Taking The Knee

Vlad_The_Impaler said:
People with any self respect do not kneel for anyone.
Throughout history it's well known that bending the knee is a sign of surrender and acceptance of a superior and BLM are not worthy of anything let alone a sign of submission to that of a conquering King/Army or whatever. Phuck off.
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Agree 100%
 
Vlad_The_Impaler said:
People with any self respect do not kneel for anyone.
Throughout history it's well known that bending the knee is a sign of surrender and acceptance of a superior and BLM are not worthy of anything let alone a sign of submission to that of a conquering King/Army or whatever. Phuck off.
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Then you're pretty clueless about how the kneeling came about. It was the idea of Nate Boyer a retired Green Beret and NFL player who suggested kneeling as a compromise because it is a sign of respect that US soldiers use for their fallen comrades.

https://www.npr.org/2018/09/09/6461...sed-kaepernick-to-take-a-knee?t=1614738409853
 
SlowDownDerek said:
Yep, and even more so when the Tories are in power. Unless you went to Uni with Matt Hancock and then you probably reckon government procurement procedures are as fair as they need to be.
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Not just limited to the health sector. There's only one reason HS2 is going ahead.
 
SlowDownDerek said:
I didn't say I wanted real names to be used I said people should be accountable for what they say. If you commit a crime or defame someone there should be legal recourse just like in any other sphere of life. It doesn't need to be that other users have access to the identity information, just the media provider. It's not an issue for me if sites that can't operate under these terms don't survive.
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I was conflating your accountability with his "hide behind fake names" comment. For me, there's an important distinction although I think it presents more problems than it solves.

Even if you're a member of the "nothing to fear if there's nothing to hide" gang, holding sensitive data in so many more places means it's more likely it will be leaked/hacked and the more valuable it will be for hackers to try. Fraud would skyrocket.

Privacy-focused services would cease to exist and every message you ever sent would need to be saved on a server somewhere along with something categorically linking it to you as an individual.

Companies like Facebook or other advertising data harvesters would quickly be able to piece together true identities by cross-referencing user IDs

Maybe it's just because I was on the internet in the early days when you'd play games and kids would scream the vilest obscenities they know at you if you beat them. Transcripts what they said would easily get them sacked from jobs in this "cancel culture". However horrific it was obvious they were dumb kids trying to get a rise out of you and even if I could ID them now I wouldn't want to.

The tweet I quoted was a continuation of the discussion resulting from Jeremy Corbyn saying that there was no place for billionaires. I didn't agree with jezza about much but he's bang on here.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1190186804785418242

https://twitter.com/x/status/1190397784429600768
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Ah cheers, I don't tend to expand on Tweets shared here.

We're deep in ideology here but I would argue poverty is relative, what we consider poverty in the UK now is different from the UK of the past and other nations. It doesn't mean we shouldn't continue to improve our collective lot but it's often measured as income disparity so it's a convenient tool for those of a socialist bent.

On the flip side, I believe it's possible for someone to deserve to be a billionaire. If they created an innovation that gave people rich or poor access to free education or provided a service that made food supply cheaper for example.

A system where eventually 100% of wealth over a certain threshold is taxed is the only antidote to having billionaires and will drive them away from the country. The top 1% currently contributes 30% of the tax revenue. That's the health service, pensions, and military all free for the 99%.

Fairness is interesting because at first glance it would be fair if everyone received the same amount of money but then you look a little deeper.

It is fairer for those who have additional needs to receive more money? What about those who work harder and longer? What about those who have cultivated skills that provide for the common good? What about those who are just happy to take their share without contribution?
 
Vlad_The_Impaler said:
People with any self respect do not kneel for anyone.
Throughout history it's well known that bending the knee is a sign of surrender and acceptance of a superior and BLM are not worthy of anything let alone a sign of submission to that of a conquering King/Army or whatever. Phuck off.
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Going along your premise that taking the knee is ineffective, what strategy do you propose for combatting racism: either in society in general or football in particular?
 
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The strategy should be education, and taking the knee and reflecting on the problem of racism is all part of the education, just like visits to concentration camp museums.

People with self-respect and don't kneel have a tendency to be arrogant and don't give a toss about anybody else's problems.
 
I haven't the time to get into a long discussion with you Kudos but the rest of us still pay 70% of tax revenue, so it's not all free. The top 1% haven't become poorer in the past 10 years, if their wealth is that great, just a small % increase in their tax would benefit the majority.
 
table said:
I haven't the time to get into a long discussion with you Kudos but the rest of us still pay 70% of tax revenue, so it's not all free. The top 1% haven't become poorer in the past 10 years, if their wealth is that great, just a small % increase in their tax would benefit the majority.
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I get your point and I agree that another % would benefit the majority but the other perspective is how many cities is an individual expected to privately fund before they've done their share?

I don't have an answer but it's interesting to see where the line is for when you become a net contributor:
https://fullfact.org/economy/are-half-british-households-burden-state/

I feel a little like the rich are the 'other' for the left, by which I mean a faceless scapegoat that causes all societies ills. Think 'immigrants' for the right.
 
Kudos said:
I was conflating your accountability with his "hide behind fake names" comment. For me, there's an important distinction although I think it presents more problems than it solves.

Even if you're a member of the "nothing to fear if there's nothing to hide" gang, holding sensitive data in so many more places means it's more likely it will be leaked/hacked and the more valuable it will be for hackers to try. Fraud would skyrocket.

Privacy-focused services would cease to exist and every message you ever sent would need to be saved on a server somewhere along with something categorically linking it to you as an individual.

Companies like Facebook or other advertising data harvesters would quickly be able to piece together true identities by cross-referencing user IDs

Maybe it's just because I was on the internet in the early days when you'd play games and kids would scream the vilest obscenities they know at you if you beat them. Transcripts what they said would easily get them sacked from jobs in this "cancel culture". However horrific it was obvious they were dumb kids trying to get a rise out of you and even if I could ID them now I wouldn't want to.



Ah cheers, I don't tend to expand on Tweets shared here.

We're deep in ideology here but I would argue poverty is relative, what we consider poverty in the UK now is different from the UK of the past and other nations. It doesn't mean we shouldn't continue to improve our collective lot but it's often measured as income disparity so it's a convenient tool for those of a socialist bent.

On the flip side, I believe it's possible for someone to deserve to be a billionaire. If they created an innovation that gave people rich or poor access to free education or provided a service that made food supply cheaper for example.

A system where eventually 100% of wealth over a certain threshold is taxed is the only antidote to having billionaires and will drive them away from the country. The top 1% currently contributes 30% of the tax revenue. That's the health service, pensions, and military all free for the 99%.

Fairness is interesting because at first glance it would be fair if everyone received the same amount of money but then you look a little deeper.

It is fairer for those who have additional needs to receive more money? What about those who work harder and longer? What about those who have cultivated skills that provide for the common good? What about those who are just happy to take their share without contribution?
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Good response. I've not really got time to get right into it all but on the first point I'd say it's down to the media companies to protect from fraud, that is their legal responsibility. There is fraud potential across a number of industries and it simply has to be overcome if these companies want to operate. I guess my main point is that anonymous communication is not a human right and if loads of media companies fold then so be it. They shouldn't be facilitating crime.

On the second point I agree it is purely ideology. My view is that any individual being a billionaire is obscene. Its not possible to be a billionaire without exploiting many people and if you delve into any of them you'll find many underpaid people facilitating their hording of resources for no good reason. I'd go further to say that being a billionaire in this world is morally bankrupt and I think the charitable actions of some of them betrays their sense of guilt.

Your numbers actually highlight the issue of how obscenely wealthy a billionaire is. They aren't the top 1% (which is anyone earning over £160k a year) they are the top 0.00028% and they have 3% of the world's wealth. They certainly don't pay their fair share of tax as they don't earn income like the rest of us and when they do it's declared in tax havens. This is why commentators tend to lump them into the top 1% so that they get the credit for the tax paid by wealthy people who do pick up the lions share of the tax burden, i.e. non-billionaires.
 
Vlad_The_Impaler said:
No it wasn't, kneeling was custom hundreds of years before the yanks existed you massive humongous fraud.
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Kneeling can mean different things to many different people and cultures. Just because you've interpreted the intent incorrectly doesn't mean they should stop to please you. Also predominant meanings of gestures can change over time- the V sign for example.
 
SlowDownDerek said:
Good response. I've not really got time to get right into it all but on the first point I'd say it's down to the media companies to protect from fraud, that is their legal responsibility. There is fraud potential across a number of industries and it simply has to be overcome if these companies want to operate. I guess my main point is that anonymous communication is not a human right and if loads of media companies fold then so be it. They shouldn't be facilitating crime.

On the second point I agree it is purely ideology. My view is that any individual being a billionaire is obscene. Its not possible to be a billionaire without exploiting many people and if you delve into any of them you'll find many underpaid people facilitating their hording of resources for no good reason. I'd go further to say that being a billionaire in this world is morally bankrupt and I think the charitable actions of some of them betrays their sense of guilt.

Your numbers actually highlight the issue of how obscenely wealthy a billionaire is. They aren't the top 1% (which is anyone earning over £160k a year) they are the top 0.00028% and they have 3% of the world's wealth. They certainly don't pay their fair share of tax as they don't earn income like the rest of us and when they do it's declared in tax havens. This is why commentators tend to lump them into the top 1% so that they get the credit for the tax paid by wealthy people who do pick up the lions share of the tax burden, i.e. non-billionaires.
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Important I think to differentiate, as you and Kudos have tried, between the good and bad aspects of these richest in our world.

Those who create most of the jobs, fund and push most of the innovation and development that builds our world, and pay a significant amount of the tax. And those who actively move themselves and money around between jurisdictions and dodge as much as they can whilst employing via substandard working conditions.

There are right and wrong ways of "the rich" going about their business. Their actions should be where the focus is, not on the bottom-line of their bank accounts per se. That's where I diverge slightly from the Corbyn view, that being X level of wealthy is in of itself wrong.

My aim for tax policy would be on maximising tax take from these guys, and for that we go back to economic theory such as the laffer curve where you don't over-tax them. Where that falls down is the example you give around people who are so powerful they are able to side step those kinds of structures completely. That is wrong. Now, if only I knew how to fix that...
 
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Have skimmed over this thread but I think many people, players (both black and non) and myself, saw the issue as an empty gesture.

The Premier League, FA, Football League all jumped on the BLM bandwagon without any research or thought, and players were basically forced to take the knee for BLM or risked being called out. They had “BLM” on their shirts, not Black Lives Matter.

It then transpired very quickly what this organisation were about, and now it’s take the knee to be against all forms of discrimination and racism. A backtrack. If more research was shown to start with, then I don’t think it would have been too much of an issue.

It’s now good to see players making a stand and an effort into actually doing something about this issue. Pushing for identification on social media is the big issue at the minute.
 
SlowDownDerek said:
Good response. I've not really got time to get right into it all but on the first point I'd say it's down to the media companies to protect from fraud, that is their legal responsibility. There is fraud potential across a number of industries and it simply has to be overcome if these companies want to operate. I guess my main point is that anonymous communication is not a human right and if loads of media companies fold then so be it. They shouldn't be facilitating crime.
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So firstly you're correct there's no human right to anonymous communication. I suspect because it's kind of an impossibility to be truly anonymous.

The UN declaration of human rights says "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence", there is an argument, admittedly a weak one that requiring all communication to have an official document attached could be arbitrary in the authoritarian definition of the word.

Additionally, the EU and therefore the UK has strict controls on data collection and it would butt against those laws if the most trusted forms of ID are stored by every media company. You also have a right to be forgotten.

Agree that media companies should be responsible and there are mechanisms to punish those who leak data but those who are hacked are the victim of crime. You might introduce a data security standards body to certify companies but I doubt they'd ever be anywhere near cutting edge.

I think it's a very tricky subject to force identification on all communications and I'm not just saying that because I value privacy.

For me, the answer is to allow users to control how much risk they are willing to accept of seeing something that will offend them. At the end of the day, you're only hiding abusive behaviour whichever method you pick. Just because it can't be said on Twitter doesn't change a mindset or whether it will be said where you can get away with it.

On the second point I agree it is purely ideology. My view is that any individual being a billionaire is obscene. Its not possible to be a billionaire without exploiting many people and if you delve into any of them you'll find many underpaid people facilitating their hording of resources for no good reason. I'd go further to say that being a billionaire in this world is morally bankrupt and I think the charitable actions of some of them betrays their sense of guilt.

Your numbers actually highlight the issue of how obscenely wealthy a billionaire is. They aren't the top 1% (which is anyone earning over £160k a year) they are the top 0.00028% and they have 3% of the world's wealth. They certainly don't pay their fair share of tax as they don't earn income like the rest of us and when they do it's declared in tax havens. This is why commentators tend to lump them into the top 1% so that they get the credit for the tax paid by wealthy people who do pick up the lions share of the tax burden, i.e. non-billionaires.
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I tried to do a quick Google for billionaires and I found between 53-150 UK/British billionaires but didn't find all that much on how much they pay.

I do agree that a billion is an obscene amount of wealth but I'd question whether it's possible without exploiting people. I suppose it depends on how you define exploitation.

I think everything else has already been said by NSM.
 
'Issues' will always be around...so will I...part of a tree maybe...don't fancy Heaven or Hell!

None of us asked to be born....and we all get caught up in whatever...so please guys...don't get too upset about the things other people come out with....something or somebody influenced them...they have their reasons !
 
Racial issues are indeed everywhere, Brian, but I don't for a second think that everything is about race .... although sometimes it feels like we are headed in that direction.

Two hypotheticals, if you will ..........

I have a choice to go for a steak and a beer with either Jack Wilshere or Josh King. I would pick Jack, seems like a decent bloke and probably can tell a good story.

Then, I have a choice to go for a steak and a beer with either Callum Wilson or Lewis Dunk. Callum, please, 100%.

Have I just gone from a racist to enlightened? Or is it just a matter of preference?
 
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