[davidjay]

Supporting peedos is their slur of choice. Savile (about who they care so much they rarely spell his name correctly) is the most notorious. Therefore Savile is their go-to, all-purpose line of attack.

[Tubby Isaacs]

The backlash seems a bit wider than I thought, so ignore the OP up there.

I still don't particularly see the problem. The Prime Minister is on there because he's the only politician lots of people know. His government can introduce minimum custodial sentences, can't they? So doesn't seem too much of a stretch to bring the Prime Minister in to it.

The Secret Barrister asks what the figures are based on. Are they solid?

[Tubby Isaacs]

Some background here. Though I notice he thinks that sentences for sexual offences are often too lenient. so some sympathy I presume for making them harsher. Of course the delays are a problem too, but his reaction to this seems over the top.

[Abernathy]

The Tories accusing Labour of "dog whistle" political campaigning is rich.

Sunak is the leader of the Conservative Party, and as such responsible for Conservative Party policy, whether in government or not. He is fair game.

[Youngian]

Whataboutery is not a pass card, this attack ad is beneath contempt.
This is worst thing Labour have produced since the Fagin like images of Michael Howard with his hypnotist watch.
So you now have to accuse your opponent of being a pedo lover to win an GE? Does the Asian PM drive a minicab?

[Philip Marlow]

Given the number of articles written about Sunak and Starmer leading the two main parties being a sign that the 'moderates' are back in charge and the dread monster of 'populism' has been defeated, there is a bitter laugh to be had over the fact that this ad basically amounts to U LUV PAEDOS. I thought Johnson using Jimmy Saville to attack Starmer was revolting at the time, but if Sunak goes back to it now (or any other aspect of Starmer's record as DPP, however dishonestly it's used) then Labour don't really have much justification for clambering atop the high horse.

I think the dogwhistle argument comes from the fact that grooming gangs have been pushed as a 'brown men bad' problem, and thus linking a man of South Asian heritage to a lackadaisical attitude to the problem might be seen as a tad...unfortunate. It's not strictly racist, any more than the Mail painting Ralph Milliband as a rootless cosmo...ahem...'The man who hated Britain'...was strictly antisemitic. But there's a nudge and a wink in there which a certain audience will absolutely pick up on.

[Oboogie]

It's not "brown men bad" that our Asian PM and Home Secretary are pushing. "Muslim men bad" is the message these two Hindus* want us to swallow.
The Tories are not being racist in this instance, they are being Islamophobic, in the spite of the evidence to the contrary. Braverman has specified a cultural problem of Muslim grooming gangs targeting white girls.

* Correction: It's actually one Hindu and one Buddhist, but the salient point is that they are not Muslims.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Bravermann is a Buddhist, albeit of a rather strange flavour.

Braverman is a member of the Triratna Buddhist Community (formerly the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order) and attends the London Buddhist Centre monthly. She took her oath of office on the Dhammapada.

More on the 'Three Jewels' (the Tri Ratner. Ironic, eh?)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/ ... rk-secrets

British-born guru Sangharakshita was mired in allegations of abuse for years. Now it seems the scandal in his wealthy order went far wider than previously acknowledged


[the Triratna Community's founder] Sangharakshita, lived there until his death last year at the age of 93. With its impressive grounds and gardens, it looks like a serene place for someone to spend their final years. But behind the scenes, the picture is a rather more turbulent one.

For decades the order has been dogged by claims of sexual misconduct, claims that often strayed into allegations of coercion and abuse but which were thought to involve only a handful of individuals at worst.


But now a bombshell internal report, produced by concerned members and shared with the Observer, has found that more than one in 10 of them claim to have experienced or observed sexual misconduct while in the order. Many of the allegations are against Sangharakshita himself, but others make it clear that he was not the only alleged perpetrator. Indeed, the report seems to indicate that the licentious culture the guru encouraged when he established his first centre in the 1960s, at a time when Timothy Leary was urging people to “turn on, tune in, drop out”, flourished across the order.

Yet, despite the lurid revelations, Sangharakshita’s influence lingers. The Adhisthana website carries many pictures of him, a bespectacled, slight man draped in holy robes. The photographs invite comparisons with Gandhi, but the two gurus come from very different backgrounds.

Born Dennis Lingwood, the son of a French polisher from Tooting, Sangharakshita, meaning “one who is protected by the spiritual community”, deserted from the British army in India during the second world war and wandered the subcontinent, studying with several leading Tibetan lamas.

Venturing out on his own, Lingwood developed his own, highly interpretative brand of Buddhism, drawing on elements of Nietzsche and Freud. Critics would accuse him of a pushing a “semi-intellectual potpourri of Buddhism” but he shrugged off the attacks, claiming he was helping the religion find new followers in the west.

Many of his ideas were unorthodox. Lingwood encouraged heterosexual followers to experiment with homosexuality as a means of expanding their minds; he was deeply critical of the nuclear family and of mixed-sex communities in general; he encouraged young men to break away from their families.

And if I may quote the opening lines of the Dhammapada, on which Braverman took her oath:

Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought. If with an impure mind a person speaks or acts suffering follows him like the wheel that follows the foot of the ox.

Oh the irony of the performative.

[Spoonman]

TBH I've been saying for a good while now that the centre & left parties, Labour included, should be very willing to throw shit back at the Tories/Brexiteers etc. and while an "upper moral ground" is always morally better, it's also fun to see right "whingers" get a taste of their own medicine. Watch the pips then squeak about "civility" when the people they've beaten down on for years suddenly get their hands on the bastards - classic right-wing political correctness.

And as for "Huh Huh Keif didn't prosecute Savile huh huh..." remind the Tories of this...





...while a couple of hoax images exist, they can't deny that Savile was a lifelong Tory supporter.

[Oboogie]

Bravermann is a Buddhist, albeit of a rather strange flavour.

My bad, I miss-remembered, it's her mother who is a Hindu. Anyway, my point still stands that it is two non-Muslims singling out Muslim paedophiles for public attention, whilst ignoring the majority.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

I see it as two Indians (or Indian heritage) taking a racist stance against Pakistan...

[Tubby Isaacs]

Ralph Milliband was long dead, and had never run for as much as chief dog catcher in Rutland. Attacking the Prime Minister for current sentencing isn’t like that. Nor is it like attacking Sadiq Khan for terrorism because of something to do with Jeremy Corbyn in 1984. The Howard advert was very bad though.

But there’s a reason Tories aren’t very popular. It’s that they do stuff like this.

[Tubby Isaacs]

To some extent, I think there’s a lot of negative ads because positive stuff costs money. If you’re a Labour Liz Truss, you can keep promising stuff. But if you want to be trusted on the economy, you probably can’t.

[Oboogie]

I see it as two Indians (or Indian heritage) taking a racist stance against Pakistan...

Maybe.
However, given that 15-20 million migrated at the time of Partition, I'm not convinced that Indians and Pakistanis are different races.
Surely, then, the prejudice is xenophobic and cultural rather than racist?
But I fear we're in danger of falling down a pedantic Easter bunny hole.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Racism covers more than race though, surely.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Racism, also religion and simple political and cultural differences.

There is considerable venom in some mouths over India/Pakistan.

The two countries have a complex and largely hostile relationship that is rooted in a multitude of historical and political events, most notably the partition of British India in August 1947. The India–Pakistan border is one of the most militarised international boundaries in the world.

In Britain this is not seen as much (though I have seen it, especially with middle-class Indians and working-class Pakistanis), but it exists, obviously more pronounced in the minds of extremists, of which Braverman must be counted as one.

There is a lengthy Wiki entry on India-Pakistan relations.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Another Sunak advert out on possession of firearms.

[Andy McDandy]

I've seen it among far right people: Indians run the corner shop or work as doctors. Pakistanis took your job at the factory. Imagine a Venn diagram with "taking the jobs" on one side, "thinking they're better than us" on the other, and "coming over here" at the intersection.

[Dalem Lake]

Another Sunak advert out on possession of firearms.

I've seen that one, really piss-poor and quite laughable stuff.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Yeah, it's not that many cases over 13 years, is it? God to be a better use of Labour campaigning time than that.