In the news

I don’t think they think that far ahead either. However, I do think Patel looks to pick fights where she can at the moment, as she’s got her eyes firmly on being PM and she needs to cement her credentials with the Party and the ERG.

I worry about what they actually want to do that necessitates withdrawal from the ECHR - unless, of course, it really is just about flexing muh sovrnty for the gammon base.

The Good Friday agreement requires the UK to maintain membership of the ECHR. Their current attempts to back out of the deal they negotiated and signed just over two years ago is to protect, they claim, the Good Friday agreement.

They know this is bullshit, of course, but the cognitive dissonance is surely too much for their simple brains.

They are trying to become an authoritarian regime. All their actions aim to limit the scrutiny of the appropriate institutions on their actions.

they always knew they were on very dodgy legal ground and the flights might get pulled. They don't care because they can just blame "lefty lawyers" and stoke the culture war ever higher

I think you this right, don't really care if the asylum seekers are left indefinitely in an old army barracks in kent or in rwanda, just want to be able to shout about a wedge issue to drive culture wars and sound bites. They seem to have zero actual policy to drive change, so just run constantly in campaign mode.

You could have been on a plane to Rwanda by now.

I jest but seriously. Why can’t we all live together and get rid of some of the shittier English people to Rwanda.

To what end, though? Self-enrichment? The enrichment of their backers? Power for power's sake?

Who knows with these psychopaths.

This kind of takes us back to earlier discussion of patriotism... https://www.lfgss.com/comments/16565320/
My idea of patriotism is to pay your taxes, obey the law, be a good citizen etc.
It has fuck-all to do with where you were born, the colour of your skin, hair, eyes or whatever. On that basis, if really want to start deporting people, do it to the tax dodgers, culture war stokers etc
Sadly, to many people, patriotism is flags, blood & soil which is a massive worry.
Also the way it affects our attitude to our past also concerns me quite deeply and we seem to be going the wrong direction with this too

I suspect the mixing up of the two might be deliberate.

Yes. It has 'Europe' in it > therefore bad. No matter that there are British judges on the ECHR and it was set up by their beloved Churchill.

Patriotism shouldn’t mean being a lairy, carlsberg swilling right wing thug.

More just working together for a common goal. I.e a nice life and the want for others to have that nice life too.

All of the above. For Johnson, power is the no1 (it's what gets him laid amongst other things) as he could (and will) make plenty of cash now if he left.

My country, right or wrong' is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying 'My mother, drunk or sober.

• G.K. chesterton
  

I liked the bit where we justified breaking international law using an argument that was precisely the reason why Article 16 was included in the Northern Ireland Protocol so was actually completely avoidable.

Self-enrichment? The enrichment of their backers? Power for power's sake?

Probably a toxic combo of all of the above, with little thought or care for the actual competent running of a country with the greater good in mind.

Patriotism shouldn’t mean being a lairy, carlsberg swilling right wing thug.

More just working together for a common goal. I.e a nice life and the want for others to have that nice life too.

Patriotism can also be shame in your government or country. Imho it works both ways. Patriotism is caring about your country being the best it can be and being proud of that and If it's not, caring that it isn't.

Sir Jonathan Jones QC head of UK Government Legal Department 2014-2020

More lefty lawyers

blood & soil

Blood and soil is kind of a thing though, to me and others. I know not everyone feels this way but some do. I wouldn't describe it as 'patriotism' as to me that's about Queen and country. Quite a formative part of my identity is a sense of belonging or attachment or something to a land, a landscape, a place. Part of that is that it's "in my blood" which I imagine I interpret in a different way to most - it's in my blood because that's where I grew up. It isn't to do with where I was born or where my parents came from, but it's blood in the sense of body.

I've also had to fight for my identity and my pride in who I am (it's still tentative tbh). Pride shouldn't be confused with superiority. I don't think I'm better than anyone else or that being English or British is great in any sense, but it is who I am.

I know some people have no attachment to the place or places they grew up in, it's not a right or wrong. I feel anger and to some extent shame at 'our' governments actions and lack of actions, but I don't associate that with blood and soil.

The current UK government is going against what the official life in the UK test (needed to pass an exam to get irl / citizenship) says the UK is...

Liberal tolerant nope
Working hard nope
Fair nope
Etc...

And enrich themselves in the process...

if you want to stay informed (/be thoroughly depressed) about the immigration situation in this country the Movement for Justice twitter account give a boots on the ground account of all the shit the gov are continually pulling to circumvent their own rules and destroy lives.

https://twitter.com/followMFJ

Yep, I think they see it as a win-win situation.

Either they get the deportation flights and the adulation of their supporters or they don't and drive more fervent support because they've been wronged by the system (which is actually their own system, but such nuances are of course irrelevant).

None of it could possibly be their fault.

What are th€y distracting £rom with thi$?

On the note of being proud to be from the UK/ Live in the UK.
In 2013 The FCO filmed this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyTnEhRBTeI

A British born Palestinian proud of the freedoms she felt here.
The same cannot be said now. I share this feeling, and I am a Caucasian looking, cis-male, middle-class dickhead. I cannot imagine how that feeling feels across other diasporic groups, be they Jewish, African, Caribbean, Asian, etc., especially when the arrest rates still highlight demographic inequality, amongst other factors.

Unrelated:
A few days ago when we were deep in the Johnson Vote of Inevitability I composed posts and deleted them, suggesting the use of a totally insubstantial threat to allow the press and the people to feel that they had some input into the running of the government, whilst subtler legislation was passed stripping them of their true freedoms, limiting the future, and forging ahead in this isolationist doctrine, that given the economic forecast should cause everyone to be concerned.
Nothing this government does is without very careful planning. Dissemble, distract, deny.

Unrelated:
Allow me a significant tangent as this is hopefully my last post here.

This forums demographics have shifted, inevitably, as some of us have been here for-frankly- far too long. With the demographic shift comes tensions, our united passion for stupid bikes with one gear that can't help but make you smile when you ride them not enough to sustain the differences. More so with the size and scale of this fantastic resource- anonymity and distance have encroached into what was familiar, small. What would once have passed for friendly mockery, now just looks like the sinister face of bullying, cabal-like and intrinsically differentiating.
Though inevitable, it has changed the feeling of the forum, and that has had a devastating effect, and it remains unacceptable in a sport that is definitively challenged in its acceptance of diversity. I find my time on the forum tinged with sadness, not with nostalgic happiness, and I need a bit less of that in my life.

And with that I think I've said my piece.
I'll forward the spare kit onto Velocio or whoever they chose to nominate for that role.
Thanks @Velocio for creating somewhere that has been my sanctuary in some real low points, and look forward to riding with many of you in the future.

Thanks - that's a really interesting response. I think I see what you mean.
My personal identity is built up from my world view, who I am now, where and who I've come from. The aggregated and mediated sum of the child, teenage and adult me, including genetic, cultural and geographic factors.
I guess I was using the term 'blood and soil' in a direct association with notions of genetic superiority/purity - If you don't stem from this soil and blood line you don't belong here..... as per the Blut & Boden associations of 1930's Germany.