The Off Topic Topic

[The Larch]

They're horrible. They're like toy money.
Plus Churchill. Really not the face modern Britain should be putting forward

You're really just a terrible person aren't you Tyr.

Who doesn't like Churchill???

Churchill has plenty to dislike.

Oh I know - he had a complicated life with lots of ups and downs.

But his finest hour was WWII.  I still cannot see how anyone, while acknowledging his flaws, would dislike Churchill.

He was so beloved that the British people themselves voted him out of office at the first chance they had even before the war was over.

[Valmy]

He was so beloved that the British people themselves voted him out of office at the first chance they had even before the war was over.

Do not read too much into that, that was more of a vote for Labour's vision than a condemnation of Churchill. After all, they brought him back later. The Tories had been in power for decades by that point, it was way past time for them to go.

[The Larch]

He was so beloved that the British people themselves voted him out of office at the first chance they had even before the war was over.

Do not read too much into that, that was more of a vote for Labour's vision than a condemnation of Churchill. After all, they brought him back later. The Tories had been in power for decades by that point, it was way past time for them to go.

Why not read into that choice that he was not so universally beloved as you claim? Churchill has undergone a pretty serious deification in recent times. Back in the day people thought otherwise.

[Valmy]

Why not read into that choice that he was not so universally beloved as you claim? Churchill has undergone a pretty serious deification in recent times. Back in the day people thought otherwise.

Oh. I never claimed he was universally beloved. I just did not think that was necessarily was a rebuke to Churchill. People thought he was a great wartime leader but it was time to get a peacetime guy in there. Besides it is not like Attlee is not also pretty romanticized these days.

Churchill had been in public life for over five decades by that point (which frankly boggles the mind) people had a good idea of who he was and what his strengths and weaknesses as a leader were.

[Barrister]

They're horrible. They're like toy money.
Plus Churchill. Really not the face modern Britain should be putting forward

You're really just a terrible person aren't you Tyr.

Who doesn't like Churchill???

Churchill has plenty to dislike.

Oh I know - he had a complicated life with lots of ups and downs.

But his finest hour was WWII.  I still cannot see how anyone, while acknowledging his flaws, would dislike Churchill.

He was so beloved that the British people themselves voted him out of office at the first chance they had even before the war was over.

His personal popularity remained quite high (Wiki suggests in the 80% range), and of course he was returned to power a few years later.

[CountDeMoney]

With bestsellers under his belt, the guy got captured in uniform as a war correspondent when he wasn't an officer, walked away from the POW Hilton the put him in because of his father's name, and crossed 300 miles in 9 days.  At age 25.  He was a badass.

[The Brain]

Here's a good short documentary on Churchill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJf5wDGEiug

[Josquius]

So did he close some coal mines or what? 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonypandy_riots

:p

Well that is a new one.

Yeah, when I first heard it I was quite unsure how to respond.
That he would be a fitting person in  such a position sure, but that he was actively maneuvering for it by alienating himself politically? err.....

That would have made sense. The 'just a natural racist' was the part I did not understand.

I have heard many Churchill speeches and read lots of him and I don't get the 'OMG this guy is a raging white supremacist that dwarfs everybody else in the era from 1890-1960' but I admit my knowledge is not unlimited. But Churchill did have a bad habit of going on late night benders and then writing crazy shit that his staff would then have to go edit out later so probably some great racist shit there.

In the beginning less so.
But by the 30s at the least he was an embarrassment.
The popular story goes that Churchill was a visionary, he was the only man who saw the threat of Hitler whilst the British establishment blindly followed a policy of appeasement thinking nothing much of him. That because he dared to speak out on this matter Churchill found himself politically ostracized....
Where the true reason he found himself a political outcast in the 30s was that he wouldn't stop ranting about how Indian independence must never happen, how inferior Indians were, etc...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/not-his-finest-hour-the-dark-side-of-winston-churchill-2118317.html

Many of his colleagues thought Churchill was driven by a deep loathing of democracy for anyone other than the British and a tiny clique of supposedly superior races. This was clearest in his attitude to India. When Mahatma Gandhi launched his campaign of peaceful resistance, Churchill raged that he "ought to be lain bound hand and foot at the gates of Delhi, and then trampled on by an enormous elephant with the new Viceroy seated on its back." As the resistance swelled, he announced: "I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion." This hatred killed. To give just one, major, example, in 1943 a famine broke out in Bengal, caused – as the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen has proved – by the imperial policies of the British. Up to 3 million people starved to death while British officials begged Churchill to direct food supplies to the region. He bluntly refused. He raged that it was their own fault for "breeding like rabbits". At other times, he said the plague was "merrily" culling the population.

Good at making speeches.
But more otherwise more of a hindrance to the war effort than a help, Attlee did more actual work.
And overall  a massive cunt.

[Jacob]

Languish as an animated cat gif:

[Valmy]

I am glad we are so feisty after so many years.

[Valmy]

Good at making speeches.
But more otherwise more of a hindrance to the war effort than a help, Attlee did more actual work.
And overall  a massive cunt.

The very article you linked to pretty much undermines most of your argument here. And what 'work' exactly are you referring to?

[Tonitrus]

Languish as an animated cat gif:

I can't imagine Ed doing that kind of wicked parkour.

[Jacob]

Languish as an animated cat gif:

I can't imagine Ed doing that kind of wicker parkour.

Mostly we're like the lady with the chair.

[Eddie Teach]

Have you been feeling "bullied" Jacob? 

[Jacob]

Have you been feeling "bullied" Jacob? 

No. No claims to victimhood on my part.