Crofton Park Conservative Candidate suspended

Have put this in local politics (even though I don’t normally come here). I would of thought this is newsworthy so could live in general section @moderators ?

52 posts were split to a new topic: Dictionary definitions and religion

Certainly newsworthy enough that this forum member was glad it had been brought to general attention!

Local Politics is a public category so all members will see this topic (except those who specifically muted the category).

I’d say this is the right category for now, although if the topic descends into chaos it’ll probably have to move to the opt-in General Politics category.

Hm, sad story. But I will still be voting for Conservatives. A group is not responsible for one person’s mistake. The Bourough need changes, we need variouse parties representatives to shift years of standstill in Lewisham. We could live much better, Lewisham has a lot of potentials and opportunities that died before been born, partly because Lewisham residents lost faith that any other party will ever win and Labour will remain.

I spoke to people when doing flyers for one of the party in our ward for this elections, very depressing, people dont want to vote because ‘nothing will change anyway, Labour will win’.

As i came from a thirld world country with a totalitarian way of the country management, people had the same feelings, the only difference between us here and people there at that time is the number of people remaining in power. We have one party here and they had one person there that cannot be changed in both situations.

People should come out and vote. Dont like Concervatives, vote for LibDems, independent candidate, People Before Profit so we can have some balance in power and in the way the Bourough is managed.

I fear that any sensible discussion of the specifics will end up in General Politics (and then deleted from the forum entirely), so I’ll try to stick to the specifics.

The Conservatives have suspended the candidate. There are still two other candidates for the Conservatives in Crofton Park ward. The Conservative Party should be praised for taking decisive action when the issue was brought to their attention. It is not acceptable to say that ‘Islam has become the new Nazism’ - it demeans the holocaust, it gives strength to the fascists within the Muslim world who deny a tolerant and peaceful form of Islam, and it is insulting to the majority of Muslims who live in peace with their neighbours in this country.

When there are ‘pockets’ of anti-semitism is one major political party and ‘pockets’ of Islamophobia in another major political party, we can only hope that each of these parties throws out those responsible and says ‘not in our name’.

It is really good to consider the individual you are voting for and not just the party beside their name. But since few people have time to get to know all their candidates we must hope that the parties select individuals who are good for the community they are seeking to represent and will not bring their party into disrepute.

That is very thought provoking and a great idea but it’s your idea, and, what does it say about free speech?

I love you all guys but can we start a topic on free speech somewhere else before this thread is taken behind the closed doors.

I dont like when threads are split but the free speech debate will kill the current one by Chris hiding it.

Fair enough but it does go to the heart of the matter and is pretty non political.

Returning to the original point.

As the tweets have been removed and the twitter account made private it is difficult to understand what context those tweets were made. But nevertheless Karen Carpenter did not make them as a private citizen. She made these comments from a Twitter account called @ToryKaren and from which she reportedly was also running her campaign to become a Conservative counsellor in Lewisham. I would presume the Conservative Party felt this may not be consistent with their core values particularly in light of the praise received this week for the Government’s appointment of the first Muslim to a senior cabinet post.

Her free speech has not been curtailed. But free speech also has consequences. She remains a candidate in tomorrow’s election and if elected could continue to hold a position as an Independent if she wished, or as a member of another political party more inclined to accept these opinions.

Okay - I think we’re starting to spin wildly off topic here. Can I ask people to take 5 and come back after a cup of your favourite?

Thanks …

A post was merged into an existing topic: Dictionary definitions and religion

As amusing as the bickering is, I’ll skirt over and throw in my 2 pence…

I wonder if she was one of the paid tweeters that the Tories have been employing? Seemed to have quite the following and spare time. Doesn’t make the Tories’ Islamophobia problem look any better either. I’m sure Crofton Park residents will do the right thing tomorrow.

@KMB wanted to post the following:

Good evening. I’m a long time lurker but I have just signed up because I was reading the thread about the Conservative candidate and I wanted to comment on it, but it does not look like I am allowed to. That or I am unable to figure out how to do it. But the elections are tomorrow so would someone be able to say what I want to say on my behalf on the thread please. What I want to say is firstly a lot of the discussion on the thread has been about the meaning of “Islamism” but the candidate very clearly did not say Islamism, she very clearly said “Islam” in all her social media posts, so it looks like the discussion has gone off on a tangent that isn’t relevant to the candidate and the election. Second I noticed that Chris Beach said that he had been in contact with the candidate and that her tweets etc had been taken out of context, so it would be really good for the voting public if the context was explained here because it may affect people’s decisions tomorrow. Sorry if this is not a proper theme for a new thread but I wasn’t sure what to do and I really wanted to post something because it’s important that people get correct and non-confusing information before they vote.

Evening everyone.

This thread now has 3 flags we need to look at, and, despite a moderator request above, is back off topic.

I’m going to lock this thread until I can get back and review the flags and tidy up the thread sometime after 8pm.

Hi everyone.

I’ve moved around 3/4 of the posts to General Politics. A number don’t belong there, however it was virtually impossible to split the thread further and have it make sense with multi-quotes. In essence I’ve left what I think is relevant to @Brett 's post, so it can stay in a public category. Apologies to those whose posts have been moved for this reason.

Can we please keep all further conversations on topic please so we can leave this up.

I’ll get onto reviweing the flags now.

@Brett in answer to your original question I think local politics is the right category. The alternative I guess would be having it in the general forum but locking it, however that does go against the base principle of the forum. Happy to discuss this further if you like with the mod team and get your views (probably outside this thread though).

Have a good evening everyone.

Here’s a statement just put out by Karen, although it doesn’t mention the context of the tweets it clarifies her position on them now:

Now that her twitter feed is switched on again we can see how Karen felt about anti-semitic comments by members of the Labour Party:

Check out @Tory_Karen’s Tweet: https://twitter.com/Tory_Karen/status/989828978402881537?s=09

No doubt others will justify such anti-semitic comments as ‘freedom of speech’

@Michael Anti-Semitism means hostility toward Jewish people.

This, as Karen points out, is anti-semitism:

image1125×413 162 KB

Criticising a system of ideas (which is what Karen did) is not the same as abusing people. As we know, Islam is not a race. It is a set of ideas.

We should all be allowed to freely criticise ideas. In doing so we sometimes help the people that formerly believed those ideas.

Criticising homophobia, for example, might offend a lot of homophobes. But I’d say it’s the right thing to do - ultimately for the sake of both us, and homophobes themselves.

I agree - you make an important distinction between attacking people and ideas - not that any attack on ideas is very sensible.

I’m sure others would find grounds to defend Marc Wadsworth but I’m not getting involved in that issue now.

6 posts were split to a new topic: Culture and Criticism

This is an interesting debate however it has veered off Local Politics into Ethikos territory so unless anyone has any rigorous objections I am going to move some of this to this to a new topic under the that category.

Ok Some of the later posts have been moved to Ethikos Under a thread - Culture and Criticism. Please feel free to rename the topic and continue the debate.
Please note that Ethikos is an opt in category for verified members.