"oh you don't get me I'm the end of the union": lol brexit is how we're all gonna die

OFCOM investigating the BBC for bias. I looked for a link on the beeb but it's not up yet.

double shock!

Well, Ofcom doing what Jeremy Wright ordered them to do, which is try and find bias.

That's different from "Ofcom sees bias and investigates further". They've already said as much — "we haven't had cause to investigate the BBC but have been asked to so we will" (paraphrased slightly)

A bit like what the EHRC have been asked to do is my point.

Except EHRC have already said that there is cause to investigate.

Except EHRC have already said that there is cause to investigate.

Amber Rudd showing her sympathetic side:

“It’s worst of all if you are a coloured woman. I know that Diane Abbott gets a huge amount of abuse.”

jesus christ

Fuck’s sake

The term "coloured", is an outdated, offensive and revealing choice of words.

— Diane Abbott (@HackneyAbbott) March 7, 2019

meanwhile, wtf is going on with these suspicious packages being received all over the place for the last few days?

Can’t wait for DA to get yet another torrent of racist abuse for daring to speak up for herself.

there go months of carefully cuddly position statements down the shitter

can't believe that the minister who presided over the windrush catastrophe would have some... unusual ways to express ideas about race tbh

meanwhile, wtf is going on with these suspicious packages being received all over the place for the last few days?

― invited to an unexpected ninja presentation (bizarro gazzara), Thursday, 7 March 2019 14:31 (forty-five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i am absolutely delighted by this post in context

if i had to guess its not about internal labour party politics but hey what else could it be

Labour have called for Karen Bradley to resign.

In case anyone was thinking too much fuss was being made about these comments, Sammy Wilson has responded to criticise Bradley for apologising.

📄 Sinn Féin’s position on the SoS Karen Bradley’s comments is blatant hypocrisy. Whilst their representatives glorify and eulogise the callous murderers of the IRA, they do not have the right to call for anyone’s resignation. pic.twitter.com/hvkm6XcClM

— Sammy Wilson MP (@eastantrimmp) March 7, 2019

another bomb scare in edinburgh today. everyone’s being weirdly quiet about these

jfc @ Blair

HE RAN A DOGWHISTLE ANTISEMITIC CAMPAIGN AGAINST MICHAEL HOWARD FOR THE LOVE OF GOD https://t.co/mfk1kdczfm

— Funny Tinge; Tendence Black (@judeinlondon2) March 7, 2019

I knew the campaign was bad but I didn’t realise they’d shopped Michael Howard’s head onto a pig’s body, fuckinggggg hell.

And meanwhile, jfc no. 2

I asked @andrealeadsom to call a debate on #Islamophobia given the scale of it in @Conservatives Party & following the @APPGBritMuslims report & definition. She said : speak to foreign office ministers about Islamophobia.When did attacks on BRITISH Muslims become a foreign issue? pic.twitter.com/idhfQEUKpK

— Naz Shah MP (@NazShahBfd) March 7, 2019

in the context of the ongoing impasse at stormont... is bradley not supposed to be acting as an honest broker ?

another bomb scare in edinburgh today. everyone’s being weirdly quiet about these

banner week this

*whistles*

Woody Johnson's arrogant bullshit words getting trashed again. Statistically you are 4 times more likely to get the camphor bacteria and 20 times more likely to get salmonella from US chicken than the UK equivalent. gl with the free trade deal lads.

“do you accept that islamophobia is a problem in your party, as it is in society as a whole...?” - nick robinson to james ly

not sure I’ve heard that sub-clause being applied during discussions on AS

there’s a right and proper reason why it shouldn’t be applied of course - because (while it is perhaps reflective of actual reality) it minimises the issue

during a discussion on ilhan omar there was also a fairly neutral analysis of how her political opponents have used AS to score political points

seems very strange

It should be applied to AS as well frankly.

hard agree AS is a massive problem in wider UK society - and if you’re having a discussion about the particular issues in specific institutions, it has to be understood in the wider context.

far be it from me to ventriloquise for others but what I’ve heard however from jewish labour members is that when you say “of course there’s a problem in labour w AS, as there is in wider society, because labour is a reflection of that” they feel like the issue (the particular processes, culture, etc which contribute to and in some cases amplify it)is being minimised

haha they don’t have the votes. fucked it

.@Jeremy_Hunt on Today reinforces message of @theresa_may that if she loses vote it will be EU’s fault: he warns EU leaders to take care the impasse “doesn’t inject poison into our relations for many years to come” and warns that if EU doesn’t make...

— Robert Peston (@Peston) March 8, 2019

hard agree AS is a massive problem in wider UK society

It is? It's difficult to tell because Jews, Judaism, Zionism, Israel so rarely come up in conversation.

if she loses vote it will be EU’s fault

also by suggesting some mental shite that Geoffrey Cox has proposed is some mental shite, when it is in fact some mental shite suggested by a man with a commanding demeanour and magnificent speaking voice.

It is? It's difficult to tell because Jews, Judaism, Zionism, Israel so rarely come up in conversation.

It's certainly the experience of every Canadian and American Jewish person I've spoken to on the subject that anti-semitism is more common in the UK. Within a European context it's harder to tell I think - obviously hailing from Portugal I've no real idea, the jewish community there being close to non-existing for obvious horrible historical reasons.

i'm british and i don't know and have never known a jewish person as far as i am aware and can probably count on one hand the amount of times israel has ever come up in conversation. zionism never has. have been a bit bemused and surprised how much of a big deal it is to ukers both to the anti semites and those respon
ding to it

I’d say it was more common in the UK than in North America, or expressed in different ways (there were certainly prejudiced comments about Jewish people being stingy, rich or exclusive in my very Jewish suburb, but nothing about Israel, ever. And the comments that were made got trounced by authority figures sharpish, IIRC). What is definitely more common in the UK is non-Jewish people having toxic opinions on Israel’s role in the Middle East because there’s tons more mainstream media coverage about I/P issues. But people in the UK do appreciate Jewish food and culture at about the same level as anywhere else.

When I had epilepsy as a teenager my doctor once told me to study hard at school because I'd be "treated like a Jew in the jobs market". Then I don't think I heard my next AS comment until I lived in London and an afro-carribean woman in the canteen was loudly complaining about the "arrogance of these chosen ppl" or words to that effect. I think there are some parts of the north that hasn't seen jewish ppl since the clifford's tower massacre.

The only person I've ever heard saying outrageously AS things is my dad but he is also a massive arsehole

hardly part of the uk!

Although the UK remains one of the least antisemitic countries in Europe, it is alarming that recent surveys show that as many as one in 20 adults in the UK could be characterised as “clearly antisemitic”. The stark increase in potentially antisemitic views between 2014 and 2015 is a trend that will concern many. There is a real risk that the UK is moving in the wrong direction on antisemitism, in contrast to many other countries in Western Europe. The fact that it seems to have entered political discourse is a particular concern. This should be a real wake up call for those who value the UK’s proud, multi-cultural democracy. The Government, police and prosecuting authorities must monitor this situation carefully and pursue a robust, zero tolerance approach to this problem.

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmhaff/136/136.pdf

I think there are some parts of the north that hasn't seen jewish ppl since the clifford's tower massacre.

That's true of the UK in general, outside of London and the Home Counties and some of the major cities.

Idk if the presence of minorities is generally required for anti-minority views to flourish tbf. Leaving aside the far-right, anti-Jewish stereotypes are fairly well engrained in British culture, imo. This is more common where there are large communities, like North London, but the background hum (which Labour tapped in to with the Michael Howard stuff, and the Tories with Miliband) has always been there. The idea that Jewish communities are insular, foreign, untrustworthy, etc has been around for hundreds of years - even if it doesn’t always manifest as hatred. The flip side of that is what Michael Segalov calls ‘creepy philosemitism’ - where negative tropes are actively embraced by non-Jewish ppl as positives in a way that still stereotypes harmfully (cf Julie Burchill, any of the thousands of hard-right anti-Muslim conservatives who have pivoted to being performatively pro-Israel over the last few years).

As with the far-right, there has always been a conspiracist element on the left engaging with fantasies about Jewish control of the world, or at least trading in some of the same imagery. However, the way this has been spun as endemic to the Labour movement is pretty disgraceful and absolutely overlaps with dog-whistle Islamophobia in places.

I was reading about the Cheetham Hill riots of 1947 and I was shocked how far back the trope of blaming Jewish people for the actions of Israel dates. Though ofc post war British Jews are recorded as coming home from war to see fascists on the streets of home too, so hardly in an isolated environment (43 group: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/43_Group)

Cheetham Hill: https://www.newstatesman.com/2012/05/britains-last-anti-jewish-riots

the judeo-bolshevik myth was another bit of AS euro-history that wasn't just the work of nazis and white russians. I was reading a review of a book about it the other and can't recall the title. I think some ppl still believed in it even after Stalin's own AS purges, just before he dropped dead.

Oh and I will never forget being in the car with my mother a few years back as we travelled through somewhere in Essex & passed a big Jewish cemetery - which of course had tons of security. The community in the UK & Ireland is mostly within a few areas of each country and so if you don’t know any Jewish people you might never realise what the lived experience is. We found it pretty shocking - it was just a normal cemetery.

know it’s been posted before but this is really good:

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/the-elastic-view-of-antisemitism/

At the core of an ‘elastic’ view is the notion that one cannot measure the prevalence of antisemitism using just one number. All three figures appearing in Figure 1 are meaningful in their own right. The power of these figures is their capacity to capture the different intensities of negativity towards Jews. From the Jewish point of view, Jews come in contact with the entire spectrum of negativity towards them, and more often than not, they will have an imperfect knowledge about which part of the spectrum any given antisemitic view arises. It can arise from the segment holding a very weak and hesitant form of negativity towards Jews. However, there is only so much that a given Jew can do in the course of regular social interaction to clarify this.

Oh and I will never forget being in the car with my mother a few years back as we travelled through somewhere in Essex & passed a big Jewish cemetery - which of course had tons of security. The community in the UK & Ireland is mostly within a few areas of each country and so if you don’t know any Jewish people you might never realise what the lived experience is. We found it pretty shocking - it was just a normal cemetery.

Totally. Always security guards posted up outside the school in Stamford Hill. Which seems reasonable, considering the hate crime against the guy in Islington a couple of days ago...

Same with the school I walk past near Brent Cross sometimes. The security seemed to be stepped up there in the wake of the wave of Jihadist terrorist attacks a couple of years ago, so I guess they're expecting trouble to come from a few different directions.

The lawyer for the family of 19-year-old Shamima Begum who left east London to join Islamic State four years ago says he has "strong but as yet unconfirmed reports" that her baby has died adding "he was a British citizen"

— Sky News Breaking (@SkyNewsBreak) March 8, 2019

Can see the Sun headline tomorrow, "GOTCHA!"