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horsefly

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Posts posted by horsefly


  1. 20 hours ago, Yellow Fever said:

    How about 'Glorious Revolution Day' - sometime in November/December.

    You know the last time we had a coup and/or where successfully invaded / taken over - deposing a king? 1688/9

    No it wasn't 1066...

    It's interesting how few are the people who actually know anything about the Glorious Revolution. Yet it seems to me it is probably of the first importance in understanding the constitutional arrangement between the power of the head of state and parliament. Arguably, it is precisely because of the GR that the monarchy has survived to this very day. By accepting the authority of parliament over their own "sovereignty" William and Mary gave the monarchy a degree of legitimacy that remains to this day the only real argument for preserving with a monarch as head of state. 

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  2. 2 hours ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

    Incidentally, here's the answer to a freedom of information request regarding injuries to police on the 14th October pro-Palestinian 'peaceful' protests.

    https://www.met.police.uk/foi-ai/metropolitan-police/disclosure-2023/november-2023/officer-injuries-pro-palestinian-protest-14-10-2023/

    Now we've addressed your deflection and established that fireworks have been fired at police and police been injured at pro-Palestine events, how is people carrying the national flag on the national saint's day worse in your universe?

    Weren't they supposed to be there CELEBRATING St George's day? 


  3. 7 hours ago, Fen Canary said:

    A delicious irony in that what is now marketed as the main drink for Irelands day was created by Arthur Guinness, a staunch unionist and Protestant 

    Irish Republicanism is non-sectarian. Wolfe Tone, the most iconic of all republicans (still celebrated every year in the movement), was a protestant.


  4. 11 minutes ago, A Load of Squit said:

    Anyone got an ideas what we're supposed to do on this most sacred of days, what are the traditions to follow?

     

    Slay dragons. That's why Truss, Patel, and Braverman have gone into hiding.

    • Like 2

  5. 45 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

    You're welcome to your opinion on how she might have reacted if she'd got the warnings that she should have had from the BoE if they were doing their job properly.

    Do you or do you not think it was remiss of the BoE to have never engaged in any stress testing on the LDI market or to organise any contingency plans for unexpected risks in the LDI market even though the risks had been raised back in 2018?

    LDI markets have been a source of concern and scandal for a long time (see the many articles in Private Eye). But I refuse to let that distract from the fact that Liz Truss is entirely to blame for pursuing her pig-headed, ideologically insane budget. Like Trump when he became president she rid herself of, or ignored, ANY advisor she considered would provide resistance to her objectives, and listened only to feeble-willed sycophants applauding her on. A perfect example of the moral of The Emperor's New Clothes.

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  6. Anyone seen sight of Fatty Bacon lately? I note he has not made a single contribution in parliament in 2024, so I can only assume he must be earning his taxpayer funded dollars working extra hard in the constituency. For some reason I just can't find any evidence. 


  7. 29 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

    Not at all. The point Peston was making us that there were immediate and abnormally high and identifiable risks that they could and should have made the government aware of before the mini budget. Peston acknowledges if she had been warned they may have carried on. The point is we don't know because the bank of England didn't do it's job, which means the reasons for its failure aren't addressed because everybody is happy just to leave all the blame at Liz Truss' door and let the bank of England do what it likes to unaccountably.

     

    Truss made it very clear at the time that she would not listen to the OBR or the BOE. She has also subsequently reaffirmed  that attitude by calling for the abolition of the OBR and the sacking of the BOE head. She was the ultimate authority, and she made it clear that she didn't want to listen to what any other body had to say. Her astonishing arrogance was evident at the time, only to be surpassed by her utterly self-delusional account of her calamitous reign in her pi*ss-poor book.

    • Like 3

  8. 4 hours ago, Herman said:

    I think it has been explained well before. Here is another comprehensive explainer if you are interested in the facts. And neither Trump nor Biden come out of it with any credit.

    https://www.factcheck.org/2021/08/timeline-of-u-s-withdrawal-from-afghanistan/

    Indeed! Sadly by the time Biden had taken over there US forces were reduced so low there wasn't the remotest chance of preventing a messy exit. At least he delayed withdrawal from the original May date that Trump had guaranteed, giving a few more Afghanis extra time to escape. It was still a very awful episode in US history. What isn't in question is that it was Trump's shameful "America First" unconditional surrender to the Taliban that caused this debacle.


  9. On 20/04/2024 at 05:30, dylanisabaddog said:

    There may well come a time when American people decide they've had enough of sorting out the world's problems. Trump could decide to run with that opinion. 

    It's pretty much what is built in to his "America First" policy. Hence his complete surrender to the Taliban when he negotiated the unconditional withdrawal of all US forces with the Taliban leadership, without a single member of the Afghan government or NATO allies being involved or consulted. As Full Fact have confirmed: 

    Screenshot_21-4-2024_141230_www.factcheck.org.jpeg


  10. 1 hour ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

    No, that was me, but Horsefly's point is a bit vapid seeing as that's merely a reflection of social attitudes when they were written, so more a reflection of that than the religions themselves. Misogyny is not inherently built-in to religion, nor shoud it be considered a part of it The C of E has reformed to include women priests and I'm sure other religions will adapt as well.

    In fact, it's unhelpful to women to insist on bundling in misogyny with religion; that's the whole reason we have misguided lefties acting as apologists for misogyny in Islam by declaring criticism as 'Islamophobic', basically leaving Women's rights in Islam in the hands of the Islamic communities in the hands of religious conservatives.

    Religion must adapt to fit into wider society, but it's stupid and futile to try and push it out.

    Oh dear! The misogyny is written in the BIBLE, ffs!. The BIBLE is THE authoritative text for the Christian religion. Try actually reading the "Rules for Priests" in Leviticus. You will find instructions for denying menstruating woman access to church because of their impurity. You will find women being described as a threat of contamination. You will find instructions calling for adulterous women to be stoned to death, etc, etc, etc. These religiously inspired misogynist attitudes have contaminated societal attitudes for ALL the succeeding centuries. And you only have to look at the USA to see that they are on the rise again. Evangelists throughout the US are securing draconian restrictions on women's rights. Their arguments are ENTIRELY based on their religious beliefs. Misogyny can take many forms, not all of which are religious, but it is utterly absurd to deny that religion is major source of misogynist attitudes.

    As for this absurd an unintelligible comment: "it's unhelpful to women to insist on bundling in misogyny with religion; that's the whole reason we have misguided lefties acting as apologists for misogyny in Islam by declaring criticism as 'Islamophobic'," Firstly, it makes no sense. Secondly, find me a "leftie" who says misogyny is OK as long as it happens within Islamic culture. As is common in your posts you're simply making up totally nonsensical positions that no one holds in a ridiculous attempt to lend your own views some plausibility. It doesn't work.

     

    • Like 1

  11. 1 hour ago, dylanisabaddog said:

    Hello @horsefly

    I'm a bit baffled by the quote that you have attributed to me. Not something that I wrote! 

    Perhaps someone is having a silly game? 

    Screenshot_20240419_180929_Chrome.thumb.jpg.ab16f9113c07ea4e2fb99c619385a6b2.jpg

    Sorry old boy! I have absolutely no idea how that could have happened as the quote was taken straight from LYB's response to you (see above). I really can't explain how the system then attributed it to you as I certainly didn't. Would you like me to delete it so people don't get confused?


  12. 4 minutes ago, TheGunnShow said:

    Is that due to religion, or is that due to land/power/resources where religion's used to pick sides? I suspect it's more the latter, although I agree with YF in having a general unease at the notion of faith schools in general, regardless of religion involved.

    Essentially I'm not sure religion's the underlying casus belli unless we're talking the Crusades.

    It is often impossible to disentangle the motives. For example, it may be true that a fight over resources motivates conflict, but often that is because the proclaimed right to those resources is based on religious claims that the land concerned was promised to them by God. 

    You can certainly add a few more wars to the Crusades as being fundamentally religious in motivation, not the least of which have involved the Taliban in Afghanistan.


  13. 1 hour ago, dylanisabaddog said:

    underlining that misogyny and mistreatment of women is a bolt on to the religion rather than a core part of it

    I take it you haven't read the Bible or Koran then. Perhaps start with Leviticus and then return to tell me that misogyny and mistreatment of women is a "bolt on" rather than core to the religious doctrines. 


  14. 4 hours ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

    Politics is divisive. Should that be banned?

    Kids are being brainwashed to entertain left wing ideology that their birth sex might be 'wrong'. Religion seems harmless in comparison.

    Of course, no one has ever heard of a single case of a gay child being psychologically damaged by religious conversion therapy. Nor a gay person being beaten up, imprisoned, or sentenced to death in countries run by religious zealots. FFS!


  15. 20 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

    All you've got to do to prove there's no God is come up with a scientifically verifiable explanation for our conscious existence in this universe that excludes the possibility that no conscious entity actively brought about what we perceive as existence.

     

    The answer to your question can be found in my last post. You're asking a "pseudo-question". There is absolutely no answer that could satisfy your requirements because NOTHING could count as a verification that excludes that possibility. 

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  16. 21 minutes ago, Yellow Fever said:

    You're standing the burden of proof on it's head. It's impossible to prove a negative. The assertion is from the diests/theists that God/s exist. They need to prove that. They can't. My default position in the absence to any such proof (and then who created them ad -nauseam) is that such (true) Gods above and beyond our universe don't exist.  Science can posit other universes - parallel time lines and many possibilities but all reducible to logic.

    From Wiki

    therefore, they argue that the burden of proof lies not on the atheist to disprove the existence of gods but on the theist to provide a rationale for theism.[6]

    Indeed! As a bit of a trick with the students I would ask them, "Prove to me that there are not 2000 invisible pixies in the lecture room right now". Many hilarious attempts at doing so would usually ensue, but of course the right answer was to point out the absurdity of the question. NOTHING at all could be cited as evidence that there were not 2000 invisible pixies in the room. So we are then left with two choices, either to think this failure means we should believe there actually are 2000 invisible pixies in the room, or think that we are left with no evidence at all for believing there are. Atheists take the second option (Just replace the invisible pixies with God and you will see the point).

    Wittgenstein, in my view, was spot on when he said "'Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language." In short, our language is such that we are able to ask questions like the one I posed to the students that look as if they are perfectly meaningful but are actually a result of confusion (if not simply absurd and meaningless). Substitute for "2000 invisible pixies" the word "chairs" and you have a sentence of exactly the same grammatical structure but now a sentence that has actual meaning because we can identify the truth conditions that determine its truth value (true or false).  

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  17. 2 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

    Getting back to the social, to me, religion is far more important in the social, cultural, and philosophical elements regarding human behaviour that what it may or may not have to say about the existence of an all-encompassing consciousness that was responsible for our existence. Fundamentally, if a group is getting so aggressively hostile to all religion that you would seek to oppress expression of religion simply for objection to the idea that the idea of a conscious entity may have been involved in our creation, , as some self-proclaimed atheists clearly are, then it's starting to display the sort of toxic behaviour that religions are often criticised for; it's going beyond secularism into what becomes ideologically-based oppression in its own right.

    I just don't think this is true. Who is this hostile group of atheists who are preventing people expressing their religion? If your talking about the headmistress who has banned prayer from school I think you'll find it has nothing to do with being anti-religion but more about about her peculiar form of school discipline. I know of no atheist who has protested outside a mosque, church, synagogue, or Gurdwara, calling for their closure. Atheists simply want to ensure that religious people are not given some kind of privileged position over non-religious people. 

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