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Why does the guardian hate this country so much ?


Rewulf
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1 minute ago, ehb102 said:

Nope, sorry, reread all the thread and the article and still can't work out where the sensitivity is. Unless it's pain at any suggestion  that the past wasn't perfect and might have been done differently.  

 

Pain ? Thats one of the daftest things Ive ever heard !
How about disrespect ?
How about using an old ladies death to have a dig at the traditions and values that bought you and I into this world ?
If you cant see it , then I cant cant help you see it, and I suspect your media diet consists of a healthy portion of daily guardian.

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Just now, Rewulf said:

Whats the correlation between DVL s death , and the bulk of the article ?

Like I said originally, end of an era and a bit of reflection?

What was the purpose of that article in essence , you could hardly call it a celebration of her life, which most decent journalists would have done.
Any topic is fair game for a bit of tory bashing with the guardian/indy.

I'm a Tory voter, at least normally, nobody was bashing me up in that article and the article reflected post war Britain so if it was criticising Government then it was surely all governments since then?

This sums it up for me, never to miss an opportunity to give a good kick in the ballcocks to what it sees as its ideological enemies, as in , the majority of the British people.

I don't see national outrage based on the contents of that article. Why has it hit such a nerve with you?

At this moment in time , everything is about race.

Only if you fall in the trap to allow it to be, I genuinely believe you are better / smarter than that...

I really don't want to hark on about the whole BLM gig but if we can't, as a whole, even agree on what it "means" - and more importantly what it doesn't mean - then we have no basis for resolving the grievances around this. Similarly, if we equate any topic or issue to race then we are condemning that to the same, frankly, pathetic outcome.

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18 minutes ago, Raja Clavata said:

really don't want to hark on about the whole BLM gig but if we can't, as a whole, even agree on what it "means" - and more importantly what it doesn't mean - then we have no basis for resolving the grievances around this. Similarly, if we equate any topic or issue to race then we are condemning that to the same, frankly, pathetic outcome.

That was why I added the picture of the protest above, at the moment everything is being made about race, covid is in second place somehow?? Brexit doesn't get a mention. 

I turned on the telly this morning and whats being discussed( on bbc 1) is if the term BAME should be used at all, asking two girls, one mixed race and one black if they or their friends used the term, obviously they didn't.

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31 minutes ago, Raja Clavata said:

Only if you fall in the trap to allow it to be, I genuinely believe you are better / smarter than that...

I am , others arent.
The media is going to milk this for all its worth , and while its todays topic, people like Khan remove statues and place names, cause division and resentment , because he believes 'the public' support it, and nobody will complain for fear of the R word being levelled at them.

 

52 minutes ago, Raja Clavata said:

Like I said originally, end of an era and a bit of reflection?

If thats what you take from the article, fair enough, but to me it is what it at first appeared to be..a sneer piece, using the death of the woman to have a dig at its ideological 'enemies'
Which to my mind , is pretty sad and disgusting.

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49 minutes ago, Rewulf said:

I am , others arent.
The media is going to milk this for all its worth , and while its todays topic, people like Khan remove statues and place names, cause division and resentment , because he believes 'the public' support it, and nobody will complain for fear of the R word being levelled at them.

I have empathy with this.

If thats what you take from the article, fair enough, but to me it is what it at first appeared to be..a sneer piece, using the death of the woman to have a dig at its ideological 'enemies'
Which to my mind , is pretty sad and disgusting.

If that's genuinely how you took it, then again, I do understand your grievance and if your interpretation is correct then I also agree it is indeed sad and disgusting.

 

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6 hours ago, Rewulf said:

Pain ? Thats one of the daftest things Ive ever heard !
How about disrespect ?
How about using an old ladies death to have a dig at the traditions and values that bought you and I into this world ?
If you cant see it , then I cant cant help you see it, and I suspect your media diet consists of a healthy portion of daily guardian.

They taught us at school how "tradition" and "respect" meant a generation of men tugged their forelock and set off to fight for King and Country and those in power, those Gentlemen, used good honest working men and boys in a war of attrition, where they didn't care that the winner would have sacrificed the lives of millions so long as they had few more soldiers left than the other side. I am old enough to have listened to World War 1 veterans and to have listened to and lived with (and be one of) those damaged by the war for the next couple of generations. "Tradition" and "respect" meant "Know your place" and "Don't question your betters" and "Die because we tell you so" and "You are worth less a human because you have less money and connections". The traditions and values that brought ME into this world were ones that questioned the Establishment and Tradition and all the things that blindly hurt so many for the whims of their "betters", and taught me that we HAD to question what was going on because not doing so was how six million Jews went to the gas chamber. We have to know why and we have to be able to look beyond how something makes us feel as an individual and look at the impact on the whole including the weak and the sick and the poor and the different, because the moment we start judging that one human is worth more than another we step on the slide into fascism. 

I stopped reading the Guardian when they decided men in dresses could be women. I might be a bleeding heart socialist but I'm not an idiot. 

 

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20 minutes ago, ehb102 said:

They taught us at school how "tradition" and "respect" meant a generation of men tugged their forelock and set off to fight for King and Country and those in power, those Gentlemen, used good honest working men and boys in a war of attrition, where they didn't care that the winner would have sacrificed the lives of millions so long as they had few more soldiers left than the other side. I am old enough to have listened to World War 1 veterans and to have listened to and lived with (and be one of) those damaged by the war for the next couple of generations. "Tradition" and "respect" meant "Know your place" and "Don't question your betters" and "Die because we tell you so" and "You are worth less a human because you have less money and connections". The traditions and values that brought ME into this world were ones that questioned the Establishment and Tradition and all the things that blindly hurt so many for the whims of their "betters", and taught me that we HAD to question what was going on because not doing so was how six million Jews went to the gas chamber. We have to know why and we have to be able to look beyond how something makes us feel as an individual and look at the impact on the whole including the weak and the sick and the poor and the different, because the moment we start judging that one human is worth more than another we step on the slide into fascism. 

I stopped reading the Guardian when they decided men in dresses could be women. I might be a bleeding heart socialist but I'm not an idiot. 

 

Spot on..👍

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I don’t believe the Guardian hates the country, just those it perceives to be the aristocracy and inherited wealth ( and therefore privileged ) especially if that includes those regarded as the establishment. 
Of course, none of this applies to they themselves. 🙂

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37 minutes ago, Scully said:

I don’t believe the Guardian hates the country, just those it perceives to be the aristocracy and inherited wealth ( and therefore privileged ) especially if that includes those regarded as the establishment. 
Of course, none of this applies to they themselves. 🙂

Ah yes -- London's champagne socialists and momentum puppets

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On 22/06/2020 at 17:23, Raja Clavata said:

Just to come back on this and provide some personal perspective.

My Father was born about a month prematurely (do the math if you doubt me) on the 23rd January 1946 after my GrandMother fell pregnant almost immediately upon my GrandFather’s return to the UK at the end of WW2.

As I’m sure was the case with many of his generation, her grew up with a desire to learn about both the Great Wars that had spanned the first half of the 20th Century, whilst not quite his specialist chosen subject he had a wealth of knowledge about WW2 having learnt not just from the popular literature in Britain at the time but also from other sources throughout Europe and beyond.

My brother and I were born in the early 70’s and we were brought up with the standard popular films about WW2, we were both fascinated by the war and in blissful ignorance of it’s true horrors. I have looked back on it with regret and guilt in older life at the way we used to pester our GrandFather to tell us about his war-time stories, he was very reluctant to do so and we didn’t really get much out of him on it. We didn’t understand it at the time of course but later came to realise that it was a horror in his past that he really did not want to be regularly reminded of and certainly not forced to recite. We were young, the films glorified the war and we were proud of our “Grandad Jack” and the few, very watered down, snippets of events he did share with us. Reality came crashing down on us with the scenes of the Sir Gallahad during the Falklands War.

Around the same time, the subscription to a WW2 magazine concluded and my Father had the magazines bound, by a friend of the family working in print, into a number of hardback books that effectively created an encyclopedia collection. Several years later I read those books and further came to realise that we were only part of the reason the Germans were defeated. The article in the link below captures the essence of my overall understanding, and to partially quote “England provided the time – meaning Churchill’s resolve and defiance in 1940-41- America provided the money, and Russia provided the blood.”

https://www.historynet.com/really-won-war.htm

This is not to take anything away from the hardship, suffering and dogged determination that the people of our nation suffered at the time.

But, I do believe that as a nation “we” have built a national myth on winning the Second World War by which I mean the extent to which we influenced the Allied success. I’m also quite sure we are not alone in doing this, far from it. But where we do appear rather unique is seemingly in not having properly moved on from it…

Even today we still hear phrases like “the Dunkirk spirit”, football “fans” sing about the colour of their Army and some treat others like they are at war with them. But it was only quite recently that these bellicose tendencies creeped into our “Politics”.

·         Farage cited the queue of immigrants lined up waiting to “invade us” in the run up to the 2016 referendum.

·         Leave.EU rightly suffered a huge backlash to a tweet citing “We didn’t win two world wars to be pushed around by Krauts”.

·         We were even recently told that we were fighting a war against an invisible enemy in COVID and it certainly did the trick of bringing us Plebs into line…

These can be seen as either good or bad, based on perspective.

So, why are we so hung-up on the war, well I reckon quite possibly (’66 aside – OK, I’m joking) it’s the last time that Britain was truly great on a world stage.

What bothers me though is not so much the inflated sense of our contribution to winning WW2 that is enshrined in UK history but the lack of recognition of other historical events such as:

·         The Suez crisis – which signalled the end of the Imperial past for both us and France. France decided it would take a leading role in a strong and “unified” Europe, we decided to cosy up to the US.

·         India partition – 1 million people were slaughtered in the run up to Indian Sub-continent independence, where is this taught in our curriculum?

·         Other aspects of our Imperial past, including our role in the slave trade – there are a significant percentage of adults of my age who believe we had not part in slavery.

The truth is of course out there but you do have to go looking for it a bit, at least in most cases. One of the lessons I learnt in life is you often learn more from failure than you do success.

Ironically Germany stands condemned today not for its historic Nazism but for its contemporary liberalism.

We may have “won the war” but the enormity of the Holocaust forced Germany to address the darkest aspects of its past whilst it appears to have given us an excuse to avoid thinking too deeply about the history of slavery or of empire and so minimise their horrors in comparison to the Holocaust.

I would strongly contest that these views and experiences do not make me any less of a Patriot than anyone who is either ignorant of our history or who conveniently chooses to overlook it. Similarly I am no less respectful of the suffering endured by those living through the Great Wars and the contribution they made to our history. Likewise I can equally respect other people and hold doors open for ladies etc.

I was born and bred throughout the war and my Grandmother always said that without the Americans we would not have succeeded. Back then everyone appreciated the American input but today I meet so many young people who detest America and they are the ones who have lived through these glorious years with everythng they wanted on a plate. To suggest that our forces made little or no contribution to the success is  in my view disgusting.  Ask any of those still alive who flew out of our airfields in the early years and also those who fought across North Africa and in the Far East.  It was good to read your final paragraphs.   

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438F9F3A-DED5-41D8-AEE9-185D68F71B4E.jpeg.b11f72edda31b277a08bef0d281c3a26.jpegThis is my grand father in North Africa in WW2. For context it isn’t a very small camel, he was 6’4” and built like a brick .... 0F0280C0-A172-4741-AD57-E05A74E58717.jpeg.70d3b2f1dc6368d4efc2d7843eba4509.jpeg

There are not many of them boys left now. Regardless, it is implicit that we appreciate their effort and sacrifice. 

Edited by WalkedUp
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15 hours ago, ehb102 said:

They taught us at school how "tradition" and "respect" meant a generation of men tugged their forelock and set off to fight for King and Country and those in power, those Gentlemen, used good honest working men and boys in a war of attrition, where they didn't care that the winner would have sacrificed the lives of millions so long as they had few more soldiers left than the other side. I am old enough to have listened to World War 1 veterans and to have listened to and lived with (and be one of) those damaged by the war for the next couple of generations. "Tradition" and "respect" meant "Know your place" and "Don't question your betters" and "Die because we tell you so" and "You are worth less a human because you have less money and connections". The traditions and values that brought ME into this world were ones that questioned the Establishment and Tradition and all the things that blindly hurt so many for the whims of their "betters", and taught me that we HAD to question what was going on because not doing so was how six million Jews went to the gas chamber. We have to know why and we have to be able to look beyond how something makes us feel as an individual and look at the impact on the whole including the weak and the sick and the poor and the different, because the moment we start judging that one human is worth more than another we step on the slide into fascism. 

Thats great , agree with 99% of that.

But its not really what we're talking about here, we are talking about respecting the traditions and values of those people doing the fighting, and those trying to keep it to together 'back home'
The way people dealt with the both wars, is a credit to the people of this nation , and people like Vera Lynn helped them deal with it, gave them hope that one day , things would be not only back to 'normal' but would somehow be better, and largely , they were.
The guardian article spits in the face of such lofty ideals, makes it seem like something to be embarrassed about, that nothing was achieved.
But it was.


The gap between the lords and the peasants decreased massively (maybe not financially ,  but spiritually) after WW1 , and still more after WW2 , for a very specific reason.
The experience of war was shared between them, they both lost the most precious commodity commited to warfare, the lives of their children.
The popular idea of 'lions led by donkeys' is great up to a point, but many many lines of aristocratic families were ended on the fields of battle.
Yes, the grunts took the brunt of the deaths, and the bit where you compare the values of life was accurate, but once the sons of the gentry realised that a bullet or shell made no distinction on those fields, the experience of combat and death was a SHARED experience, that galvanised , and changed perceptions.
The revolutions of social life between the wars are a testament to this.

16 hours ago, ehb102 said:

I might be a bleeding heart socialist but I'm not an idiot. 

Never doubted it for a moment.

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On 24/06/2020 at 17:35, ehb102 said:

They taught us at school how "tradition" and "respect" meant a generation of men tugged their forelock and set off to fight for King and Country and those in power, those Gentlemen, used good honest working men and boys in a war of attrition, where they didn't care that the winner would have sacrificed the lives of millions so long as they had few more soldiers left than the other side. I am old enough to have listened to World War 1 veterans and to have listened to and lived with (and be one of) those damaged by the war for the next couple of generations. "Tradition" and "respect" meant "Know your place" and "Don't question your betters" and "Die because we tell you so" and "You are worth less a human because you have less money and connections". The traditions and values that brought ME into this world were ones that questioned the Establishment and Tradition and all the things that blindly hurt so many for the whims of their "betters", and taught me that we HAD to question what was going on because not doing so was how six million Jews went to the gas chamber. We have to know why and we have to be able to look beyond how something makes us feel as an individual and look at the impact on the whole including the weak and the sick and the poor and the different, because the moment we start judging that one human is worth more than another we step on the slide into fascism. 

I stopped reading the Guardian when they decided men in dresses could be women. I might be a bleeding heart socialist but I'm not an idiot. 

 

Good post.

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On 24/06/2020 at 19:36, Walker570 said:

To suggest that our forces made little or no contribution to the success is  in my view disgusting.  

I agree and that in itself would be a distortion of historical fact.

On 24/06/2020 at 19:47, WalkedUp said:

This is my grand father in North Africa in WW2. For context it isn’t a very small camel, he was 6’4” and built like a brick .... 

There are not many of them boys left now. Regardless, it is implicit that we appreciate their effort and sacrifice. 

Thanks for sharing these personal pictures and, again, I agree.

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