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forum
The Reform Party and the UK’s lurch towards fascism
I posted an earlier version of this a while back - inspired to do update following THAT discussion about all things ULEZ.
The “manifesto”, in terms of transport, only mentions stopping HS2, but there’s plenty on the usual right-wing obsessions: Brexit, immigration, veterans and climate change. I had another look because I worry about the ongoing decline of the two main political parties.
If the Cons stay wedded to Brexit, then we will go into the next GE with all the widespread impoverishment Brexit has ushered in - not helped by Covid, Putin, etc. People generally vote according to their pockets. I don’t get Labour’s current position on Europe either, but let’s see how that evolves, and even the Cons may also evolve, or even pivot, but time is already running out for them.
Several roads now lead to the horrors of a further lurch to the right in this country. Let’s hope Labour get the GE landslide the polls are predicting - but we’re still at least a year out from the real campaigning beginning.
A cycling angle? With the Reform Party and its ilk, Facebook Steve and Nextdoor Dave attain real political influence. It’s not spelt out in the manifesto, but you can see where this is probably heading and what it is likely to mean for cycling. You can bet that this lot are very much "on the side of hard working drivers" etc.
As you all know, Dave’s going to “sort the traffic” and no doubt show them lazy planners how it’s done: Steve thinks the Council are corrupt, the police blinkered and is, if he can fit it in to his busy schedule he’s going to “teach them Lycra’s a thing or two.” It won’t concern him that his Mondeo is 3 months out of MoT or that Mrs Steve sometimes drives the kids in it uninsured.
As vulnerable road users, vulnerable people, we rely a great deal on the rule of law for protection. The rule of law means that we understand what the laws are, they are in general fair, and how they are applied and to whom is even-handed and consistent.
The fascist position is broadly the opposite - it’s all off-the-cuff to support today’s particular agenda - that’s why the Iain Duncan-Smith “happy to see ULEZ infra vandalised” comment is, as an example, so very worrying. In the Conservatives, here is a party happy to send signals to enable the mob to attack RNLI stations, beat up immigrants, shout at teachers, doctors etc.
This right-wing stuff works by allowing/enabling significant privileged groups to to think of themselves as the downtrodden underdog and here is a way to fight back. The pro Brexit campaign played on people’s ignorance, fears and prejudices exactly as this does.
It’s all about freedom, innit, less regulation, less tax burden, and damn the climate. There’s more polar bears now, so it’s fine. Let’s have open-cast coal mining, lithium mining and fracking. The section on climate change stumbles around like a Friday night drunk, trying to explain he wasn't being racist to the barman - a denier position emerges, unsurprisingly.
In places, the mask really slips: “We must keep divisive woke ideologies such as Critical Race Theory (CRT) and gender ideology out of the classroom.” - to be honest, I don’t even know what those two are.
The standard enemies are put up - the civil service, the BBC. Amid all the thrust and parry, there’s nothing about making a better, more inclusive and cohesive world to live in; arts, sports and culture don’t feature in this barstool view of the world: a dullard’s grim vision.
Don’t be a member of the wrong sort of minority would be my advice, should any of this come to pass.
If you're new please join in and if you have questions pop them below and the forum regulars will answer as best we can.
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Latest Comments
- kingleo 2 hours 9 min ago
The A103: the choice is, parked cars that are rarely used or cycle lanes.
- chrisonabike 2 hours 38 min ago
Not quite sure what the news is here?...
- Adnico 3 hours 13 min ago
1. Bicycles don't have speedometers....
- NOtotheEU 3 hours 45 min ago
in the UK the DVLA will ask the worst offenders to prove they are fit to get their licence back....
- Destroyer666 4 hours 1 min ago
I am pretty sure you don't apply the same unrelenting unforgiveness to yourself. But I don't know why it is so.
- Simon E 4 hours 19 min ago
If you start with just honesty there's half a chance that there is someone in the party who is honest....
- Bungle_52 4 hours 34 min ago
Ours has just supended the chief constable apparently. https://www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/news/gloucester-news/gloucestershi...
- David9694 4 hours 57 min ago
What should Gordon Mallet do? Writing a public confession would be a good start.
- Another_MAMIL 6 hours 11 min ago
Indeed. Britain's Alex Yee—who is fresh from medalling in the Paris Olympics—is the most successful male triathlete in Olympic history (two Gold...
- biking59boomer 6 hours 32 min ago
Old towns like Worcester need safe cycling routes. They are not designed for today's level of traffic. Many of them were built in pony and trap...
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Not sure the recent Trump shooting incident is quite the clincher it's being played as - like what new supporters does it bring? Sure, if you're already frothing this will play into your narrative.
Another grim prospect for the world and not least isolated Brexit Britain is Trump 2025 - 4 years of the US at best flakey and inconsistent on foreign policy (e.g. western Europe/ NATO, Ukraine/ Taiwan) and wracked by internal conflict.
The US government's job, so far as big business is concerned, is to provide them a suitable trading environment - what he appears to stand for doesn't sound conducive to that.
Ginger beer's lurch towards fascism
Somerset drinks firm under fire for Donald Trump Republican Convention links
They have said it is a misunderstanding and they do not endorse any political party
no, you just thought it was a good idea to send them some free product
https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/news/somerset-news/somerset-drinks-firm-u...
https://eu.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/07/17/rnc-hos...
Couple of newsthump
https://newsthump.com/2024/08/01/man-who-regularly-invokes-the-blitz-spi...
Local patriot and self-proclaimed defender of British culture, Simon Williams, 45, has reportedly been left emotionally shattered this week after an encounter with a new EU-mandated tethered bottle cap.
https://newsthump.com/2024/08/02/protesters-sitting-peacefully-in-the-ro...
A man who has spent all year insisting Just Stop Oil protestors should go to prison for sitting quietly in the road, has today insisted that it is ‘perfectly understandable’ so many protesters express their current frustration by hurling bricks at police and setting fire to things.
#FarageRiots
I guess all the things fomenting away for years under the Tories didn’t all just drop away on 5 July. It’s quite the inheritance for Labour now. That’s all the rhetoric against for example “the boats” and migrants in general that have seeped into a few people’s minds with the help of a few agitators - “you’d better do what we say, or things will only get worse”. I thought Newsthump covered it very well - “I’m so disillusioned with multi-culturalism I needed to steal some new trainers from Shoezone.”
White Van Man looks like a significant demographic when you look at the pictures. Although they initially act as a crowd, when you look, for the most part individuals don’t help each other, in fact it’s often more about capturing the action on your ‘phone.
I find myself bothered more by the individual acts of bullying of black and brown people than I do the larger confrontations with the police. White thugs been given permission to do this by certain political leaders. Bravo to the places big enough to mount a sizeable counter-protest.
The cost of living crisis, the cutting back of the public services that help ease the passage in all our lives in recent years is really starting to tell. We went into the election with all the privations (and increasingly vague memories of promises of better things) from Brexit, and they are with us still. That said, I tend away from ideas that actual poverty (as opposed to perceived) is a significant factor here.
Brexit didn’t solve anything, stopping the boats won’t do a lot, leaving the ECHR won’t solve anything: a cycle of worsening and more extreme ideas that don’t satisfy then follows, one after the other - see 1930s Germany. There's some nasty stuff on X that have all this charted. The position is "everything that's happened since the 1950s is universally bad - let's go back 70 years. Here's how."
A minor point - yeah, thanks for all the car-free pictures of ye olde Britain and the sly (and not so sly) references to it being a better world, etc.
If you’ve just tuned in and are wondering what any of this has to do with cycling, go back to the Reform plc’s “draft contract” and look up what it says about transport. Being a cyclist is the nearest (and my nationality and skin colour make this pretty distant) I get to being one of their target / out groups - worst case, they simply want you not to exist.
As I write, it feels like it’s gone pretty quiet from the political classes on most sides in recent days - perhaps they hope that the onset of cooler weather and the start of the football season will ease things. After all, it’s only a few hundred people - young guys who are by no means full-time criminals or all that interested in politics, but are the opportunists, bored with their lives, who perpetrate if they believe no-one is looking, the pal who will look the other way in support of another fella. As someone said on X/Twitter today, for every one of them there’s family who are glad that at least the little shit is out the house for a while.
Behind the scenes, the govt need to severely disrupt the means by which the agitating is given legs, which I hope is happening. More publicly, Labour seriously need to stay on top of this issue. I’m not in possession of all the facts by any means but if this nonsense continues, Starmer and Co will need in my view to act decisively, comprehensively and robustly - which may explain the current quiet.
New twist to the helmet debate.
" That’s because it’s not the far right, it concerned British people… "
When Olivia Pratt-Korbel was shot dead I personally drove all the way to Liverpool to smash in windows, rob shops and set light to a library to show my concern.
What a grim weekend!
Spent Saturday at the Stand Up to Racism counter protest in Nottingham, where both sides of the debate were allowed the opportunity to air their views under the bwatchful eye of Nottinghamshire Constabulary. Bar a couple of scuffles, nothing untoward happened. Certainly no riots, that's for sure.
Even with the relatively fresh memories of the murders of 3 people going about their business last summer, by a man the far-right were keen to class as a newly arrived immigrant, Nottingham did itself proud, as a multi-cultural society and generally ignored those trying to cause division and hatred.
That was the good stuff.
Sunday, been to Wath-upon-Dearne between Rotherham and Barnsley, ex-mining country in South Yorkshire where even I was targeted for physical abuse, even though I was in a wheelchair following a recent replacement knee operation. The level of violence being meted out by the far-right and the local, feral youth was extremely intimidating, meaning a hasty retreat was required before our likely lynching took place.
Their target, a hotel partially housing asylum seekers. I pity anybody caught up in their onslaught today. As ever, South Yorkshire Police did as little as possible, ensuring the yobs could let rip. SYP still haven't changed, whether it's the miners strike, Hillsborough or the grooming gangs in Rotherham a decade ago. Utterly incompetent.
Overall, it's good to see that the average man/woman in the street is apathetic to their cause, but I still think this has a long way to run and will be very interested to see the new governments response.
OT (just recent rioting) but I wonder given that misperceptions and complete fabrications are out and about in the Meejasphere whether pediatricians are looking over their shoulders again? (News: GPs and health practitioners advised to be vigilant).
On an assessment of just how irredemably thick some of these people are, and how they can be manipulated, here's a 2013 report of an EDL demonstration aganst a Mosque planned for Sheffield Lane End.
The plan for a mosque did not exist; it is now a Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Yet the twats all turned up and tried to create disorder. But that means they can be manipulated.
I think we will see some more of that, but that there will be heavy penalties for some, and some organisers. It turns into Riot aiui when more than 12 people are there.
https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/police-bill-for-edl-protest-over-no...
We are many and you are, umm, four
And as was/is the case with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the explanation given by the apologists is rather different from that given by the perpetrators.
A new Reform "contract" is out. I just thought it might be worth another visit as the Conservative Party seems to want to destroy itself. They're using pretty much the same Leader selection process that led them to Truss 2 years ago, then Sunak. Neither Labour nor the Conservative party seems particularly good at choosing the right leader.
Anyway, the bar room discourse continues:
Stop the War on Drivers
Legislate to ban ULEZ Clean Air Zones and Low Traffic Neighbourhoods. Scrapping Net Zero means no more bans on petrol and diesel cars and no legal requirements for manufacturers to sell electric cars.
We will keep the speed limit low where safety is critical. Otherwise, 20 MPH zones will be scrapped.
The above is in keeping with the Net Zero chapter, where at least there is no attempt to deny the science: we're straight in to extracting as much carbon as we possibly can.
Education. Can't see "ban critical race theory" any more and we seem to have adopted a position that says "well, other countries practised imperialism". Nothing about oh I dunno mundane stuff like investment in school buildings, securing the supply of teachers, SEN, improving support for pupils who are struggling with say having had breakfast.
A Patriotic Curriculum in Primary and Secondary Schools
Any teaching about a period or example of British or European imperialism or slavery must be paired with the teaching of a non-European occurrence of the same to ensure balance. History and social science curriculum to be reviewed and audited regularly to ensure balance. Our children must be taught about their heritage.
I wouldn't be so sure, I was discussing this with an American friend (well, an English friend who has lived in America nearly 30 years) and he thought that it would have a significant impact because of the respect Americans have for the office of President, regardless of the holder, something akin to the respect that (bewilderingly) the majority of Britons still have for the monarchy. An attack on a president/former president/presidential candidate is seen as an attack on the office itself and (in my friend's opinion) a lot of wavering voters could move Trumpwards not so much in support of him but in support of the office he has represented.
It doesn't even have to be done as satire, which is the scary thing.
As far as I can see, you have a bunch of self-described patriots who demonstrate their patriotism by looting shops, burning buildings and throwing bricks at policemen.
Although I had no part in the counter protest in Bristol last night (which easily outnumbered the EDL idiots), I was encouraged by their chant "We are many, you are few. We are bristol, who are you?"
The far right may be very vocal and they get a lot of media attention (Farage on the BBC all the time?), but there's far more of us that enjoy having a multi-cultural society and welcome refugees despite the narrative that the mainstream media is pushing.
Encouraging to see that while it was maybe fifty or a hundred scumbags who set fire to the foodbank/library/community hub in Walton, 1700 people have donated towards its repairs and restocking (here if any interested). I think the average person in the street isn't even apathetic but actively disgusted, just as ever one person starting a fire gets more attention than the hundred who rush to put it out.
Good for you for joining the protests even in the middle of your recuperation, hope it's going well.
Interesting...without wishing to demean the lady or underplay the seriousness of the situation, there's nothing journalists like more than dressing up to make it look as though they're in rather greater peril than they are. Many years ago a photographer friend was sent to cover Desert Storm, I remember him being much amused by the insistence of the BBC's Kate Adie on wearing her combat fatigues, flak jacket and carrying her helmet everywhere...when they were staying in an hotel in Dubai waiting to be allowed into Kuwait about 800kms away.
Is it still a 'counter-protest' if there are no protestors?
In any case, it seems to me that They achieved their intention of creating fear and panic just by anonymously circulating a list of alleged targets. There was no need to actually turn up to their own (alleged) 'protests'/riots.
Textbook terrorism - create an atmosphere of fear with the minimum actual skin in the game and consequent risk of arrest.
Besides, it was a weeknight and lot of them probably had to get to work in the morning, leave the rioting for a sunny weekend day instead…
I'm not sure what point you're making?
The GP quote was from somebody at the protest.
Absolutely!
I'm not sure that "the office he has represented" is quite how Trump and the Presidency work together.
"The office he besmirched"? "The office he sh*t all over"? "The office he corrupted and used for the good of himself and his friends'n'relations"? Maybe those descriptions work better…
Perfectly consistent. Imagine forins coming over and rioting - who knows what they'd do?
Also "keep benefit fraud / cash-in-hand jobs and undeclared taxable income for local people!"
...obviously "local" means er... from the UK. Oh, the alleged killer was born here ... er ... we'll have to get back to you with a "political" definition...
And on Twitter/ X. I hope you're right.
Apparently, Keir Starmer is carrying on with his August holiday, and maybe that's the right attitude to take - let the police deal with a few rioters - as we find out the meaning of "we're coming for Labour, make no mistake".
I read somewhere today - honestly can't remember on which site - that Malaysia is the first country to recommend that its nationals not visit the UK as safety cannot be guaranteed due to civil unrest.
EDIT: Now joined by Australia and Nigeria: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2024/aug/05/cobra-emergency-me...
World-beating once again! Or just world-beating-up?
In terms of speed limits, I was wondering where safety was "critical" - and where it was not.
Point of
pedantryorder: issuing a travel alert doesn't necessarily equate to telling you not to travel to the country. The advice just says to keep aware of what's going on and avoid areas where there's trouble."Come to (insert frisky UK town here) and enjoy a night out in one of the UK's famous A&E units".
Isn't "adventure tourism" a thing again with the influencers? The
localstravelling rent-a-mob certainly provide "lively local customs" which would look striking in your TikTok...I think it may because for the UK - compared even to many European countries, this stuff is rare.
Compare to France, say. Or the extent of Far Right politics across the four FIGS countries with the UK, or former Eastern Europe.
One of my concerns is that Reform's search for a future is giong to lead to the blurring of lines, and some of the Tory MPs who have been placed in the dustbin of history by the voters may lose it. My MP is Lee Anderson, and I think he is way out of his depth.
Liz Truss's support for Trump was a bit of a shocker, even given her fairly loopy history; I don't think there are many UK politcians who will overlook that Trump is a sex-abuser and a career criminal who has corrupted everything he has touched.
Ex Conlservative MP Andrew Bridgen turning up on stage at the Tommy Robinson rally in Trafalgar Square was also concerning.
Maybe it should be - but as many have said (Neil Kinnoch for one IIRC) "if you're not in power, it's a hobby". (Albeit one with some substantial perks).
Trump seems an irresistable magnet for many voters who are prepared to overlook a great deal of personal "details". After all - not a few of the more powerful politicians have very shady things on their records one way or another. Boris would be one and not just for his sexual shenanigans. Given the pull of Trump most (not all) Republicans decided to hold their noses and go along at least, to stay in business. Some went far further!
Would that be the conspiracy-peddling Andrew Bridgen?
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