Tag Archives: knee

Dominic Raab doesn’t know what misogyny means. How is he qualified to rule on it?

“He has no idea what he’s doing”: Raab blocked anti-Brexit groups after they broadcast this image while he was Brexit secretary – but it is just as valid today as it was then.

Dominic Raab rejected the idea that misogyny should be a hate crime – on a TV interview in which he then demonstrated ample proof that he didn’t even know what it means.

BBC Breakfast presenter Sally Nugent had to read a dictionary definition of the word to him after he said, “Misogyny is absolutely wrong, whether it’s a man against a woman or a woman against a man”.

Misogyny is hatred aimed specifically by men against women.

Hatred by women against men is misandry.

And Dominic Raab is so illiterate, he did not know the difference. Couldn’t he even be bothered to get a briefing from someone in the know?

… Ah. Well, I think we all know the answer to that. After all, he didn’t understand the importance of the Dover-Calais crossing when he was Brexit secretary.

That’s why one commenter tweeted that he wasn’t surprised Raab didn’t know the meaning of ‘Misogyny’: “I am surprised that he didn’t think Misogyny was a place just south of Calais.”

Raab also demonstrated his ignorance of ‘taking the knee’.

We all know it’s a symbolic gesture against racism, in protest against the lack of attention given to issues of racial inequality and police brutality. Right?

Raab didn’t.

And now this:

And this is what passes for Cabinet-level expertise in Boris Johnson’s government?

I know Raab has been demoted from Foreign Secretary but it is clear that he is still being asked to perform far beyond his capabilities and the UK will suffer as a result.

EXTRA: This response is too good to leave on Twitter:

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Isn’t Priti Patel’s attitude to footballers ‘taking the knee’… racist?

It seems to me that the Home Secretary is being disingenuous – if not downright deceitful.

She is deliberately trying to associate “taking the knee” – which is a gesture of solidarity with black people who continue to suffer oppression from modern nation states – with anti-social or even outright criminal behaviour.

Yes, it has been associated with the Black Lives Matter organisation and there are strong reasons to question the behaviour of those involved with it.

But most people who “take the knee” aren’t doing it because they agree with the politics of that particular pressure group. They’re doing it to make the simple point that black lives do matter – at a time when racists have been asserting the opposite.

So it is wrong for Patel to make a false connection between what the England team are doing and any questionable motives, just as it is wrong for her colleagues like Gillian Keegan to condemn the gesture as “creating division”.

How can a show of solidarity with an oppressed group be divisive? It’s an expression of fellowship.

It is also inappropriate to suggest that football fans who boo the England team for “taking the knee” are doing so for any justifiable reason.

I think Patel is right to say that those people are booing because they don’t want to see protests against racism. In other words, they boo because they themselves are racists.

Patel’s support for their position is therefore entirely consistent with the attitudes she has already expressed – for example, towards people of ethnic minorities who she has locked up like sardines in concentration camps where they were made vulnerable to Covid-19 infection.

In short, it seems clear that she supports people who are racists because she is a racist herself.

Source: Priti Patel says fans have right to boo England team for ‘gesture politics’ of taking the knee | The Independent

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Priti Patel disapproved of Black Lives Matter protests – is anybody surprised?

 

Priti Patel and Boris Johnson: when he gets into trouble, she starts making questionable statements to the media.

It might be too much to say that Priti Patel’s obvious disdain for people of certain ethnic origins makes this a foregone conclusion.

So let’s just allow her record to speak for itself. Run a search for “Priti Patel” on this site and see what comes up. And see this for a current example of her behaviour:

On the current issue, The Guardian says she described the protests prompted by the killing of George Floyd by police in the United States as “dreadful”.

It seems she didn’t like the way that some of these protests turned violent after police became involved. Or did I misinterpret those events?

So, what did she think of the peaceful gesture that people chose to make – “taking the knee”?

Asked if she would be prepared to take the knee, she replied: “No I wouldn’t, and I would not have done at the time either.

So in other words, she didn’t like any kind of protest?

“I don’t support protest…”

Wow. So we’re all supposed to just knuckle under and accept any kind of ill-treatment, no matter how appalling – including murder by police officers?

I’m not okay with that. And I’m not alone:

Mind you, it seems odd that – after nobody asked her – Priti Patel should suddenly come out with a comment like this.

It’s as though there was another motive for it…

Or is that too much of a stretch?

Source: Priti Patel hits out at ‘dreadful’ Black Lives Matter protests | Priti Patel | The Guardian

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How many scandals can Keir Starmer hide with his sacking of Rebecca Long-Bailey?

 

Choke hold: Israeli armed forces using the same ‘knee on neck’ technique that was used to kill George Floyd. But we’re being asked to believe Israel never taught that technique to US police and it is anti-Semitic to suggest that one country’s armed forces could teach such techniques to another’s police.

Quite a few, it seems.

Let’s start with the biggie: Israel is due to launch a major invasion of Palestinian territory next week, targeting in particular areas containing the aquifers that make life possible in these parched places.

Starmer’s sacking of RLB is a warning to Labour Party members that he will not tolerate the voicing of any dissent against this racist military action.

Any comment that he dares to make will be entirely ineffectual:

Labour has a policy that all people have a right to self-determination. Israel’s right to self-determination has been used as a stick to beat party members accused of anti-Semitism. Palestine’s right to self-determination goes unrecognised under racist Starmer.

But let’s not stop there. Starmer has also taken the heat off Robert Jenrick, whose corrupt manipulation of the planning system to save Richard Desmond £45 million in return for a small bung for Conservative funds was causing trouble for the Tories.

While Starmer moved quickly to sack RLB, he has done nothing about the right-wingers in his party who subjected Diane Abbott to racist abuse:

Finally, let’s bear it in mind that Starmer has no interest in opposing the Tory government’s genocidal policy on handling the Covid-19 pandemic…

… and, come to that, the people to whom he is pandering – the Board of Deputies of British Jews and all those other right-wing supporters of the Likud government in Israel – never criticised successive Tory governments for killing huge swathes of the UK population either:

Underlying all of this, remember: The claim RLB was sacked for – in an interview with her constituent Maxine Peake – is accurate. Israeli forces do indeed train United States police. And Starmer’s claim that it is anti-Semitic to say this loses any force when one realises that Jews know about it and oppose it:

 

Here’s the last word – it should be the last word on Starmer’s catastrophic leadership of the Labour Party (but it won’t, because these creeps cling like limpets):

‘Compassionate’ Conservatism’s three ‘R’s – reading, writing and… rickets?

Painful deformities of the skeleton such as bowed legs: The return of rickets is another sign that the Conservative-led government is regressing Britain to conditions during the primitive Victorian era - or even earlier.

Painful deformities of the skeleton such as bowed legs: The return of rickets is another sign that the Conservative-led government is regressing Britain to conditions during the primitive Victorian era – or even earlier.

David Cameron’s quest to bring the Victorian era back to life in the 21st century reached a new milestone this week when the UK’s chief medical officer formally announced the return of a disease long thought banished from these shores: Rickets.

The announcement brings to fruition a prediction made by Vox Political almost a year ago, when we said: “As a consequence of the rise in poverty, overseen and orchestrated by Mr Cameron and his lieutenant Iain Duncan Smith in the Department for Work and Pensions, the classic poverty-related diseases of rickets and tuberculosis are on the increase.”

According to the NHS Choices website, rickets “is a condition that affects bone development in children. It causes the bones to become soft and malformed, which can lead to bone deformities.

“The most common cause of rickets is a lack of vitamin D and calcium. Vitamin D comes from foods such as oily fish and eggs, and from sunlight on our skin. Vitamin D is essential for a child to form strong and healthy bones.

“Rickets causes the bones to become painful, soft and weak. This leads to deformities of the skeleton, such as bowed legs, curvature of the spine and thickening of the ankles, wrists and knees.”

The disease was thought to have been eradicated in the UK but, in a damning indictment of modern political priorities, chief medical officer Dame Sally Davies has admitted that 40 per cent of our children – that’s two-fifths of all the children in the country – now have some kind of vitamin D deficiency. Current figures for full-blown rickets are not available.

“The disease was common in Victorian England, but largely disappeared from the Western world in the latter half of the 20th century thanks to vitamin D being added to everyday foods such as margarine and cereal,” stated a report in The Independent. “There has been an observed rise in cases in recent years.”

Can there be any doubt that this rise in cases has been brought about, not just by children sitting at home playing video games rather than going out in the sunlight, as some would have us believe, but because increasing numbers of children are having to make do with increasingly poor food, as Cameron’s policies hammer down on wages and benefits and force working class people and the unemployed to buy cheaper groceries with lower nutritinal value?

The Tory wage-crushing policy has been ignorant in the extreme, according to Dame Sally’s report, as it has created an extra burden on the NHS. Preventative measures “could save the economy billions”.

Dame Sally’s report is entitled ‘Our Children Deserve Better’ – echoing Ed Miliband’s Labour conference mantra, “Britain can do better than this” – and sets out recommendations to tackle urgent problems, such as a universal handout of vitamin supplements to all children under five for vitamin deficiencies, and measures to handle rising child obesity and a lack of effective mental health services.

The neglect created in our health system by more than three decades of neoliberal political rule has had a devastating effect on the nation’s children. According to Dame Sally, while our mortality rate for 0-14 year olds was among the best in Europe during the 1980s, it is now among the worst, with five more children dying every day than in the best-performing country, Sweden.

The highest death rates are in deprived areas – in the northwest, northern cities and some of London’s poorer boroughs, with 21.1 deaths per 100,000 people under 17.

Dame Sally said: “I think this is something, as a country, we should feel profoundly ashamed about – I do.”

Do you think Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt feels ashamed, as he cuts NHS budgets and hives off huge care contracts to profit-making private companies?

No?

Nor should you.

The Vox Political article from December last year also claimed tuberculosis would return, and our report this week on the government’s plan to tackle the phantom problem of “health tourism” seems to demonstrate that it is hell-bent on ensuring that this comes true as well.

Our report earlier this week quoted the chair of the Royal College of GPs, Claire Gerada, who has warned that the cost of administrating the new system could outweigh the savings, while also increasing public health problems such as TB by deterring temporary migrants from seeking treatment when they first fall ill.

In the Bible, Jesus is quoted as saying, “Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not” – meaning he did not want his disciples to stop youngsters from hearing his teachings.

That saying may now be re-worked to fit the philosophy of David Cameron and Jeremy Hunt to read: “Suffer, little children – for you have a Conservative government.”