- Sun Aug 24, 2025 8:12 pm
#94873
Perhaps the presenter should have pushed him on the apparent contradiction between "Up to the job" and "overwhelmed".
Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Wed Aug 27, 2025 10:37 am This looks like a very online decision. You see tons of "journalists are really activists" stuff online, but local media still has a following (even if it's very hard to monetize). This probably won't go down well.Refirm supporters, like MAGA, are all in. I suspect they couldn't give a damn about this.
A Cross of St George flag flown during the European Women’s Championship signalled support for a great national team. For a few weeks, it even looked as if the flag might be reclaimed from fascists. This August, though, days after aggressive anti-migrant protests outside hotels where asylum seekers are housed, fly that flag from a lamppost and the gesture has a very different, far nastier meaning.
There’s a viral movement co-ordinating just this kind of pseudo-patriotic display, and there’s a reason they are doing it now. Anti-migrant protesters love their flags. Displaying them signals to one another what they stand for and what they are against. Claims that this is just inclusive patriotism are about as convincing as Bill Clinton’s declaration, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman”.
The concept of implicature, introduced by the philosopher HP Grice, is useful here. Implicature is the act of implying a meaning beyond the literal meaning of the words or other symbols we use. For anti-immigrants, festooning lampposts with national flags this August is mostly implicature signalling a “no foreigners in my town” stance – let’s not pretend otherwise.
Flag-flyers are calling out to fellow xenophobes. The literal meaning of the flags, something like “I’m proud to be English, and am proud to be proud” is a cover. For those already targeted by near-violent protests, the vile message is obvious: a cross of St George or a union jack flown today means “You’re not welcome here”
There are no plans for fracking to return in Lancashire, the county's Reform-led council has said, despite a wider party promise to let energy firms "drill, baby, drill".
Reform has pledged to lift the ban to access what deputy leader Richard Tice said was "potentially hundreds of billions of energy treasure in the form of shale gas" if they take power.
But Simon Evans, deputy leader of Lancashire County Council, said conditions on the Fylde Coast were "not conducive to fracking, and there are no plans for it to take place here".
He said the party supported fracking on a "case-by-case basis", adding more activity was expected in the east rather than the north-west of England.
County Councillor Joshn Roberts, cabinet member for rural affairs, told the BBC last month: "Fracking has its place but not everywhere in Lancashire.
"The geology is the issue the shale under the peat is so porous and unstable and that brings a real risk such as subsidence and water contamination.
"It has a place when safety is proven but it has been proven in Lancashire not to be safe."