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Just saw a report on the news channel France 24 about concerns that they are using social media to influence the presidential election in France in the same way the US saw in 2016. The same concerns that outfits like Meta claim to be monitoring, but researchers and political journalists have noted the escalation and lack of any significant action to stop it. I wouldnât be surprised if this has gone global.
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Not so much their interference (is it even deniable now?), but the fact that they were promoting the division of the UK* at that time, aka: Am I the useful idiot supporter of Scottish Independence?
*That was the impression I got when I read a thread which had a brief history of Russian election interference
I think the reason the russian government (or any authoritarian government) hire tr0lls is to create political dischord to support their narrative that democracies are inherently broken. So yeah, totally thatâs plausible.
Itâs almost like itâs not just Russia that thinks that democracy doesnât serve the ruling class well enough⌠
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Liberal=Conservative. The Tories most famous leader Churchill used to line out for the Liberals, the Liberals most famous leader Gladstone used to line out for the Tories.
Same shit, different tone. Itâs surprising that people still fall for it and are surprised at the scale of the awfulness of someone like Nick Clegg. Donât vote Lib Dem. Itâs a wasted vote. Itâs Tories pretending to be nice. The whole point of being a Tory is to be a complete and total fucking arsehole, a genuine evil thieving bastard, and get away with it. Lib Dem is for those who canât actually lean in to what they are and what they are doing.
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Nicely put, I must remember this.
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And you gotta watch 'em constantly because otherwise they just carry on their evil, lying thievery.
ETA: Just to add another example of a lying, gas lighting scumbagâŚ
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You canât judge the whole party by Nick Clegg, who I agree is awful. The Liberals created the British welfare state, and the âDemâ part of the Lib Dems was founded by people who would be center-left Democrats in the US. During the elections they were the only party that was consistent in their stand opposing Brexit, and during the Iraq War they were the only party that opposed the invasion. Clegg fucked the party with his alliance with the Tories 10 years ago, but theyâve been working hard to shed that disgrace, and I donât think that characterizes the party as a whole.
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The Tories say the same thing about us with respect to Labour. Itâs almost like they want to police the more reasonable edges of their parties by pretending thereâs not an alternative.
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that is incorrect, the modern welfare state was created by the labour party which was swept into power in a landslide in 1945 with clement atlee as prime minister. the national health service and the response to the national housing shortage of the post-war era were the remit of aneurin bevan who managed both areas remarkably well given the post-war budgetary constraints. none of this was done by the liberal party which was moribund at the time.
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I would date it to the Liberal welfare reforms that the Government put into effect after the 1906 election. This included free school meals, probation instead of prison for young offenders, pensions for people over 70, the creation of labour exchanges, national health insurance, not to mention Lloyd Georgeâs âpeopleâs Budgetâ.
But yeah, postwar Labour did extend many of these reforms and mold them into todayâs welfare state.
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In Germany these sorts of reforms were initiated by Bismarck in order to stave off the socialist threat. Implementing them doesnât have to be a sign that someone is on the left.
I am always astonished that the LibDems are considered centre left in the UK. The whole point of a liberal party is free market capitalism (with a bit of social liberalism sprinkled in). In most of Europe liberal parties are considered centre right and the natural allies of the right wing parties.
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Thereâs a hint of âno true Scotsmanâ in that argument. Whatever the history of the analogous laws in Germany, the post-1906 reforms in Britain were fought tooth and nail by the Conservatives. The big criticism of the day was not that the advocates were trying to avoid more significant reforms, but rather that they were trying to impose âgood for youâ policies on people who didnât really want them.
Lloyd Georgeâs moving Limehouse Speech was either expressing a genuine moral stand in support of the needs of common people, and genuine outrage at inequity and wealthy parasites, or it must have been one of the great scams of the century. The former makes more sense to me. However, I wasnât there, and there is no video; maybe he was winking the whole time, with his fingers crossed behind his back.
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Say âliberalâ to most people in the UK and theyâre going to think of social liberalism and a vague, soft kind of leftism first - despite the (rather unfortunate, IMO) prominence of Orange Book types in the LDs.
In a ranked voting system I could still bring myself to put the Lib Dems on my list. Things would have to change more than I could possibly imagine for me to ever be able to say that about the Tories.
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Hopefully the aberrant Liberal Reform group will eventually fade back into the ooze from which they emerged. The popular view you describe should help the Cleggs and Randersons look out of step with mainstream LD Party values.
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I got pretty hornswoggled by Cleggâs rhetoric back before the 2010 election. I donât think his ilk could pull it off a second time for a long while.
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In what he described as an âact of self-harmâ, LGBT+ special envoy Nick Herbert criticised the âcrocodile tearsâ shed by LGBT+ groups amid the âdebateâ over trans rights.
Herbert said that âdecentâ lawmakers have expressed âgenuine concerns that gender ideology may have gone too farâ, so time is needed to ensure a trans conversion therapy ban is âsafe and justifiableâ.
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