they take a look first to see if anything is on there before they go anywhere near.

My missus went to see her mother, 91, whom she hadn't seen in a couple months, to take her some plants and do a few little jobs.

I was taken along because there was something wrong with the old dear's laptop, which I was able to fix. It was nice to see her again, and while we were there the missus' brother turned up, so the old dear got us a family dinner! We sat around the table as of old. Safe social distancing was sort of practised, but down to about a metre at best. We washed hands before dinner, but then we always have done.

So I guess we were kind of doing the bubble thing in advance. And I guess a great many other people have been doing this sort of thing, in small family groups, for some considerable time. They certainly are around our way, these last few weeks. Family garden parties or barbies, and they don't all live there at the houses where it's going on.

Quote from Prepper

What i cannot get my head around is why the fkk is the government saying you can now have bubbles form groups and grankids hug grandparents.

If after covid rips again after people have been in large groups surely they will bring covid "back home" to the parents grandparents and family, esp now they are told they can bubble group up etc.

I think utter madness why didnt the government wait two weeks before altering family groups, i do think shops may have safely opened but families not good policy at all

You must understand that the government stands to save a very considerable amount of money by ensuring the greatest number of pensioners are wiped out. Around £78,000 per pensioner over ten years, on average state pension alone, to say nothing of probable care costs. So with what they have already managed in the care homes, either deliberately or through incompetence, another 20,000+ pensioners out of the way would be very financially desirable....

I just get "582 Bad Gateway" on those two links, Dave?

Many a true word spoken in jest... The BBC is the propaganda unit of the government in power, and probably the only one in the world that is paid for by a separate licence fee levied on most of the population.

Less people are watching the Beeb, so look out for the Beeb trying to expand their licence demands to include any Internet devices at some point in the future.....

Well, if it is factually true, we wouldn't be hearing much about it at the present time, would we?

The media wouldn't want to spoil their current big story, fanning the flames world-wide, would they?

It may all come out during the trial of the officers responsible, of course. And if the jury thinks it was a violent criminal that the police killed, well, maybe that was just a bad accident...

We'll see.

Hi Mally,

Welcome aboard the site. Take a look around. Plenty on here for lots of different interests.

Yeah. Seen the same thing myself, years back, in demos. Last one in the 90's I think - Stop the City, in London.

The cops get excited, they just grab whoever is nearest, easiest, maybe has a bright T-shirt on, or some other feature that catches their eye. Little 'snatch squads' of three or four who dive into the protesters after a single person. A mate got snatched - he had an anarchy shirt on - and was later charged with possession of offensive missile, a small pot of paint they planted and 'found' in his jacket.

So anyone who thinks all cops are regular guys, just go on a demo, and you will probably see them change into something else....

Nice wish-list there!

But as likely as the coming of a messiah, or even Karellen from Childhood's End....

That's an interesting one, RT.

Think they'll eventually try it over here, with most local authorities squeezed out of funds by the governments of the last twenty years?

Republicans? Democrats? All actors in the same play?

As this is the conspiracy thread, take a look at this.....

Quote from Prepper

I predict a massive spike in coronavirus cases and deaths esp in BAME comunities in about roughly two weeks.

I think something similar happened a few years back, when there was a big flu epidemic in the States. After attending big demos when advised not to. Two weeks later some 400,000 went down with the flu, some fatally.