West Ham Online

"There is a very good section on GB news where the ludicrous idiocies of Wokeness are looked at I thought we would should have one for WHO. I'll start with Baptiste on BBC: In Hungary,an ambassador's family are kidnapped by Islamic terrorists and carry out atrocities. At the end of the last episode Baptiste finds out that it is a false flag operation and conveniently, the real culprits are white supremacists who want to stop all immigration. Coronation Street ITV a gay black footballer is stopped by the police, because he is driving an expensive car. He is pushed to the ground during an altercation, and damages his leg threatening his career. Could have been written by Dawn Butler or a BLM activist."

"Centrist Dads recently finished inhaling Andrew Roberts’s excellent biography of George III. In this bold, revisionist, meticulous account, King George emerges – unexpectedly – as an often courageous figure, a benevolent family man, and a model constitutional monarch. He appears worlds away from Thomas Paine’s “royal brute of Great Britain”, or the petty despot satirised in the hit musical Hamilton. It is his starrier contemporaries who seem closer to the villains of the piece – particularly the colourful Whig politician Charles James Fox. For all his brilliance as an orator, Fox proved notably wrong on most major questions of the day. He rejoices in the French Revolution, even as it descends into the blood-soaked Reign of Terror. With his judgment clouded by hyper-partisanship, he adopts nakedly anti-British positions and affectations; sporting the uniform of Washington’s Continental Army while Britain was at war with it. At one point, he even hopes French revolutionary forces will slaughter British redcoats at Quiberon – anything other than dilute his beloved revolution. For decades, Fox is largely condemned to sit on the political sidelines, though on the rare occasions he does approach the levers of power he proves hopelessly incompetent. Above all, he is crippled by a fatal desire for the world to fit his version of events, so he is frequently confounded by reality. This tradition of always thinking the worst of Britain, in spite of the evidence, lives on. For a small but strangely influential group in politics, the war in Ukraine is following a rather different path to that perceived by the rest of us. Britain is a minnow, excised from the real decision-making in Brussels. We are mean-spirited and cruel towards refugees. The Prime Minister’s apparent comparison of Brexit with Ukraine over the weekend was not just a cack-handed analogy, but irresistible proof of Britain’s decline. These are the Centrist Dads – men who came of age in the era of the Third Way. They believe in multilateralism and rule by technocrats, and favour certain guiding orthodoxies and idées fixes – think “data-driven decisions” and “evidence-based policy” (with the implicit assumption that there is One Right Answer to everything). They relish the idea that the UK’s influence is waning, though they are often disappointed – as when Ukrainian officials speak glowingly about their relationship with Britain. On occasion, they will give succour to theories that conform to their worldview, even if these are instantly disprovable, like the notion that Brexit was masterminded by a sinister army of Russian bots. They live mostly on Twitter – but also agreeable enclaves of north London. And, like modern-day Charles Foxes, they are perhaps the most frustrated people in the UK. Centrist Dad-ism has found a new cross-party pantheon of heroes: from the “grown-ups” in Brussels to the “statesmanlike” Sir John Major whenever he makes one of his rare bi-monthly interventions, and of course, that great prince across the water, Sedgefield Fortinbras himself – Tony Blair. The Wet Tory and Blairite elements of Centrist Dad-ism joined forces in the form of the lamely titled podcast The Rest is Politics, hosted by Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell and billed as a spin-off to Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook’s excellent offering, The Rest is History. This one, however, is more of a curate’s egg. Though often insightful and intelligent (Stewart, is, at any rate) a sense of overriding bitterness pervades these conversations, and there are inevitably blindspots. The pair recently discussed Brand Finance’s annual global soft power index, after Campbell had written an article lamenting the decline of British influence. Somehow, in all of this, they managed to ignore the fact that in the last index Britain rose to second place overall, ahead of the rest of Europe and behind only America. The Centrist Dads have certainly had quite a bad run lately. There was Brexit, of course. Covid – where their obsession with the Asian economies of South Korea, Taiwan, even China – collapsed under the weight of omicron, and new data about “excess deaths” has challenged their view of Britain’s pandemic performance as uniquely terrible. The exposure of Germany’s self-serving position on Russian energy has undermined Angela Merkel’s reputation. But bad timing, per Charles Fox, is a Centrist Dad speciality. Earlier this year Stewart wrote a tribute to Merkel and her brand of “serious politics”, at precisely the moment her legacy was beginning to unravel. Were the Centrist Dads always wrong, or has the world moved away from them? The answer is a bit of both. Multilateral institutions – from the UN and EU to the World Health Organisation – seem increasingly ill-suited to our complex world. They have a point about many of this Government’s failings. Yet what finally dooms the PM won’t, I suspect, be his critics’ hyperbolic rhetoric, but the impact of more everyday horrors like inflation and the housing crisis. When that time comes, expect the Centrist Dads to misdiagnose things yet again. Like Charles James Fox, their tragic fate is to be eternal snipers from the sidelines – to rage against forces they can neither control, nor understand."

He's already angry so he'll threaten to get it shut down again by lunchtime

"leave him alone, this website is his entire life."

Anything that doesnt fit H&P's narrative he shouts down as disinformation & far right etc etc. Which is ironic because it's the very definition of free speech. You cant pick & chose when free speech suits you.

Anything that doesnt fit H&P's narrative he shouts down as disinformation & far right etc etc. Which is ironic because it's the very definition of free speech. You cant pick & chose when free speech suits you.

"Ah some you are now the spokesman of all the little reactionaries on here and also the dictator who you say “doesn’t give a shit anyway”. I’d say it’s no deal - go on mince off, you and your ridiculous shiny black leather boots and gestapo cap."

"I wasn't talking about me. There are about a dozen people on here who your first port of call in any discussion is to accuse them of stuff which is illegal if not taboo enough to warrant a kicking. Before you pontificate about responsibility towards people you disagree with, fix yourself up first. Your question was silly for a couple of reasons btw, firstly the subject of incitement vs free speech is well covered and secondly an ""armed dictator"" wouldn't give a shit anyway."

"You stop spreading Kremlin and Far Right disinformation you know to be lies and I’ll stop calling you a Nazi sympathiser. While you’re about it can also apologise for all the disinformation you have relayed on her over the years on virtually every subject that comes up from Ukraine, to Brexit, to Trump, to the pandemic and to this topic of racial tolerance. Also, if you have the courage to come out of the closet and admit you are a little reactionary seeking the company of other little reactionaries, I’ll give you a day off. Deal?"

"Hammer and Pickle 9:29 Thu Mar 24 ""Have you even considered that the right to speak must be balanced by a sense of responsibility towards others who you may not agree with?"" Interesting you'd ask that. Many of your posts on here are calling people Nazis, hosyile foreign agents, terrorists, and abusers. Things you know are false. These are accusations that can lead to arrest, prison, not to mention getting the shit kicked out of you in the real world. Shouldn't your own posts be subject to your own standards?"

'born women' LOLZ

South Beach is fucking Massive.

"""Lee the big question surely in terms of a move to Florida is how many fat blokes in lycra there are cycling there?"" The road systems are vastly different out there so everyone can use the roads without too much difficulty, even those who want to stare at their mates sweaty ring piece."

"""The possibility that the top levels of women’s sports could be dominated by transitioned men is beginning to concern the likes of Lord Coe."" If he applies similar logic to that he used when setting out the requirements for the long-term use of the 2012 Olympic Stadium, the sport is already fucked every which way - and guess who will be picking up the tab for that for all eternity..."

The possibility that the top levels of women’s sports could be dominated by transitioned men is beginning to concern the likes of Lord Coe. In his view it would deter born women from participating in sport at anything other than lower level stuff.

Lee the big question surely in terms of a move to Florida is how many fat blokes in lycra there are cycling there? A mate of mine from school 30 years ago got married to a Colombian American and lives in Florida having made a mint in the IT field. Not that I'm jealous

"Agree Trunds, he appears to not give to much of a fuck what the 'progessives' think of him or what he says. Which is exactly how it should be."

Ron DeSantis is brilliant. I hope he does go on to become President. I'm having a real good think about moving to Florida. It's by far one of the most normal places to live in this weird world we currently live in.

"Some welcome 'reverse wokery' Florida governor Ron DeSantis has issued a proclamation that a resident of his state is the “rightful” holder of the NCAA 500m freestyle title won by trans swimmer Lia Thomas last week. On Tuesday DeSantis, who many see as a Republican contender in the next US presidential election, declared that Emma Weyant, a Florida resident who competes for the University of Virginia and finished second to Thomas, was the “rightful winner” of the race. “It is my determination that men should not be competing against women such as Emma Weyant,” DeSantis wrote in his proclamation. “ … Florida rejects the NCAA’s efforts to destroy women’s athletics, disapproves of the NCAA elevating ideology over biology, and takes offense at the NCAA trying to make others complicit in a lie.” Good to see someone with some clout telling the truth."

https://youtu.be/feItz9IRmrI

Surface I'm sick at the moment and you just made me have a coughing fit. Ag ag ag ag

"You say that Fifth, but what happens when Men's Laundry becomes an Olympic event?"

"Women playing men's sports is fine because they don't have a built in biological advantage. That's why there are zero ""transmen"" dominating any male sport."

How do we feel about women ( not blokes who think they are birds) playing in mens professional sports?

It's pretty insane to pretend you are a woman just so you can cheat your way to a win that you couldn't get when competing against your actual biological sex.

"There are always exceptions to a rule - of course inciting genocide shouldn't be permissible (and it's not, in British law at least)... but the conversation was about the fact that stating that a male swimmer is a male has become unacceptable to a significant minority of the population in the West."