It appears that the Guardian/Observer is always right.

Old_Laytonian said:
I think the Chinese might be patriotic
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Likewise the Soviet Army that defeated Hitler.
But according to Blood and his ilk
Funneling money into offshore tax havens while waving the Union flag and paying poverty wages = patriotism
Wanting to ensure fair taxes, decent living conditions and enough food to eat for everybody in the country = dangerous communism
 
Lytham_fy8 said:
Fought at Gallipoli in WW1, worked closely with Churchill as deputy PM during WW2, led the government that created the NHS.

Clearly not a patch on Blood's patriotic record though (gets a bit teary when the Queen is on TV).
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Lytham, it’s my opinion and I’ve never met a socialist I’d regard as a Patriot.

I‘ve not had a personal Go at anyone on the thread but you appear to be getting aggressive and insulting...calm yourself please
 
catinstalbans said:
Likewise the Soviet Army that defeated Hitler.
But according to Blood and his ilk
Funneling money into offshore tax havens while waving the Union flag and paying poverty wages = patriotism
Wanting to ensure fair taxes, decent living conditions and enough food to eat for everybody in the country = dangerous communism
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I don’t think I have an ilk......I will check round the house but pretty sure you’re mistaken there Cat
 
catinstalbans said:
Likewise the Soviet Army that defeated Hitler.
But according to Blood and his ilk
Funneling money into offshore tax havens while waving the Union flag and paying poverty wages = patriotism
Wanting to ensure fair taxes, decent living conditions and enough food to eat for everybody in the country = dangerous communism
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Jeez you don’t half talk shite.
 
Curryman said:

I hate to say it, but Britain's doing OK. Even Germany envies us...​


For those of us who like to talk Britain down, all this good news is hard to take. The vaccination figures are shocking. Nearly 20 million first doses administered. A forward-thinking procurement plan. The leading large nation, far ahead of the US and, more gallingly for us frothing Remoaners, miles ahead of Europe. Nothing could be more depressing for the honest self-loathing liberal Brit. You know the type. Recycle assiduously but fly once a fortnight.

We can’t say we haven’t had a good run. The past few years have been wonderful. Any positive stories could be written off as a fluke or a statistical aberration. There has been abundant bad news to confirm what we already knew: Britain is a sad, grey little Plague Island in the Atlantic, incapable of relinquishing its past glories and heading full tilt towards irrelevance. Brexit has been Gloomster Glastonbury.

The early days of the pandemic were promising, too. We had the dithering over lockdown, the PPE fiasco and the Barnard Castle drive-by. All reinforced our narrative of total incompetence. A simple eye-roll was usually enough to convey your membership of the told-you-so club. What do you expect from 10 years of Tory rule? The turkeys voted for Christmas. It’s our children and grandchildren I’m worried about.
The self-loathers hadn’t had it so good since Suez. But this year life is increasingly bewildering. The test-and-trace fiasco was comforting. It proved that when the Tories combine public money with private businesses, an orgy of cronyism ensues. Yet the vaccine programme has turned out to be a slick collaboration between hard-nosed businesspeople, big pharma and the academic establishment. It’s almost as confusing as Gillian Anderson playing Margaret Thatcher. Even Private Eye conceded that they’d been “harsh” on vaccine tsar Kate Bingham.

It turns out it might not only be vaccinations that Britain is excelling at. An article in the Economist, not normally given to jingoism, pointed out the UK’s success in cutting carbon emissions. For several months last year the UK burned no coal. It looks likely that soon it won’t burn any at all. You might argue we’ve outsourced emissions to China, but so has everyone else. The bitterest pill is that we’re beating Germany. Germany, the nation self-loathing Brits revere more than any other. Germany, which welcomes every immigrant, has sensible governments, and has only ever craved peaceful European integration.
It transpires that several of the dozen or so vaccines Germany thought to order have been ensnared in red tape. Surely the pandemic can’t have exposed shortcomings in having a pan-continental uber-bureaucracy?

Related: How the EU’s vaccine effort turned into a crisis – podcast
Wasn’t all that technik meant to lead to a bit of vorsprung? The front page of Bild, one of Germany’s main tabloids, last Wednesday read “Britain, We Envy You”. While Eeyorish Mrs Merkel warns of yet another lockdown, with less than 10% of her population vaccinated, our flaxen-haired prime minister leads his nation towards a summer of Weimar excess. Mutti, how could you forsake your fans in Islington like this?

The American economics professor Tyler Cowen, in a blog about the Economist piece, said Britain was “grossly underrated”, also pointing out our performance in AI and London’s enduring appeal as a global city. Our bond yields are substantially higher than Germany’s, indicating that hopes of recovery are better advanced. At the time of writing it looks as though the European Football Championships, originally to be played across the continent, will be held solely in England, a neat metaphor for this confusing year.
There are glimmers of light for gloomsters. Amsterdam has taken over as Europe’s share-trading capital? Tell me more. Lorry delays and export nightmares? Give it to me neat. But everywhere we look there are questions without easy answers. Does Ed Davey deserve some credit? Is Matt Hancock not the literal devil? Is the UK actually… good?

We must be thankful for the cricketers. Presumably reading about the vaccination rates from their bubble in Gujarat, they took the trouble to engineer one of their most craven defeats in memory. When everything else is looking up, it’s nice to have failures you can rely on.

Ed Cumming. 28/02/2021.
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Just goes to show that everyone is entitled to their opinion, irrespective of how misguided or otherwise it may be! We can all find facts to suit our personal agenda.
 
catinstalbans said:
Likewise the Soviet Army that defeated Hitler.
But according to Blood and his ilk
Funneling money into offshore tax havens while waving the Union flag and paying poverty wages = patriotism
Wanting to ensure fair taxes, decent living conditions and enough food to eat for everybody in the country = dangerous communism
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Jacob Rees Mogg - exactly his modus operandi. Ditto Nigel Farage.
 
Tangojoe said:
It's unbelievable that an educated person can come out with nonsense like that. Leaving the EU will harm us strategically? Go on then, enlighten us as to the strategic suffering we're going through as a result of the decision to leave the EU. As for making us less safe, that would be because the self-styled guardians of Europe in their cosy offices in Brussels are intentionally withholding information on terrorist activities as well as on convicted murderers and rapists roaming freely in England. Justify that for us as the decision of an enlightened organisation. While you're at it tell us about the population of this country getting progressively less well educated. Less educated than whom? The people of Dublin? The people of Czechia? And the poorer classes are falling further behind whom exactly? Those in Lithuania? Latvia? Poorer class in this country means only having an iPhone 12, only owning a 65 inch OLED tv and only going on holiday to Florida once a year. Ever thought, as the OP says, the UK might actually be good?
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I think you may have taken a wrong turn a while back when you were looking for the road named 'reality.'
 
Bloodtangerine said:
Lytham, it’s my opinion and I’ve never met a socialist I’d regard as a Patriot.

I‘ve not had a personal Go at anyone on the thread but you appear to be getting aggressive and insulting...calm yourself please
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Whenever you've met people who you say are socialists can you be sure that they are/were? Also, is your assertion based on you having enquired as to their patriotism?
 
Scaramanga said:
Where are these figures from CAt ? Nonsense.
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I can tell you that depending on which measure of poverty you use, will give you different answers.

The 4 million is due to using 60% average earning figures; so as the average earning goes up, there are only marginal changes to the total number of people living in "relative poverty". The same would be said if the average earning figures fell. In some respects in just maths.

It doesn't use a fixed point of reference to absolute poverty, so you get people in places like Switzerland being in relative poverty.

It's why the Tories use absolute poverty as it says £xx/wk to live on. That said, there are still children who have less than that, although we do mitigate by having a floor for sanctions on parents if the kids are involved.
 
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TSSeasider said:
I can tell you that depending on which measure of poverty you use, will give you different answers.

The 4 million is due to using 60% average earning figures; so as the average earning goes up, there are only marginal changes to the total number of people living in "relative poverty". The same would be said if the average earning figures fell. In stunned respects in just maths.

It doesn't use a fixed point of reference to absolute poverty, so you get prior in places like Switzerland being in relative poverty.

It's why the Tories use absolute poverty as it says £xx/wk to live on. That said, there are still children who have less than that, although we do mitigate by having a floor for sanctions on parents if the kids are involved.
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You can’t just pop an equation into a calculator and say there you go, 4 million kids as poor as poor old Oliver. Its nonsense. IMO of course.
 
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