[Pete L]

I do like "angryist".

[eltonioni]

Up to about 180 years ago, before cities took off in the UK, pretty much everyone was a slave. It took longer elsewhere.

[Sooty25]

Colston wasn't considered a bad person in his era. His business was legal, generated revenue, employment and no doubt paid taxes. Bristol benefited very nicely from him. ...

.. but the statue was commissioned and erected many decades later by a 'business owners club'*,

in recognition of his philanthropic activities

by which time Colston's activity had long been illegal and deplored, apparently in an attempt to enhance the reputation of those later businessfolk. The analogy would be the BBC commissioning Gill to create a statue and then erecting it at Broadcasting House after the details of his private diaries and proclivities were publicly known; that's not what happened.

* still active, with professed wholly philanthropic purpose; which is not to deny that they do good things today:

https://www.merchantventurers.com/

Colston was a merchant of multiple products to and from multiple countries over a period between 1672 and 1708. 36 years. Within that period he was only involved in the slave trade for 12 years and not solely involved.

I'm not suggesting the slave trade was right, but it was legal at the time and Colston did an awful lot for Bristol off the back of all of his activities. He even acted as their MP, so presumably the majority liked him then.
I don't see the recipients of his philanthropy offering to return all his donations in protest!

[Paultheparaglider]

Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis. A good expression which means times are changed; we also are changed with them.

Judging the past by the present is ultimately futile. It focuses on the wrong issue. What is far more important is to understand why times have changed, and how you want to further change things going forward.

Chucking the statue in the harbour probably slows progress more than it advances it because it is self indulgent, childish behaviour. It is uncivilised behaviour.

They could have found better ways to make their protest, but all would have involved a lot more hard work and have resulted in less instant gratification.

A bunch of silly kids who will hopefully grow up to be more constructive members of society. The jury is still out on that one.

[OCB]

I do like "angryist".

It's what happens when someone gets over-educated in history, politics, engineering and science (and economics, semantix.,,,)

I don't mean "becomes a grumpy pilot and rants on FF", although tbh there is probably a decent scientific paper in there if anyone wants to fund it....

Angry-ist is a personal reductionist/rationalist roll-up of many facets of modern politics.

I kinda like it - and thanks for appreciating it

[OCB]

Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis. A good expression which means times are changed; we also are changed with them.

Judging the past by the present is ultimately futile. It focuses on the wrong issue. What is far more important is to understand why times have changed, and how you want to further change things going forward.

Chucking the statue in the harbour probably slows progress more than it advances it because it is self indulgent, childish behaviour. It is uncivilised behaviour.

They could have found better ways to make their protest, but all would have involved a lot more hard work and have resulted in less instant gratification.

A bunch of silly kids who will hopefully grow up to be more constructive members of society. The jury is still out on that one.

I deleted, the,n put back all of this post.

In France - the joke is
67, the young revolted and wanted everything to change

A few year later - they revolted as they wanted it all to remain the same...

[nallen]

He even acted as their MP, so presumably the majority liked him then.

You don't know much about parliamentary elections in the 17th/18th centuries, do you?

(After Colston's time but not much had changed …)

[kanga]

... He even acted as their MP, so presumably the majority liked him then. ..

.. with a then very different franchise, confined essentially to male property owners, so likely to have considerable overlap with merchants like himself

But yes, perfectly valid points

[Bill McCarthy]

Slavery didn’t die out 180 years ago - in the far north, it had another name up to the late 50s (when mechanisation advanced rapidly) and that was farm servant, the now farm worker. I escaped to sea.

[OCB]

Slavery didn’t die out 180 years ago - in the far north, it had another name up to the late 50s (when mechanisation advanced rapidly) and that was farm servant, the now farm worker. I escaped to sea.

I got booted off a friend’s social meedja stuffeke for basically saying “understand your own (Scots) history before you defend /attack someone else’s”.

Said friend I’ve known since the mid 1980s, and this was exactly the sort of carp we’d debate and discover over a few pints of warm brown and mainly flat mildly alcoholic jars. No harm nor malice intended - just like minded folks bouncing topical subjects around.

I’ve now been “cancel cultured/gaslighted” for daring to stick to thon “ask first, shoot later” mentality that we had back then

[Sooty25]

He even acted as their MP, so presumably the majority liked him then.

You don't know much about parliamentary elections in the 17th/18th centuries, do you?

(After Colston's time but not much had changed …)

Probably very close to the truth, regarding both the elections and me!

[Paultheparaglider]

Not again.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-59996870

[Sooty25]

Not again.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-59996870

I know, just makes me laugh that one of them glued himself to an electric DLR train that was 3/4 full! Just think of all the diesel taxi's that got hailed 2 minutes later!

What a clown.

Maybe he'd been doing the environment more good by not having kids, who then had grand kids, I'm sure they will do more harm to the environment than he stands to save.

Hopefully I can burn some avgas tomorrow.

[Sooty25]

I do however, suspect Prince Andrew is going to get "hung" in the near future though. I suspect and availabe American jury has already decided he's guilty!

[CloudHound]

I formed an opinion of Prince Andrew years ago when a friend who had been in the Navy at the same time told me his nickname.

The Duke of Pork.