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Post by crowblack on Jun 1, 2024 19:35:26 GMT
There was enthusiasm for 'New Labour' in the 90s - we knew who the personalities were before the election, there was a 'story' and a 'journey', we had a clear idea of where they stood even if those of us further Left weren't happy about some of their agenda. There are no political 'big beasts' now in the way there were then. Bluntly, I don't think Starmer and co are as intelligent as their predecessors. We're very much in an era of second, even third rate politicians here and in the USA.
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Post by crowblack on May 31, 2024 21:59:56 GMT
I hope she does stand, and I hope she wins. She doesn't look well - she was shaking at that rally and had to be helped by literal supporters. My sibling lives in her constituency - it's still an area with a lot of issues and problems as has been tragically highlighted again this week and it needs someone on the ball at the helm (sorry to mix metaphors there). I suppose if the whip removal hadn't happened she might have retired earlier - no one wants to leave under a cloud. Then again, the longer you go on, the more 'senior moments' you may expose yourself to.
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Post by crowblack on May 30, 2024 21:01:36 GMT
Am here, seeing this tonight. There is a lot of availability, apparently. I wondered if it might do a 'Springtime for Hitler' with those reviews.
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Post by crowblack on May 30, 2024 11:21:23 GMT
I don't accept that MPs are able to talk to young people in order to represent them any more than I would have accepted the idea that men were able to represent the interests of women at the ballot box. The presence of MPs with young families in Parliament is vital if we are to have a parliament that is representative. MPs yes, but I don't think it's wise at high level like cabinet, leader, if they have very young and attention-requiring, sleep-depriving children. It's also a very pressurised environment for sensitive teenagers if their parents are the public face of very unpopular decisions. I don't think the private school/posh postcode/Oxbridge PPE / big business funded Think Tank or bag carrier to MP route is producing an intake with much actual lived experience, wise heads or diversity either.
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Post by crowblack on May 30, 2024 8:48:42 GMT
he beat Paul Boateng to be the Labour candidate in 1983 I didn't know that - Boateng had a far better CV and more interesting background than Corbyn, who comes across like a superannuated angry student but without the university grades. On the age limits: I don't think people have enough life experience when young so I think a lower limit of late 20s. If people want to know the pressures on children or young adults, they can talk through it with them, but they shouldn't be making policy. Older people - honest health and capacity assessments, the sort Biden would not pass and I don't think Abbot would these days either. I also think MPs with very young families (babies, pre-school etc) should not go in for high office jobs while their children are young. Their attention won't be fully on the job - they won't even be sleeping - and it's not fair on the children or partner. That's not anti-family, btw, it's the opposite - I think parenting should take priority. Ed Miliband won the Labour leadership just as his wife was having a baby - he couldn't hit the ground running, and he shouldn't have run for that position knowing something so massive was about to happen in his personal life (I voted for him, btw, but wouldn't had I known that).
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Post by crowblack on May 26, 2024 20:37:26 GMT
Young people don't seem particularly interested but then this isn't aimed at them, it's a policy designed to appeal to older voters. A BBC vox pop of youngsters at a pop festival today indicated some of them were into the idea. It's akin to something private schools do with CCF, St John's ambulance volunteering and the like, with the aim of building confidence and experience. In an age when so many teenagers I know are glued to their phones or computer games with their heads in cyberspace I think something that got them engaged outside and in their communities could be a good thing.
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Post by crowblack on May 24, 2024 23:33:52 GMT
Regarding the old, much artier Ch4 comments above, this sounds very like Derek Jarman's Blue. I have to say my 'ooh, Ben Whishaw, but I can't get to/afford London' FOMO is significantly lessened when it's this type of production (especially given how glum the cast look in the production photos)
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Post by crowblack on May 24, 2024 13:37:21 GMT
I certainly don't feel or sense much active enthusiasm for the current Labour leadership team, and I think they must realise that given their campaign slogan - 'change' rather than a dynamic, substantial message.
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Post by crowblack on May 23, 2024 15:06:35 GMT
Smaller parties may do better than usual but there's not the slightest indication it will be significant. The feeling on the radio today was that Farage going off to the US to serve Trump rather than his right-wing party back here will help the Tory vote. I'm in a region with low turnout generally so it'll be interesting to see who gets the voters out. In a vox pop in Bury on our local news yesterday no-one seemed very enthusiastic about anyone.
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Post by crowblack on May 22, 2024 20:57:54 GMT
The date will impact the student vote in university towns too: most of them will have gone home by the 4th July.
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Post by crowblack on May 22, 2024 20:20:54 GMT
Might be a smarter move for Sunak than it looks: the Tories will lose, but the current Gaza situation may reduce Labour's vote & majority with the students and in Muslim areas, who will likely vote Green or maybe even the Galloway faction. The behaviour of some on the weekend London demos also alienates some 'middle ground' voters who may be prompted by that to vote Tory or Lib Dem for fear Labour still has a Momentum/Corbyn element. My social media is Left-leaning / feminist but I'm not seeing much enthusiasm for Starmer.
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Post by crowblack on May 20, 2024 11:26:01 GMT
And all the gays and lesbians in the seventies and eighties were trying to convert/corrupt your children to homosexuality and destroy their lives! This right-wing scaremongering sounds very familiar! Don't be absurd. It is literally the opposite. In the USA and UK, it is Conservative Christian and homophobic parents who are eagerly 'transitioning' effeminate boys into 'straight' girls and vice versa (Iran, btw, has been using state funded transitioning as 'gay conversion therapy' for years now). Look up the words of Kai Shappley's 'Christian mom', or ex-Mermaids CEO Susie Green's Ted Talk where she describes her husband's attitudes to her son's behaviour. The majority of children referred to the Tavistock in the UK were same sex attracted - clinicians had a dark joke that "there would be no gay people left at the rate Gids was going". There's a cohort of young people who if left to grow up naturally would most likely be gay & fully functioning now being sold a fantasy that will turn them into lucrative medical patients for life: two of the most famous celebrity 'trans girls' are now in their 20s and beset by health problems. I know two teenage boys on this route, one a relative and yes, I am worried about the outcome. I knew what we now call a detransitioner (post op) some years ago and she was one of the most distressed people I'd met to that point.
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Post by crowblack on May 19, 2024 22:13:44 GMT
I am never going to 'catch up' with, or view as 'progressive', an ideology that tells young people that they're 'born in the wrong body' and need surgically 'fixing' if their behaviour doesn't conform to a set of regressive pink and blue stereotypes. I was lucky enough to be a child in the genuinely progressive 70s and 80s, when we could dress and behave pretty much how we liked, and no one told me it made me 'more' or 'less' of a girl - bliss it was in that dawn to be alive etc. This stuff now is taking us back to the 1950s and before.
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Post by crowblack on May 18, 2024 12:38:02 GMT
Apparently Nemo has had a girlfriend for the last five years - presumably is still with her - and 'came out as nonbinary' a few months ago. The 'queer nonbinary witch' (as she called herself in interviews) Bambi Thug, wearing a trans flag bikini, performed on stage with her longtime boyfriend. One does rather get the feel of 'spicy straights' giving themselves a rainbow wash for votes here. Gender identity and sexuality aren't the same thing though. Identifying as non binary doesn't mean they can't still be attracted to their partners. 'Gender identity' is the more sexist and regressive rebranding of what we used to just call a personality or personal style in dress sense. I don't think it makes you oppressed or a freedom fighter in the way gay people who sometimes used the controversial word 'queer' had to be in the 80s.
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Post by crowblack on May 18, 2024 8:25:58 GMT
Apparently Nemo has had a girlfriend for the last five years - presumably is still with her - and 'came out as nonbinary' a few months ago. The 'queer nonbinary witch' (as she called herself in interviews) Bambi Thug, wearing a trans flag bikini, performed on stage with her longtime boyfriend. One does rather get the feel of 'spicy straights' giving themselves a rainbow wash for votes here.
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Post by crowblack on May 17, 2024 16:19:37 GMT
But then why is everyone so intent on excusing the actions of a stalker who allegedly did things that were ruining someone's life? And pinning so much of the blame on Gadd? He seems to shoulder enough of that himself. If a male stalker was interviewed like this would people be using sympathetic terms like "vulnerable person" to describe him? I just find it so jarring that something like this can happen to someone and the stalker is received by the public as something between a victim and a sort of comedy icon. I don't think most of those concerned about the show are doing so because they defend the stalker's actions (or alleged actions). Instead it's about the ethics of this kind of show and, as discussed in yesterday's Media Show, the honesty and potential for defamation given that the subject, quickly identified by viewers, wasn't taken to court or imprisoned for what Netflix/Gadd described in their publicity as a 'true story'. And it was that 'true story' aspect and the praise being heaped on the show for its 'honesty' that got me, like so many others, watching (fwiw I've been the victim of stalkers, which is partly why I watched and partly why some things didn't ring true - like the failure to report attacks which police would have taken action on, and it now appears may not have happened). I'm conscious too that we are living in a world where show fandoms have actually bullied people into suicide through social media, so when a show's fans, as here, quickly identified, or believe they identified, two characters and started sending them threats, that's a problem, and it's something the broadcaster should have anticipated and taken steps to avoid.
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Post by crowblack on May 16, 2024 21:09:56 GMT
Radio 4's The Media Show tonight was on the ethics / responsibilities of Baby Reindeer and UK vs streaming codes of conduct (yes, as suspected, lower standards for streamers).
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Post by crowblack on May 16, 2024 14:40:44 GMT
I don't think there was much indication Sweeney Todd was a musical in its marketing - the person I went with, who was expecting a gothic horror like Burton's earlier Sleepy Hollow groaned when he discovered it was!
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Post by crowblack on May 13, 2024 17:21:24 GMT
Why can't gay performers do sleaze? I loved that staging. Female singers do it all the time. It's fine post watershed, Channel 4, theatre, cinema, whatever, but not on Saturday early evening light entertainment BBC One shows.
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Post by crowblack on May 13, 2024 12:31:15 GMT
The win went to someone of gender non-specificity and wearing a pink skirt. I don't think conservatism was an issue. but essentially sexless. Yes, and dressed like a cute little pom-pom - a lot of the comments I saw online that night reminded me of that episode of Father Ted where all the old ladies want to mother the baby-faced singer and Mrs Doyle bakes him a jumper in a cake. It wasn't a sexually challenging androgyny, Bowie or Frank N'Furter style.
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Post by crowblack on May 12, 2024 9:58:36 GMT
Someone posting the public vote breakdown says only Ukraine gave Switzerland 12 points in the public vote, which adds weight to the idea that the national juries were steering it in the direction of a conflict-neutral rich country.
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Post by crowblack on May 12, 2024 9:06:45 GMT
Did anyone else find the staging particularly the lighting overpowering to the point of some acts being unwatchable on TV?It seemed to be everything all at once which was I guess spectacular in the arena but in close up migrane inducing. Yes - 'just because you can, doesn't mean you should'. It's interesting that the higher placed acts are the ones that look less 'Ai generated' (so many of the women in particular have been given that Ai, airbrushed look with barely-there costumes that look like the sci fi / fantasy stuff worn by female characters n in ads for computer games)
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Post by crowblack on May 12, 2024 8:47:17 GMT
I ended up watching with a Croatian friend and she commented that it was the best-possible outcome, Baby Lasagna king of the hearts, but Switzerland has to fork out to host the thing next year which Croatia was too broke for. One feels this outcome was partly tactical from the national jury votes, so many giving it 12: it's a famously / notoriously politically 'neutral' country when it comes to wars and has shedloads of cash. I'd imagine large demonstrations and death threats aren't something that happen there (but I may be wrong). I don't 'get' the Olly Alexander phenomenon here in the UK (he was ok as a vampire monster in a tv show years ago but his skills don't live up to the hype & opportunities he's given here). It was a run of the mill song, neither better nor worse than some of the others, but his voice was flat and the staging here, cramped in a box dressed up to look like a smelly toilet, is just such a bizarre choice for a stadium audience and the dancing OTT for what used to be a family show.
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Post by crowblack on May 11, 2024 20:38:11 GMT
Finland was fun - would probably get the teenage boy vote, if there was one (maybe there is - Lordi?)
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Post by crowblack on May 11, 2024 17:15:04 GMT
He made a threatening movement at the camera, but did not come near nor touched the woman in question. Which is horrible, and he deserves to be suspended for that. He's an adult professional representing his country. Imagine if that was a politician backstage at Question Time making a threatening gesture at anyone, especially when it's a male to a woman. It would be instantly career-ending behaviour and no-one would be arguing in his favour. His behaviour at a press conference was odd too. Maybe he's high, but that's no excuse either.
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