Politics Thread!

[Orava]

Allow me to join you.


Pies. We love pies in New Zealand. Every petrol station and corner shop sells them and they are now over NZ$7 each.

Let the food riots begin. It's time.

Here in the West Country we are big on pies every pub has their own

[Mat]

"BIG ON PIES, BIG ON THE CAUSES OF PIES!"

[Orava]

The
Great conspiracy theory, I have worked for a big phrddra
closed role in the government nothing dodgy there no lizards in charge

[Orava]

The
Great conspiracy theory, I have worked for a big medical company and a
closed role in the government nothing dodgy there no lizards in charge

[zip accident]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3vxddzr2z5o

In his first interview since leaving the country, Manuel Guerrero Aviña, who says he was targeted because he is gay, warned LGBT people to “be careful when visiting Qatar”, saying: “What happened to me could happen to anyone.”

...

BBC News has seen a confession, written in Arabic, which Manuel says he was forced to thumbprint without the presence of a lawyer or the aid of a translator.

We cannot independently verify all of his claims.

I dunno.

[PFVA]

And on the chapter of inflation another report published.

Since the Ukraine war started the products that went up the most in price are:

olive oil
and
fish.

Olive oil?
Fish?
How on earth a war in Ukraine can affect the prices of those above anything else ?!?!

[snaff]

And on the chapter of inflation another report published.

Since the Ukraine war started the products that went up the most in price are:

olive oil
and
fish.

Olive oil?
Fish?
How on earth a war in Ukraine can affect the prices of those above anything else ?!?!

[snaff]

The city of Springfield, Ohio - population 60,000, has been overwhelmed by roughly 20,000 Haitian illegal migrants, who flocked to the city - exacerbating a 'significant housing crisis' according to city officials, and eating pets and wildlife according to locals.



During an Aug. 27 City Commission meeting, one local resident said that Haitians were "in the park grabbing ducks, cutting the heads off, and eating them."

Another local resident posted to a Facebook group that their neighbor had a cat go missing - only to see it "hanging from a branch, like you'd do a deer for butchering, & they [the Haitians] were carving it up to eat."

"Can't Take It Anymore": Residents Of Springfield Ohio Beg For Help After 20,000 Haitians Overwhelm City, Eat Local Wildlife

[PFVA]

I'm sorry, somehow I have a tendency not to believe this kind of news.

I hear some strange ones from the same type around here.
Recently I was told by a neighbour that they are having to disinfect, meaning to wash with bleach the streets of Lisbon, the party areas because the immigrants and refugee urinate in the streets.
There is in fact people urinating on them but I think it's related to the 'party city' all those nationals and tourists, and probably immigrants too, drinking loads of beer, and not enough public restrooms.
And I actually think they should have started washing them a long time ago, it's done all over the world specially in party areas.

[Little stoned kiwi]

Snaf is Tim Pool and I claim my £5.

[Dio]

Don't worry. snaff doesn't believe it either.

[KlaxonCow]

If the Haitians are foraging for the local wildlife to eat, then that just tells you that - as usual in America - the poor people are being abandoned, overlooked and disregarded by the authorities, who are not looking after them.

Difference is, Haitians are used to looking after themselves - unlike molly-coddled "Anglo-Saxon" Westerners - so they don't go begging on the streets, they go foraging for ducks in the park and butcher and cook them for dinner.

I'm sure, though, that they would happily take work to earn their own money to just buy food at the supermarket, like their hosts do.

Cultural understanding, folks. The "learned helplessness" of molly-coddled Westerners to just become homeless alcoholic bums, living under the overpass, is not a view of "civilisation" shared by most of the world.

The Haitians don't sit around waiting for hand outs - which, amusingly, you'd think would please right wingers like Snaff - but they'll go hunt and forage for their own food, if the host nation isn't accommodating enough to offer them the opportunity to do it, by what we term "civilised" means.

Yes, they're culturally different. But, actually, in an arguably good way - they don't have that "learned helpness" bred into them to wait for the government to bail them out. If they're hungry, then they don't sit around allowing themselves to starve.

Consider that we Westerners might have it wrong, in fact. You shouldn't just gladly "accept your fate" when the system and environment drops you on the shit pile.

If the government is not going to provide assistance - local businesses not provide paying work to be able to use the supermarkets - then, fair enough, "we, the people" will do it ourselves. We're not going to sit around suffering fools gladly, but will solve the problem ourselves, by whatever means is available to us.

Eliminating poverty would eliminate 90+% of all crime. If the locals were prosperous, then they wouldn't mind the immigrants - the xenophobic rhetoric only starts winning when the economy takes a nose dive and that's always been true in human history. If the immigrants could get jobs, earn wages and pay taxes, then they're not a burden on the system - they're actually helping to keep it ticking over.

(I've always found it ridiculous that, in the UK, asylum seekers are not legally allowed to work. They must live on benefits by law.

I think this is entirely wrong - there does need to be regulation that employers MUST be told that they're an asylum seeker (so that the employer realises that, if the claim is rejected, then they'll be deported and they could lose a worker - but we all know there's plenty of employers who'll happily take that deal), but then they're legally allowed to find work and earn a wage. And pay taxes, whilst NOT being on benefits.

Or, well, in the modern UK, not be on any more benefits than any other working families are - which is a disgrace that jobs are so low-paid that families, with both parents working decent jobs, still find themselves needing a taxpayer top-up for housing benefits as well.

To my mind, this not only stops them being any burden on the taxpayer - as they actually become a taxpayer themselves and can live off their own wages - but it's also, surely, the perfect evidence for their asylum claim that proves that they will be a contribution, not burden, on their new adopted society, as they're already out there doing it. Proving it by example.)

The "housing crisis" is a red herring. We all know that that's actually caused by developers sitting on land, as it's in their interests to build new houses really, really, really fucking slowly, as it keeps house prices high for more profits. It's caused by landlords raising rents - and I know, from an ex-local-shopkeeper in my area, that what killed off his high street business was not lack of footfall - he was doing okay for customers coming into the shop, right up until he had to close - but that his corporate landlords (because big corporate landlords have bought up all the properties along all the high streets of the UK) were just arbitrarily raising rents all the time.

I've got it directly from the horse's mouth of a local shopkeeper. What killed his business was not "online" and home deliveries - indeed, most shops did already have "click and collect" or home delivery via UPS or DPD, even before the pandemic made it nigh-on universal for all businesses to do so - or a lack of footfall coming into the store. It was corporate rents continually going upwards - regardless of the economic situation - that "rented" his thriving shop out of business.

(And I also know another local shopkeeper who's survived through all the recent crises, and it's because his shop is not on the high street. It's a converted house on a street adjoining the high street. And he owns it outright. No rent. His business and others on that street of converted terraced houses, near the high street but not on it to have been snapped up as rental properties by big corporate landlords operating out of London, gobbling up every high street property, survive because they took rent out of the equation.)

Housing developers are sitting on land - quite deliberately - to make nice large profits from a purposefully-induced bit of "disaster capitalism". Do a "go slow" on building new houses, and the prices of the current housing stock goes through the roof, so the few "new builds" you are actually building and selling are worth so much more.

We live in a neo-feudal system of landlords with extortionate "existence taxes" levied on us all.

"Public services" is a red herring. They'd all collapse without the contributions of immigrants to keep them alive.

"Stealing all the jobs" is a red herring. Because we all know that the true job stealers - for several decades - has been automation, computers and now AI. Indeed, governments would love to remind us that the employment figures are as rosy as they've ever been - record employment - so, you know, complaining about "job stealing" when there are, in fact, no jobs being stolen makes no actual sense.

And if the immigrants are "stealing jobs", then it's because there are whole industries of jobs that local people won't do. Insultingly poor "gig work" picking fruit or driving taxis or serving in McDonald's or whatever, that local people - still possessing a thing called "dignity" - won't lower themselves to do. But, actually, I don't blame them. Because this is insultingly bad nigh-on "slave labour" work and the immigrants also wouldn't touch it with a barge pole, if their circumstances actually allowed these beggars to be choosers.

Zero hours contract bollocks. The "employment rights free zone" of the gig economy.

It's all "corporate welfare" for the billionaires, as the government has sided with the builders providing political party donations to not force house building. When our forced "work from home" experiment proved that, actually, it makes not a dent in productivity (actually improves it in various industries, with a better work / life balance), the Tory government sided with landlords, fearing that their city-centre "money for nothing" extortionate rent schemes would collapse.

And the outright "corporate welfare" that working families are still having to claim benefits - even visit the local food bank when Putin's misadventures sent energy prices soaring - to top-up across-the-board low wages. The taxpayer bailing them out from being required to give a shit about their own employees' welfare, through reasonable wages.

It's all bollocks.

Indeed, I watched a BBC documentary and it directly showed the real problem - crops dying in South American countries, due to climate change. So the men of the village were, yes, venturing up to the United States to seek work, as their local subsistence farming (their means to survive) has been devastated by the effects of climate change. Some crops are more vulnerable to climate conditions than others, and even modest warming is fucking up their yields.

Something similar is also true of Africa, and African immigrants trying to cross the Med into Europe.

The thing to understand is that talk of how the planet will re-arrange itself drastically, thanks to climate change causing "climate refugees", is already happening. it's not a future thing. What's driving most of it is climate crop failures at home.

Climate change itself being yet another example of corrupt "corporate welfare" as we know we need to bury the fossil fuel industry and replace it with renewables - and where that's happened, everything is going great guns and is saving people money, increasing prosperity - but it's been waved away by successive governments, taking the bribes of the fossil fuel lobbies. Before becoming the most disastrous modern Prime Minister, Liz Truss worked for Shell. They're hand in glove, which is why nothing useful happened for decades, contrary to all the evidence.

If immigrants bother you, Snaff, then let's agree to restore the International Aid budget. Let's help them stay at home because their countries are locally prosperous, so the Western world isn't a lure to them. If you can be rich at home or rich abroad, nearly everyone selects "rich at home" first and foremost. Emigrating is not actually a fun adventure. They say that moving home is the most stressful thing a human being ever does in their lives. No-one's doing this shit lightly.

The system is cornering all of us into this these broken patterns, which are themselves breaking down. The rich continue to push "business as usual" in a world that can no longer support it, and that's really why so much of our modern world is unravelling.

I call "bullshit". The brown man has never been my enemy. It's the rich old white men, with their corrupt little system, gorging themselves on our suffering.

So, please, have the common sense to stop voting for the right-wing populists. They're lying bastards, who're playing you for a useful idiot. They're the cause of this corrupt system that's falling apart - which they still want to hold onto, even as it dives into planetary economic disaster, because they want to keep their "rich get richer" schemes going.

Stop voting for billionaires - Trump - or multi-millionaires - Farage - who tell you it's poor brown people, when the reason we're all fucked over is the rich old white men maintaining their "rich get richer" self-interested schemes, at the expense of the rest of the planet.

[p-saurus]

It's not true but it's red meat for low IQ racists like Snaff.

[venusian]

It's "eating the wildlife" when the poor do it. When it's the rich, it's "wild caught game".

[Orava]

It's "eating the wildlife" when the poor do it. When it's the rich, it's "wild caught game".

It is like English anglers where shocked when their Polish counterparts did not put the fish back but took it home to eat. I am for eating the fish, what's the point otherwise.