In my view part of the danger of FPTP is that it encourages a two-party system and no pair of parties can encompass all the different issues and compromise.
Kilkrazy wrote: In my view part of the danger of FPTP is that it encourages a two-party system and no pair of parties can encompass all the different issues and compromise.
True but grand coalition or more than one in ot tends to get alot more unstable.
I can see advantage and disadvantage to both systems.
Kilkrazy wrote: In my view part of the danger of FPTP is that it encourages a two-party system and no pair of parties can encompass all the different issues and compromise.
True but grand coalition or more than one in ot tends to get alot more unstable.
I can see advantage and disadvantage to both systems.
It's only more unstable because it requires compromise, it considers more than an isolated view of one side of the argument. That makes for a stronger country, more inclusive. It challenges perceptions and facts are used to determine how we approach the world rather than be manipulated to fit a particularly perspective. A solution that results in one arty dominating for decades only results in certain groups benefiting and the rest suffering. It's the sort of thing that V for Vendetta warns against, although obviously exaggerated for the audience but some of the speeches made are quite relevant, for example the slogan for the incumbent party was "Strength through Unity, Unity through Faith" compare this to some of our current soundbites "Strong and Stable"
Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the now high chancellor, Adam Sutler. He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent.
It's academic anyway, the Tories are about as likely to change the voting system from FPTP, as they are to develop a compassionate ethical stance on just about anything.
However, I know quite a few conservatives, a lot actually, and they're mostly lovely people, one even drove an hour out of his way yesterday to help me out. However, the conservative party just seems to somehow come out with these ideas that end up inflicting uneccessary suffering or misery on the weakest members of our society.
None of the people I know would go out of their way to hurt anyone, or not offer to help and put themselves out for others, yet they do so every time they vote for the conservatives.
I occasionally point this out, and the most consistent reason I get is that they don't trust labour to not tax and spend. They see the role of Govt as purely a financial concern, and that everything else is unecessay interfering.
Which is an odd attitude, considering the fact we're part of a huge Govt institution.
I occasionally point this out, and the most consistent reason I get is that they don't trust labour to not tax and spend. They see the role of Govt as purely a financial concern, and that everything else is unecessay interfering.
Which is an odd attitude, considering the fact we're part of a huge Govt institution.
I wonder though which is the primary concern, the former or the latter. All governments tax and spend... If you didn't want that then there would be no government at all (or only the rich would be able to even get anywhere near being a politician). Like my brother I think the main concern comes from the tax because they don't see the benefit of the spend. Of course it's all well and good whilst things are going well, but then it lacks any consideration that they might need those services in the future because many don't anticipate anything bad happening (say being in car crash that puts you out of work for three years or a stroke at 50 etc). It doesn't make people bad, just failing to realise the consequences of not having that spend.
The majority of those who balloted voted Brexit, and as The Guardian knows that its opinion is liberal progressive Truth, Therefore the majority must have been too stupid to think for themselves and can only have been hoodwinked into voting against the revealed Truth.
After all anyone who supported Leave or is in general in disagreement with The Guardian must be an alt right knuckledragger.
It is not possible that people came to the conclusion to vote to Leave by any rational process or opinion as rationality is the exclusive purview of the Truth and the Truth belong to progressive liberalism as enshrined in The Guardian.
This conclusion is essentially the initial premise on which the supporting theory must be used to confirm.
And yes, progressives can the that up their own backsides; they are likely no longer consciously aware of it.
Kilkrazy wrote: In my view part of the danger of FPTP is that it encourages a two-party system and no pair of parties can encompass all the different issues and compromise.
True but grand coalition or more than one in ot tends to get alot more unstable.
I can see advantage and disadvantage to both systems.
The Empire successfully fought the two biggest wars in history with coalition governments.
That aside, what does stability mean in terms of government?
Kilkrazy wrote: In my view part of the danger of FPTP is that it encourages a two-party system and no pair of parties can encompass all the different issues and compromise.
True but grand coalition or more than one in ot tends to get alot more unstable.
I can see advantage and disadvantage to both systems.
The Empire successfully fought the two biggest wars in history with coalition governments.
That aside, what does stability mean in terms of government?
ones that are not likely to crumble due to internal disagreement. more parties you add more chances it happens. not that its a bad form of govement but i do see advantages of are a majority over a combined majority,
Though in counter a partner like lib/con did tend to soften each others to be more sensible both ways,
Last time the danger to economy and nation forced its requirement to be established.,
True but they also had a very big reason forcing unity, and compromise even if they disagree and if they failed it was far more lost than votes or seats in parliment, . sometimes you don't have same level of outside drive to make that happen.
If FPTP was acceptable in 1997 it is acceptable today.
Lib Dems would love it if it benefited them.
FPTP has a superior feature, it separates each component of the election down to is individual MP. The UK system doesn't have people directly voting for party x or party y, they vote for their local representative MP.
This is inherently fair as it parses out democracy to where it should be to an MP and the geographical area they are accountable to.
The majority of those who balloted voted Brexit, and as The Guardian knows that its opinion is liberal progressive Truth, Therefore the majority must have been too stupid to think for themselves and can only have been hoodwinked into voting against the revealed Truth.
After all anyone who supported Leave or is in general in disagreement with The Guardian must be an alt right knuckledragger.
It is not possible that people came to the conclusion to vote to Leave by any rational process or opinion as rationality is the exclusive purview of the Truth and the Truth belong to progressive liberalism as enshrined in The Guardian.
Except the guardian didn't say that such were people "have been to stupid to think for themselves". This is about targeted campaigns on a small number of undecided voters and bombarding them with weighted information to influence their decision making process. We are humans, we have psychological 'weaknesses' that can be exploited which is something the military do look into. It is not about being brainwashed its about subtly changing peoples views over time by providing information that favours ones particular stand point and altering views so they conform. You haven't provided any alternative about why the article isn't correct, only throwing abuse at the Guardian for reporting what it has investigated. That's the point of investigative journalism, if it's wrong then further investigations will show it to be. Refusing that it can be the case just because it comes from the Guardian is just denial. This sort of journalism is miles above "Enemies of the People" because at least there are things that can be checked and verified whereas the latter is just hate-mongering. What should be worrying is the influence that such a small group of people (and/or states noting the comments on possible Russian influence) can potentially have on referendums or elections that in the end have their own vested interest at heart. Not taking this seriously and flat out denying it just opens us up to more manipulation not less...
This conclusion is essentially the initial premise on which the supporting theory must be used to confirm.
And yes, progressives can the that up their own backsides; they are likely no longer consciously aware of it.
That's lovely and that you can argue your case with such a colourful backwards argument!
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Orlanth wrote: If FPTP was acceptable in 1997 it is acceptable today.
Lib Dems would love it if it benefited them.
FPTP has a superior feature, it separates each component of the election down to is individual MP. The UK system doesn't have people directly voting for party x or party y, they vote for their local representative MP.
This is inherently fair as it parses out democracy to where it should be to an MP and the geographical area they are accountable to.
That's not correct, you can still have PR and local representatives. In reality PR will give you better wider representatives and you are more likely to be able to find one that aligns with your views.
Also LDs were have been campaigning to change the electoral system for quite some time. Any system that allows for a relative minority to vote in a majority is not a good system in whatever year. It's more that the problems with it are becoming more and more pronounced over time.
My view is that internal disagreement within a government reflects disagreement among the wider electorate, and therefore is a good thing.
If this is true, the difference between a FPTP style "strong" government and a coalition of parties elected by PR is that in the PR system it is feasible for smaller partiers to campaign on a narrower platform of issues. This enables the electorate to more directly express its views on different policies and therefore results in decisions that are more likely to reflect the overall mood of the nation.
For all the money spent on this, leave supporters aren't alone in a dodgy approach to election spending. I'm not clear exactly how they targeted people with adverts. Some screenshots with examples would be good to get a clear idea what we're talking about.
I recall the government spending millions on information booklets sent to every house, that were distinctly pro-remain. Yet the excuse given was that it was the government's position and therefore nothing to do with the allocated spending for the Remain campaign, dodging both the referendum expenses and purdah. The cost of this was £9m, more than the £7 allocated to both campaigns. Could that also have swayed 1% of the population? You can't complain about the opposition when you blatantly have dirty hands.
On the subject of Brexit, I will recall this incident, and yeah it's slightly OT, but it's a reason for my leave vote:
A few years back, at the height of the Ukraine crisis, I was following the coverage quite intensely, and there is one incident I'll never forget.
The protestors had set up camps, barricades, roadblocks etc etc
And then the German foreign minister turned up in Kiev. And then the EU representative turned up, and so on...
And then they went straight from the airport to the protesters' camps...
Not the Ukraine foreign ministry or meeting with some other government representative, but the camps. The camps...the protesters...
It was as clear a breach and violation of diplomatic protocol as you're ever likely to see...
Could you imagine the outcry that would have ensued if the Russian foreign minister had joined the London riots of 2012, or the student protests?
I knew then, that it was crystal clear, that the EU was more than a trading block, then it was determined to expand whatever the cost, even if it meant a geopolitical clash with the Russians.
It's not THE reason, but it is A reason why I voted leave, so this nonsense in the Guardian today carries no water with me.
Except the guardian didn't say that such were people "have been to stupid to think for themselves".
They imply that indirectly, but they imply that strongly.
People voted leave, so to the Guardian that meant they were hoodwinked on immigration, of hoodwinked by Farage, or hoodwinked on EU bureaucracy, or hoodwinked over the NHS. The repeated implication is that Leave voters wee gullible and needed shepherding away from these opinions.
That's lovely and that you can argue your case with such a colourful backwards argument!
Not surprised you don't see it. The progressive bubble is a real phenomenon and a dangerous one. Take 'safe spacing' for example, where freedom of personal doctrine is achieved by denial of platform, and this occurs in places of education.
That's not correct, you can still have PR and local representatives. In reality PR will give you better wider representatives and you are more likely to be able to find one that aligns with your views.
Actually PR gives you regional not local representatives, because actual local representation has to be sacrificed to give the block of votes available to fuel a multi vacancy per voting area. Also there is still no guarantee of representation, also it denies the public the opportunity to vote against candidates directly, because even with fringe parties the top list candidate become unshakably safe unless the vote is effectively wiped out.
Also LDs were have been campaigning to change the electoral system for quite some time. Any system that allows for a relative minority to vote in a majority is not a good system in whatever year. It's more that the problems with it are becoming more and more pronounced over time.
The system is inherently fair as it is, however it is a political system and it is used for advantage.
You might not have noticed this but the UK electoral system is personal not party based, the ballot is for the individual local representative. Over time those representatives have formed parties, but no matter what the press say and no matter how often a voter chooses to look at the party and not the candidate name that is not what is happening.
We have the 'mother of parliaments' and while it elects individual MP's is is also of itself the foundation of the modern party system also. However we didn't invent democracy, the Greeks did, and it was they that formed the theories. Democracy begins to break down once an electorate reaches over a thousand voters, they knew that even then. The Uk parliamentary system is in actuality one of the fairer ones because is devests democracy to as local a level as possible for the representation. How this is used is up to people, and people will find advantage if they can. PR is just a way of saying 'jerrymander different', the answer is to find candidates who can enthuse a local population to vote for them. Whether x million Lib Dems have fewer actual MP's is just statistical noise, instead of blaming the system they need to get local people to vote for local candidates.
Got the first bit of local Lib Dem propaganda through the door today, all dressed up to look like a real local newspaper, with only the content to suggest it might not be real, and a single mention in fine print right at the bottom of the first page that says it was published and promoted on behalf of the Lib Dem candidate to confirm it.
You'd think that, for all the criticism of "fake news" over the past half year, dressing your propaganda up as a newspaper might not be the best idea in the world. The guy apparently decided otherwise.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: On the subject of Brexit, I will recall this incident, and yeah it's slightly OT, but it's a reason for my leave vote:
A few years back, at the height of the Ukraine crisis, I was following the coverage quite intensely, and there is one incident I'll never forget.
The protestors had set up camps, barricades, roadblocks etc etc
And then the German foreign minister turned up in Kiev. And then the EU representative turned up, and so on...
And then they went straight from the airport to the protesters' camps...
Not the Ukraine foreign ministry or meeting with some other government representative, but the camps. The camps...the protesters...
It was as clear a breach and violation of diplomatic protocol as you're ever likely to see...
Could you imagine the outcry that would have ensued if the Russian foreign minister had joined the London riots of 2012, or the student protests?
I knew then, that it was crystal clear, that the EU was more than a trading block, then it was determined to expand whatever the cost, even if it meant a geopolitical clash with the Russians.
It's not THE reason, but it is A reason why I voted leave, so this nonsense in the Guardian today carries no water with me.
That's clearly pretty partisan response to the situation.
Ots a internal matter, and they should of impartial or close to as you can.
You look at the Federal Government in Washington from its birth in the 18th century, and you look at the growth rate of the EU/EEC/Steel community etc etc
from day 1, and they have done nothing but grow and grow at a staggering rate. It's the nature of the beast.
The EU has a fiscal union, wants a political union (it needs it for the Euro to survive) so why shouldn't it have a foreign policy?
The logical conclusion of the EU is The United States of Europe. A blind man could see that.
The logical conclusion of TTIP and the Trans Pacific Trade agreement was to join both togther.
It may surprise some people, but I think the EU is a wonderful idea in theory, but an idea that has been badly executed.
Who could argue against peace in Europe? Not I...never...
But I believe that democracy works best the closer you are to it. But if you seperate the people from the decision makers with MEPs, European Commision, President this, president that, and an organisation that grows and grows with unaccountable global trade deals...
Then people are cut off and unrest and bitterness sets in.
We see that already. Paradoxically, the EU is creating more trouble, not less. Increasing the risk of strife, not preventing it.
That, in a nutshell, is why I voted to leave.
Not because I believe that idiot Farage (I detest that man) or was taken in by that horsegak about 350 million a week, or straight bananas...
I hope I'm wrong, but I think the EU will be the death of Europe, not it's lifesaver, and that would be the supreme irony...
You look at the Federal Government in Washington from its birth in the 18th century, and you look at the growth rate of the EU/EEC/Steel community etc etc
from day 1, and they have done nothing but grow and grow at a staggering rate. It's the nature of the beast.
The EU has a fiscal union, wants a political union (it needs it for the Euro to survive) so why shouldn't it have a foreign policy?
The logical conclusion of the EU is The United States of Europe. A blind man could see that.
The logical conclusion of TTIP and the Trans Pacific Trade agreement was to join both togther.
It may surprise some people, but I think the EU is a wonderful idea in theory, but an idea that has been badly executed.
Who could argue against peace in Europe? Not I...never...
But I believe that democracy works best the closer you are to it. But if you seperate the people from the decision makers with MEPs, European Commision, President this, president that, and an organisation that grows and grows with unaccountable global trade deals...
Then people are cut off and unrest and bitterness sets in.
We see that already. Paradoxically, the EU is creating more trouble, not less. Increasing the risk of strife, not preventing it.
That, in a nutshell, is why I voted to leave.
Not because I believe that idiot Farage (I detest that man) or was taken in by that horsegak about 350 million a week, or straight bananas...
I hope I'm wrong, but I think the EU will be the death of Europe, not it's lifesaver, and that would be the supreme irony...
Aye...
They added so many layers and things that part citizens from there leaders in Europe.
They expanded too fast I think..
Had it not moved to Greece, and Eastern Europe as far I do believe we may not of had brexit.
The older central Europe block would of had less economic variation and maybe been far more stable and easier to unite under one policey etc.
But I believe that democracy works best the closer you are to it. But if you seperate the people from the decision makers with MEPs, European Commision, President this, president that, and an organisation that grows and grows with unaccountable global trade deals...
Then people are cut off and unrest and bitterness sets in.
This happens with literally every organization of any size. Be it a company of 50 people or a megastate of hundreds of millions. You can see it in the UK where there are multiple elements in multiple areas that all feel cut off, dictated to, and controlled by London & Westminster, and that's at a *far* smaller scale. This is nothing new, and has been the case for hundreds of years and the cause of bloodshed...more than once. Hence why there was so much strife in Ireland throughout the 20th century, a strong SNP today, and rumblings in Wales and Cornwall.
While there is some very legitimate criticism of EU policy, structure, etc, any organization of its size is naturally going to have some level of disconnect and have many people that, no matter how well the EU is devolved/locally connected/etc, will never be pro-EU. Same with the US for much of its existence.
r_squared wrote: It's academic anyway, the Tories are about as likely to change the voting system from FPTP, as they are to develop a compassionate ethical stance on just about anything.
However, I know quite a few conservatives, a lot actually, and they're mostly lovely people, one even drove an hour out of his way yesterday to help me out. However, the conservative party just seems to somehow come out with these ideas that end up inflicting uneccessary suffering or misery on the weakest members of our society.
None of the people I know would go out of their way to hurt anyone, or not offer to help and put themselves out for others, yet they do so every time they vote for the conservatives.
I occasionally point this out, and the most consistent reason I get is that they don't trust labour to not tax and spend. They see the role of Govt as purely a financial concern, and that everything else is unecessay interfering.
Which is an odd attitude, considering the fact we're part of a huge Govt institution.
They might be nice people but that doesn't stop them from being ignorant, which prevents them from being able to fully empathize with those that the Tories are currently crapping on, that is of course until their local A&E shuts down, or they get sick/loose their job and find themselves being made destitute. Honestly though at this point ignorance isn't even an excuse, I get that all the alternatives might 'scare' them, but there's just no escaping the fact that these perfectly Human voters are allowing a very ruthless government to deny help to those who need it the most. You only have to look in a town centre to see the impact of their collaboration, how much suffering is it all worth?
But I believe that democracy works best the closer you are to it. But if you seperate the people from the decision makers with MEPs, European Commision, President this, president that, and an organisation that grows and grows with unaccountable global trade deals...
Then people are cut off and unrest and bitterness sets in.
This happens with literally every organization of any size. Be it a company of 50 people or a megastate of hundreds of millions. You can see it in the UK where there are multiple elements in multiple areas that all feel cut off, dictated to, and controlled by London & Westminster, and that's at a *far* smaller scale. This is nothing new, and has been the case for hundreds of years and the cause of bloodshed...more than once. Hence why there was so much strife in Ireland throughout the 20th century, a strong SNP today, and rumblings in Wales and Cornwall.
While there is some very legitimate criticism of EU policy, structure, etc, any organization of its size is naturally going to have some level of disconnect and have many people that, no matter how well the EU is devolved/locally connected/etc, will never be pro-EU. Same with the US for much of its existence.
That's why you need to build it from the ground up. Like the American system which was designed pretty much from the early days.mive said this before, but the EU are trying to work backwards and it just doesn't work. The longer it goes on the less democratic it becomes. Eventually it will probably turn into a Franco-German alliance with friends due to the vast differn said between Germany and France and the rest of the EU. That's why America has the Electoral College so America isn't only ruled by 5 states out of 50.
But I believe that democracy works best the closer you are to it. But if you seperate the people from the decision makers with MEPs, European Commision, President this, president that, and an organisation that grows and grows with unaccountable global trade deals...
Then people are cut off and unrest and bitterness sets in.
This happens with literally every organization of any size. Be it a company of 50 people or a megastate of hundreds of millions. You can see it in the UK where there are multiple elements in multiple areas that all feel cut off, dictated to, and controlled by London & Westminster, and that's at a *far* smaller scale. This is nothing new, and has been the case for hundreds of years and the cause of bloodshed...more than once. Hence why there was so much strife in Ireland throughout the 20th century, a strong SNP today, and rumblings in Wales and Cornwall.
While there is some very legitimate criticism of EU policy, structure, etc, any organization of its size is naturally going to have some level of disconnect and have many people that, no matter how well the EU is devolved/locally connected/etc, will never be pro-EU. Same with the US for much of its existence.
That's why you need to build it from the ground up. Like the American system which was designed pretty much from the early days.mive said this before, but the EU are trying to work backwards and it just doesn't work. The longer it goes on the less democratic it becomes. Eventually it will probably turn into a Franco-German alliance with friends due to the vast differn said between Germany and France and the rest of the EU. That's why America has the Electoral College so America isn't only ruled by 5 states out of 50.
You do realize that the EU is equally democratic and that votes are distributed based on population size in the European Parliament? With the European Commission based on 28 members, each one picked by a respective member state? Everything in the EU is directly or indirectly chosen by us the voters. Same as the US.
But I believe that democracy works best the closer you are to it. But if you seperate the people from the decision makers with MEPs, European Commision, President this, president that, and an organisation that grows and grows with unaccountable global trade deals...
Then people are cut off and unrest and bitterness sets in.
This happens with literally every organization of any size. Be it a company of 50 people or a megastate of hundreds of millions. You can see it in the UK where there are multiple elements in multiple areas that all feel cut off, dictated to, and controlled by London & Westminster, and that's at a *far* smaller scale. This is nothing new, and has been the case for hundreds of years and the cause of bloodshed...more than once. Hence why there was so much strife in Ireland throughout the 20th century, a strong SNP today, and rumblings in Wales and Cornwall.
While there is some very legitimate criticism of EU policy, structure, etc, any organization of its size is naturally going to have some level of disconnect and have many people that, no matter how well the EU is devolved/locally connected/etc, will never be pro-EU. Same with the US for much of its existence.
That's why you need to build it from the ground up. Like the American system which was designed pretty much from the early days.mive said this before, but the EU are trying to work backwards and it just doesn't work. The longer it goes on the less democratic it becomes. Eventually it will probably turn into a Franco-German alliance with friends due to the vast differn said between Germany and France and the rest of the EU. That's why America has the Electoral College so America isn't only ruled by 5 states out of 50.
You do realize that the EU is equally democratic and that votes are distributed based on population size in the European Parliament? With the European Commission based on 28 members each on picked by a respective member state? Everything in the EU is directly or indirectly chosen by us the voters. Same as the US.
Having a system based off population is not democratic in the slightest. Germany has more MEPs than the 10 smallest nation states. Germany is equal to a third of the total members of the EU.
As for the commission, that is 1 head of state. Just 1. In order to get anything to the commission you need 25% of the commission to support it. So how do you get the support of 6 other heads of state?
It just doesn't work, and that's only 2 parts of the system.
If the EU were to reduce the amount of MEPs so that each country had an equal amount, then we'd be getting somewhere. But when one country can brush off the concerns of 10 others, it isn't democratic.
But I believe that democracy works best the closer you are to it. But if you seperate the people from the decision makers with MEPs, European Commision, President this, president that, and an organisation that grows and grows with unaccountable global trade deals...
Then people are cut off and unrest and bitterness sets in.
This happens with literally every organization of any size. Be it a company of 50 people or a megastate of hundreds of millions. You can see it in the UK where there are multiple elements in multiple areas that all feel cut off, dictated to, and controlled by London & Westminster, and that's at a *far* smaller scale. This is nothing new, and has been the case for hundreds of years and the cause of bloodshed...more than once. Hence why there was so much strife in Ireland throughout the 20th century, a strong SNP today, and rumblings in Wales and Cornwall.
While there is some very legitimate criticism of EU policy, structure, etc, any organization of its size is naturally going to have some level of disconnect and have many people that, no matter how well the EU is devolved/locally connected/etc, will never be pro-EU. Same with the US for much of its existence.
That's why you need to build it from the ground up. Like the American system which was designed pretty much from the early days.mive said this before, but the EU are trying to work backwards and it just doesn't work. The longer it goes on the less democratic it becomes.
Could you expand on that more just out of curiosity? I'm not sure I follow your meaning in this sense.
Eventually it will probably turn into a Franco-German alliance with friends due to the vast differn said between Germany and France and the rest of the EU.
Without the UK that's far more likely as there won't be another major power to sway things, but even then, it's unlikely to be a Franco-German iron dominion, they have their own issues and concerns and other elements of Europe aren't going to be as comparatively weak as they are now forever.
That's why America has the Electoral College so America isn't only ruled by 5 states out of 50.
Except that's exactly what the electoral college does (they're just not the biggest states) if you don't live in one of a small number of swing states, your vote for president is effectively simply tossed out. Look at our last election and see how well that system worked out if you want to talk about democratic representation
seems they love interviews turning into burning wrecks.
they seem to making a few mistakes of late, not to say others have not but thisis what 2-3 in only a week..
You do realize that the EU is equally democratic and that votes are distributed based on population size in the European Parliament? With the European Commission based on 28 members, each one picked by a respective member state? Everything in the EU is directly or indirectly chosen by us the voters. Same as the US.
No. Nobody in the UK knows that. We're all just taught about the faceless 'Eurocrats' banning our bendy bananas, giving our fish to the very same Vikings we kicked out of the Danelaw, and forcing Romanians to occupy all the council housing and both scrounge benefits and take all the jobs. And yet the largely-tabloid media somehow fails to enlighten us by explaining how these pompous panjandra managed to achieve their lofty positions. Weird eh?
But I believe that democracy works best the closer you are to it. But if you seperate the people from the decision makers with MEPs, European Commision, President this, president that, and an organisation that grows and grows with unaccountable global trade deals...
Then people are cut off and unrest and bitterness sets in.
This happens with literally every organization of any size. Be it a company of 50 people or a megastate of hundreds of millions. You can see it in the UK where there are multiple elements in multiple areas that all feel cut off, dictated to, and controlled by London & Westminster, and that's at a *far* smaller scale. This is nothing new, and has been the case for hundreds of years and the cause of bloodshed...more than once. Hence why there was so much strife in Ireland throughout the 20th century, a strong SNP today, and rumblings in Wales and Cornwall.
While there is some very legitimate criticism of EU policy, structure, etc, any organization of its size is naturally going to have some level of disconnect and have many people that, no matter how well the EU is devolved/locally connected/etc, will never be pro-EU. Same with the US for much of its existence.
That's why you need to build it from the ground up. Like the American system which was designed pretty much from the early days.mive said this before, but the EU are trying to work backwards and it just doesn't work. The longer it goes on the less democratic it becomes. Eventually it will probably turn into a Franco-German alliance with friends due to the vast differn said between Germany and France and the rest of the EU. That's why America has the Electoral College so America isn't only ruled by 5 states out of 50.
You do realize that the EU is equally democratic and that votes are distributed based on population size in the European Parliament? With the European Commission based on 28 members each on picked by a respective member state? Everything in the EU is directly or indirectly chosen by us the voters. Same as the US.
Having a system based off population is not democratic in the slightest. Germany has more MEPs than the 10 smallest nation states. Germany is equal to a third of the total members of the EU.
As for the commission, that is 1 head of state. Just 1. In order to get anything to the commission you need 25% of the commission to support it. So how do you get the support of 6 other heads of state?
It just doesn't work, and that's only 2 parts of the system.
If the EU were to reduce the amount of MEPs so that each country had an equal amount, then we'd be getting somewhere. But when one country can brush off the concerns of 10 others, it isn't democratic.
Germany has more people than the last 10 countries combined. Germany actually has less votes than it should receive based on its population to balance things out. For example Luxembourg has 1/16th of the German vote while only having 1/160th of the German population. Smaller countries already have more votes compared to Germany. The same argument can however be made for the UK, why has the UK so many votes compared to the smaller states?
What are you talking about? The commission is 28 members and each member state submits one candidate. What do heads of state have to do with it?
You mean that a country with half a million people should have as many MEPs as a country with 80 million people? And you think the EU is undemocratic now? You do realize this makes the UK and the US undemocratic as well?
You do realize that the EU is equally democratic and that votes are distributed based on population size in the European Parliament? With the European Commission based on 28 members, each one picked by a respective member state? Everything in the EU is directly or indirectly chosen by us the voters. Same as the US.
No. Nobody in the UK knows that. We're all just taught about the faceless 'Eurocrats' banning our bendy bananas, giving our fish to the very same Vikings we kicked out of the Danelaw, and forcing Romanians to occupy all the council housing and both scrounge benefits and take all the jobs. And yet the largely-tabloid media somehow fails to enlighten us by explaining how these pompous panjandra managed to achieve their lofty positions. Weird eh?
Hilarious. We have some of the same people in the Wilders crowd.
But I believe that democracy works best the closer you are to it. But if you seperate the people from the decision makers with MEPs, European Commision, President this, president that, and an organisation that grows and grows with unaccountable global trade deals...
Then people are cut off and unrest and bitterness sets in.
This happens with literally every organization of any size. Be it a company of 50 people or a megastate of hundreds of millions. You can see it in the UK where there are multiple elements in multiple areas that all feel cut off, dictated to, and controlled by London & Westminster, and that's at a *far* smaller scale
Yeah, but there's a question of intent I think. You're correct that practically any organisation, given sufficient resources, will naturally expand. But in the context you're referring to, it's merely a result of mission creep, private empire building by managers, and so forth. At the end of the day, the Westminster Government very clearly espouses what its remit is, what it governs over, and when it chooses to extend/change that, precisely what it intends to do, why, and how.
In the case of the EU, to steal a wonderful direct quote from Mr Juncker on the expansion of the EU remit:-
"We decide on something, leave it lying around, and wait and see what happens. If no one kicks up a fuss, because most people don't understand what has been decided, we continue step by step until there is no turning back."
It's a little more deliberate and intentional than that natural outgrowth all organisations suffer from. It's the difference between a mid-level manager choosing to hire two secretaries
where one will do, and the CEO/Board making a conscious decision to expand into a new market but cook the books so the shareholders can't find out.
With regards to the European super-state, I'm aware that sometimes europhiles wave at the original Treaty of Rome and say 'It's right there, if you want to see it'. I maintain though, that the vague tenet to promote European understanding contained therein is not equivalent to saying 'We wish to build a new integrated nation-state from the component members', and only someone looking for any straw to grasp would promote it as such. To continue the business analogy, it's much like pointing to the Mission Statement of a company to 'Be innovative' as the reason for the CEO maintaining a private jet at company expense. You can just about link the two if you work hard and obfuscate, but it's pretty obvious how loose the connection is.
Note that I have no issue with a United European Government as a concept, or even with the EU becoming it. I just wish they'd be bloody honest about it. Fearfulness for whatever supra-government would ultimately derive from such two faced misdirection is one of the primary reasons I voted out.
What was that quote I heard about the referendum for the EU constitution? If the answer is yes it's full steam ahead. If the answer is no we will continue. That's (one reason) why I hate it. Democracy means feth all to them.
You mean that a country with half a million people should have as many MEP as a country with 80 million people? And you think the EU is undemocratic now?
The fact that the people of one country don't want to be overruled by the people of another much larger country?
Its the same exact reason why the SNP want Scottish independence from the UK, so Scotland isn't overruled by the much bigger population of England.
But I believe that democracy works best the closer you are to it. But if you seperate the people from the decision makers with MEPs, European Commision, President this, president that, and an organisation that grows and grows with unaccountable global trade deals...
Then people are cut off and unrest and bitterness sets in.
This happens with literally every organization of any size. Be it a company of 50 people or a megastate of hundreds of millions. You can see it in the UK where there are multiple elements in multiple areas that all feel cut off, dictated to, and controlled by London & Westminster, and that's at a *far* smaller scale. This is nothing new, and has been the case for hundreds of years and the cause of bloodshed...more than once. Hence why there was so much strife in Ireland throughout the 20th century, a strong SNP today, and rumblings in Wales and Cornwall.
While there is some very legitimate criticism of EU policy, structure, etc, any organization of its size is naturally going to have some level of disconnect and have many people that, no matter how well the EU is devolved/locally connected/etc, will never be pro-EU. Same with the US for much of its existence.
That's why you need to build it from the ground up. Like the American system which was designed pretty much from the early days.mive said this before, but the EU are trying to work backwards and it just doesn't work. The longer it goes on the less democratic it becomes. Eventually it will probably turn into a Franco-German alliance with friends due to the vast differn said between Germany and France and the rest of the EU. That's why America has the Electoral College so America isn't only ruled by 5 states out of 50.
You do realize that the EU is equally democratic and that votes are distributed based on population size in the European Parliament? With the European Commission based on 28 members each on picked by a respective member state? Everything in the EU is directly or indirectly chosen by us the voters. Same as the US.
Having a system based off population is not democratic in the slightest. Germany has more MEPs than the 10 smallest nation states. Germany is equal to a third of the total members of the EU.
As for the commission, that is 1 head of state. Just 1. In order to get anything to the commission you need 25% of the commission to support it. So how do you get the support of 6 other heads of state?
It just doesn't work, and that's only 2 parts of the system.
If the EU were to reduce the amount of MEPs so that each country had an equal amount, then we'd be getting somewhere. But when one country can brush off the concerns of 10 others, it isn't democratic.
What would be undemocratic is if some people's opinions and choices were given more strength than others. This is exactly what you are suggesting, and what people like the SNP want. Power and government based on the number of votes and number of people is the very definition of democracy. "Rule of the majority" is a term used all the time. Any system where some people's votes are worth more is less democratic by definition.
But I believe that democracy works best the closer you are to it. But if you seperate the people from the decision makers with MEPs, European Commision, President this, president that, and an organisation that grows and grows with unaccountable global trade deals...
Then people are cut off and unrest and bitterness sets in.
This happens with literally every organization of any size. Be it a company of 50 people or a megastate of hundreds of millions. You can see it in the UK where there are multiple elements in multiple areas that all feel cut off, dictated to, and controlled by London & Westminster, and that's at a *far* smaller scale. This is nothing new, and has been the case for hundreds of years and the cause of bloodshed...more than once. Hence why there was so much strife in Ireland throughout the 20th century, a strong SNP today, and rumblings in Wales and Cornwall.
While there is some very legitimate criticism of EU policy, structure, etc, any organization of its size is naturally going to have some level of disconnect and have many people that, no matter how well the EU is devolved/locally connected/etc, will never be pro-EU. Same with the US for much of its existence.
That's why you need to build it from the ground up. Like the American system which was designed pretty much from the early days.mive said this before, but the EU are trying to work backwards and it just doesn't work. The longer it goes on the less democratic it becomes. Eventually it will probably turn into a Franco-German alliance with friends due to the vast differn said between Germany and France and the rest of the EU. That's why America has the Electoral College so America isn't only ruled by 5 states out of 50.
You do realize that the EU is equally democratic and that votes are distributed based on population size in the European Parliament? With the European Commission based on 28 members each on picked by a respective member state? Everything in the EU is directly or indirectly chosen by us the voters. Same as the US.
Having a system based off population is not democratic in the slightest. Germany has more MEPs than the 10 smallest nation states. Germany is equal to a third of the total members of the EU.
As for the commission, that is 1 head of state. Just 1. In order to get anything to the commission you need 25% of the commission to support it. So how do you get the support of 6 other heads of state?
It just doesn't work, and that's only 2 parts of the system.
If the EU were to reduce the amount of MEPs so that each country had an equal amount, then we'd be getting somewhere. But when one country can brush off the concerns of 10 others, it isn't democratic.
You're literally arguing that the system isn't democratic because the minority can't overrule the majority. That is crazy.
But I believe that democracy works best the closer you are to it. But if you seperate the people from the decision makers with MEPs, European Commision, President this, president that, and an organisation that grows and grows with unaccountable global trade deals...
Then people are cut off and unrest and bitterness sets in.
This happens with literally every organization of any size. Be it a company of 50 people or a megastate of hundreds of millions. You can see it in the UK where there are multiple elements in multiple areas that all feel cut off, dictated to, and controlled by London & Westminster, and that's at a *far* smaller scale. This is nothing new, and has been the case for hundreds of years and the cause of bloodshed...more than once. Hence why there was so much strife in Ireland throughout the 20th century, a strong SNP today, and rumblings in Wales and Cornwall.
While there is some very legitimate criticism of EU policy, structure, etc, any organization of its size is naturally going to have some level of disconnect and have many people that, no matter how well the EU is devolved/locally connected/etc, will never be pro-EU. Same with the US for much of its existence.
That's why you need to build it from the ground up. Like the American system which was designed pretty much from the early days.mive said this before, but the EU are trying to work backwards and it just doesn't work. The longer it goes on the less democratic it becomes.
Could you expand on that more just out of curiosity? I'm not sure I follow your meaning in this sense.
Eventually it will probably turn into a Franco-German alliance with friends due to the vast differn said between Germany and France and the rest of the EU.
Without the UK that's far more likely as there won't be another major power to sway things, but even then, it's unlikely to be a Franco-German iron dominion, they have their own issues and concerns and other elements of Europe aren't going to be as comparatively weak as they are now forever.
That's why America has the Electoral College so America isn't only ruled by 5 states out of 50.
Except that's exactly what the electoral college does (they're just not the biggest states) if you don't live in one of a small number of swing states, your vote for president is effectively simply tossed out. Look at our last election and see how well that system worked out if you want to talk about democratic representation
Except it is still better than using just the popular voting method. About 40 cities in the US make up over half of the population. Which means that those cities are the ones that decide the election. Unfortunately it does cause swing states which have lower populations where each vote is technically worth more, but I'd still say it's a better system that having 40 cities decide the fate of a country as large as the US.
And as for Germany having a larger population, it still doesn't make it fair. You have 2 distinct groups in the EU, the "original members" which have a lot more swing than the "newer" ones. Polices that most benefit them are then forces upon the smaller states. The CAP Is a good example. It was basically a good deal for Germany and France, the rest of the EU and great big chunks of the world be damned. And it then took them decades to fix it because the EU moves slower than a slug In a salt mine.
They imply that indirectly, but they imply that strongly.
People voted leave, so to the Guardian that meant they were hoodwinked on immigration, of hoodwinked by Farage, or hoodwinked on EU bureaucracy, or hoodwinked over the NHS. The repeated implication is that Leave voters wee gullible and needed shepherding away from these opinions.
No that's what you want it to say and what you are telling others to say. The same thing is at action here that is stated in the article. Changing what it means, changing the context so that others might take your interpretation as what the guardian is doing rather than letting people make up their own mind with all the information to hand. It says nothing about being hoodwinked, it's saying that those identified by massive amounts as data as undecided or on the fence were bombarded with information in a manner that gives the impression that the Leave argument was the right argument. Both sides talked a load of rubbish but we knew what being the EU was like, everything that was said about being outside was made up and not based on any information that has not been discredited.
Not surprised you don't see it. The progressive bubble is a real phenomenon and a dangerous one. Take 'safe spacing' for example, where freedom of personal doctrine is achieved by denial of platform, and this occurs in places of education.
That's because my eyes are wide open. The reason such things exist because some groups have overtly hostile to those deemed 'Different' somehow. It's a result of people's actions that these places were felt to be necessary. If as a populace people felt comfortable expressing views of who they were without some numbskull being homophobic, racist etc then such places wouldn't be necessary. In reality it's no different than a men's only golf club and so on that we have had for a long time where people self segregate.
Actually PR gives you regional not local representatives, because actual local representation has to be sacrificed to give the block of votes available to fuel a multi vacancy per voting area. Also there is still no guarantee of representation, also it denies the public the opportunity to vote against candidates directly, because even with fringe parties the top list candidate become unshakably safe unless the vote is effectively wiped out.
Regional is just another type of 'local' that's a bit larger. If, for example, they represent Cambridgeshire does it matter that they then cover the whole of that region rather than some arbitrary area drawn on a map? Would you not prefer to take a point to a more receptive local MP than one that might just ignore it completely because it doesn't agree with the politicians or parties views? And the idea that top list candidates are not already protected is farcical anyway those parties want just parachute them into safe seats anyway.
The Uk parliamentary system is in actuality one of the fairer ones because is devests democracy to as local a level as possible for the representation. How this is used is up to people, and people will find advantage if they can. PR is just a way of saying 'jerrymander different', the answer is to find candidates who can enthuse a local population to vote for them. Whether x million Lib Dems have fewer actual MP's is just statistical noise, instead of blaming the system they need to get local people to vote for local candidates.
I'm afraid that it's not just statistical noise when you can get 35% of the vote and win 55% of the seats. Any system that allows a significant minority to give a party the majority is not a balanced system and is also ripe for exploitation. You forget that it is meant to be representative of the people. If 35% of the vote goes to the party then they should get 35% of the seats plus or minus a few percent. It should not be 20% as that is just a mockery of what democracy stands for.
You mean that a country with half a million people should have as many MEP as a country with 80 million people? And you think the EU is undemocratic now?
The fact that the people of one country don't want to be overruled by the people of another much larger country?
Its the same exact reason why the SNP want Scottish independence from the UK, so Scotland isn't overruled by the much bigger population of England.
If they want they are free to leave. But so far its a more democratic system. The EU is supposed to take care of all its member states. Not just England. Scotland seems to have less problems with EU democracy than the UK one.
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welshhoppo wrote: And as for Germany having a larger population, it still doesn't make it fair. You have 2 distinct groups in the EU, the "original members" which have a lot more swing than the "newer" ones. Polices that most benefit them are then forces upon the smaller states. The CAP Is a good example. It was basically a good deal for Germany and France, the rest of the EU and great big chunks of the world be damned. And it then took them decades to fix it because the EU moves slower than a slug In a salt mine.
The bigger members have more swing because of the economic size. The UK could have been one of those and its loss is lamented by coalition partners in the EU such as Sweden and Poland. Its about making coalitions, sheer size gets you nowhere if the other 27 are opposed. You can't brute force things through, all individual parliaments still have a say.
You do realize Germany hates the CAP right? It exists mostly because of France.
What would be undemocratic is if some people's opinions and choices were given more strength than others. This is exactly what you are suggesting, and what people like the SNP want. Power and government based on the number of votes and number of people is the very definition of democracy. "Rule of the majority" is a term used all the time. Any system where some people's votes are worth more is less democratic by definition.
I'm glad you agree with me seeing as the various EU states have different ratios of population to MEP.
And the case (Id say) for Scotland is slightly different in that both of them are part of the national government and there is nothing from stopping the SNP from running people in seats outside of Scotland. Sure they probably wouldn't get very far, but the option is there for them.
I would very much like to see Scotland remain part of the U.K., but I agree that something does need to be done to cheer them up, I just don't think independence is that thing.
Future War Cultist wrote: What was that quote I heard about the referendum for the EU constitution? If the answer is yes it's full steam ahead. If the answer is no we will continue. That's (one reason) why I hate it. Democracy means feth all to them.
The referendum were ignored by the member states themselves. The French or Dutch parliaments could have blocked the treaty of Lisbon but they choose not to. This is less of a problem with the EU and more of your national democracy.
What would be undemocratic is if some people's opinions and choices were given more strength than others. This is exactly what you are suggesting, and what people like the SNP want. Power and government based on the number of votes and number of people is the very definition of democracy. "Rule of the majority" is a term used all the time. Any system where some people's votes are worth more is less democratic by definition.
I'm glad you agree with me seeing as the various EU states have different ratios of population to MEP.
And the case (Id say) for Scotland is slightly different in that both of them are part of the national government and there is nothing from stopping the SNP from running people in seats outside of Scotland. Sure they probably wouldn't get very far, but the option is there for them.
I would very much like to see Scotland remain part of the U.K., but I agree that something does need to be done to cheer them up, I just don't think independence is that thing.
You do realize the MEPs aren't voting along nation lines but along party lines right?
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welshhoppo wrote: I am also aware that Germany hates the CAP now, but even then it shows how hard it is for the EU to change course.
Because the EU isn't based on the tyranny of the majority. Each individual member state can halt proceedings. Either you think this is very undemocratic like your MEP stance or do you agree its great?
What would be undemocratic is if some people's opinions and choices were given more strength than others. This is exactly what you are suggesting, and what people like the SNP want. Power and government based on the number of votes and number of people is the very definition of democracy. "Rule of the majority" is a term used all the time. Any system where some people's votes are worth more is less democratic by definition.
I'm glad you agree with me seeing as the various EU states have different ratios of population to MEP.
And the case (Id say) for Scotland is slightly different in that both of them are part of the national government and there is nothing from stopping the SNP from running people in seats outside of Scotland. Sure they probably wouldn't get very far, but the option is there for them.
I would very much like to see Scotland remain part of the U.K., but I agree that something does need to be done to cheer them up, I just don't think independence is that thing.
You do realize the MEPs aren't voting along nation lines but along party lines right?
I didn't say they were, but the total amount of MEPs are based on a ratio based off the total population. So that gives them the total amount of MEPs that they then get to choose.
welshhoppo wrote: I am also aware that Germany hates the CAP now, but even then it shows how hard it is for the EU to change course.
When some course changes take 28 states to agree.
Changing course is like a oil tanker. Its gonna take miles to make a large turn.
Oh and seems France would probably resist its removal and do whatever to delay it so they would make it pretty tough to turn the ships that is the EU when one crew member is fighting thr rest.
What would be undemocratic is if some people's opinions and choices were given more strength than others. This is exactly what you are suggesting, and what people like the SNP want. Power and government based on the number of votes and number of people is the very definition of democracy. "Rule of the majority" is a term used all the time. Any system where some people's votes are worth more is less democratic by definition.
I'm glad you agree with me seeing as the various EU states have different ratios of population to MEP.
And the case (Id say) for Scotland is slightly different in that both of them are part of the national government and there is nothing from stopping the SNP from running people in seats outside of Scotland. Sure they probably wouldn't get very far, but the option is there for them.
I would very much like to see Scotland remain part of the U.K., but I agree that something does need to be done to cheer them up, I just don't think independence is that thing.
You do realize the MEPs aren't voting along nation lines but along party lines right?
I didn't say they were, but the total amount of MEPs are based on a ratio based off the total population. So that gives them the total amount of MEPs that they then get to choose.
It isnt based on ratio, again Luxembourg has 1/16th of the German vote but only 1/160th of the pop. Also Germany doesn't pick its MEPs. The German voters vote for candidates that connect themselves to certain European parties.
welshhoppo wrote: I am also aware that Germany hates the CAP now, but even then it shows how hard it is for the EU to change course.
When some course changes take 28 states to agree.
Changing course is like a oil tanker. Its gonna take miles to make a large turn.
Oh and seems France would probably resist its removal and do whatever to delay it so they would make it pretty tough to turn the ships that is the EU when one crew member is fighting thr rest.
Doesn't this make the EU more democratic? It can't overrule the UK and I thought it overruling the UK was part of the undemocratic problem?
welshhoppo wrote: I am also aware that Germany hates the CAP now, but even then it shows how hard it is for the EU to change course.
When some course changes take 28 states to agree.
Changing course is like a oil tanker. Its gonna take miles to make a large turn.
Oh and seems France would probably resist its removal and do whatever to delay it so they would make it pretty tough to turn the ships that is the EU when one crew member is fighting thr rest.
Well CAP received massive amounts of criticism from outside the EU too. It did terrible things to many of the countries around Europe. Lots of EU produced food when into Africa and then undercut a load of local farmers.
I mean, CAP is in a better position now. But for years it caused a lot of issues and cost a load of money.
As for one country being able to buck the trend and halt whatever it is the EU is doing (like Ireland and the Lisborn treaty.) that is also a bad thing, but I wouldn't regard it as undemocratic. Except it makes the EU even more cantankerous than it needs to be.
Basically, I won't be happy with the EU no matter what it does. But that's why I'm a filthy leave voter after all. I just want it gone.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: You're literally arguing that the system isn't democratic because the minority can't overrule the majority. That is crazy.
The system is too big.
As DINLT said, for a democracy to work it has to be localized. Obviously, you are always going to have big blocks overruling smaller blocs (Germany vs Eastern Europe, England vs Scotland, London vs the rest of England). But the smaller the democracy the better. The smaller the size of a political State, the closer Government is brought to the people.
We don't have a shared cultural identity, we have different cultures, different values, different politics, different legal systems, different traditions, different histories. The average person does not identity as European first and foremost, they identify as British (or Scottish/English/Welsh), French, German, Italian, Spanish, Greek etc. The EU has tried to stamp out nationalism and national identity, but its still there, still a major obstacle to the European project. And until it is stamped out, people will always object to their country being overruled by another country.
Steve steveson wrote: What would be undemocratic is if some people's opinions and choices were given more strength than others. This is exactly what you are suggesting, and what people like the SNP want. Power and government based on the number of votes and number of people is the very definition of democracy. "Rule of the majority" is a term used all the time. Any system where some people's votes are worth more is less democratic by definition.
You really don't understand our objection to the EU, do you?
I don't want to be a part of this wider European democracy. The bigger the democracy, the more my influence as a voter is diminished. In Britain, I am one voter amongst 60 million. In Europe, I am one voter amongst 500 million. Being a member of the EU by definition diminishes the influence I can exert over the governance of my country.
I simply don't want to be part of one massive country of 500 million people, I want to be part of a smaller country, the United Kingdom.
[And yes, I know the EU is not currently a country in its own right, but that is clearly the direction we are heading in. "Ever closer union". The goal is clearly to one day unite Europe into one Nation state. I want to leave before that happens, and before we no longer have the Sovereign power to leave].
Now, you can mock me as a racist bigot or xenophobe all you like, but that doesn't change the fact that the bigger a democratic system is, the less democratic it becomes.
welshhoppo wrote: I am also aware that Germany hates the CAP now, but even then it shows how hard it is for the EU to change course.
When some course changes take 28 states to agree.
Changing course is like a oil tanker. Its gonna take miles to make a large turn.
Oh and seems France would probably resist its removal and do whatever to delay it so they would make it pretty tough to turn the ships that is the EU when one crew member is fighting thr rest.
Well CAP received massive amounts of criticism from outside the EU too. It did terrible things to many of the countries around Europe. Lots of EU produced food when into Africa and then undercut a load of local farmers.
I mean, CAP is in a better position now. But for years it caused a lot of issues and cost a load of money.
As for one country being able to buck the trend and halt whatever it is the EU is doing (like Ireland and the Lisborn treaty.) that is also a bad thing, but I wouldn't regard it as undemocratic. Except it makes the EU even more cantankerous than it needs to be.
Basically, I won't be happy with the EU no matter what it does. But that's why I'm a filthy leave voter after all. I just want it gone.
It's too big to be democratic so it becomes undemocratic.
As SCE said, try and devise a system of government that covers 500 million people from 28 different counties and probably thousands of different regions that is both fair, democratic and is capable of such flexibility to deal with external issues (like the crisis in Syria) or internal issues (like Greece's economy collapsing.)
When you do let me know, you can tell me how to my gravestone because such a thing is pretty much impossible.
A big democracy (EU) is less democratic than a smaller democracy (Nation State). The bigger it becomes, the less influence you as an individual can wield over your Government.
welshhoppo wrote: I am also aware that Germany hates the CAP now, but even then it shows how hard it is for the EU to change course.
When some course changes take 28 states to agree.
Changing course is like a oil tanker. Its gonna take miles to make a large turn.
Oh and seems France would probably resist its removal and do whatever to delay it so they would make it pretty tough to turn the ships that is the EU when one crew member is fighting thr rest.
Well CAP received massive amounts of criticism from outside the EU too. It did terrible things to many of the countries around Europe. Lots of EU produced food when into Africa and then undercut a load of local farmers.
I mean, CAP is in a better position now. But for years it caused a lot of issues and cost a load of money.
As for one country being able to buck the trend and halt whatever it is the EU is doing (like Ireland and the Lisborn treaty.) that is also a bad thing, but I wouldn't regard it as undemocratic. Except it makes the EU even more cantankerous than it needs to be.
Basically, I won't be happy with the EU no matter what it does. But that's why I'm a filthy leave voter after all. I just want it gone.
The EU needs massive reforms at end of day. Pull everything apart, and rebuild it.
Maybe then. Even if it takes many years it might be more attractive.
Some things need to end. Shuffling parlinents, endless bail outs and credit, the fact no one has signed off the budgets for years for a while, maybe still even now.
It cannot fix things till it realises there are mistakes.
Yes I voted leave.
And the reasoning is a tad to complicated to type on my phone, safe to say I wanted to see UK remain a distinct nation than a European province.
welshhoppo wrote: It's too big to be democratic so it becomes undemocratic.
As SCE said, try and devise a system of government that covers 500 million people from 28 different counties and probably thousands of different regions that is both fair, democratic and is capable of such flexibility to deal with external issues (like the crisis in Syria) or internal issues (like Greece's economy collapsing.)
When you do let me know, you can tell me how to my gravestone because such a thing is pretty much impossible.
That is a problem of lack of competency. That is not a lack of democracy though. Its member states wanting to go halfway.
Disciple of Fate wrote: So you should break up the UK? That seems to carry the same argument. The smaller the better right?
It's not so simple. You can't reduce a system too far otherwise you'll lose a lot of synergy between larger communities. The democratic republic of Swansea wouldn't get very far without access to food.
I mean, the U.K. Is at a level where I can physically go talk to my local MP or my local council member and they potentially report my issue with the Prime Minister, it's pretty good.
Sure we have the House of Lords, but nothing is perfect.
welshhoppo wrote: It's too big to be democratic so it becomes undemocratic.
As SCE said, try and devise a system of government that covers 500 million people from 28 different counties and probably thousands of different regions that is both fair, democratic and is capable of such flexibility to deal with external issues (like the crisis in Syria) or internal issues (like Greece's economy collapsing.)
When you do let me know, you can tell me how to my gravestone because such a thing is pretty much impossible.
Its simply too late to bind the countries of Europe together into one political entity. Our countries are simply too old, too different, our histories are too long, our values, politics, traditions, legal systems are too diverse. It worked for America because America was built from the ground up, it was founded as a youthful nation of States/former colonies with a lot more in common with each other than the countries of Europe have in common today. But even that was not without its own fair share of bloodshed.
I regard the European Union as an idealistic, Utopian pipe dream that will never work out, not in the way that its proponents hope it will. The only way to make it work will involve tyranny, not democracy.
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Disciple of Fate wrote: So you should break up the UK? That seems to carry the same argument. The smaller the better right?
In theory, yes. Its a sliding scale, and everyone has a different opinion of where the ideal place on that scale is.
For supporters of the EU, its the EU. For me, its the Union of England, Scotland and Wales, a tried and tested Union that has endured for 3 Centuries. (United Kingdom). For DINLT, its Scotland.
Disciple of Fate wrote: So you should break up the UK? That seems to carry the same argument. The smaller the better right?
It's not so simple. You can't reduce a system too far otherwise you'll lose a lot of synergy between larger communities. The democratic republic of Swansea wouldn't get very far without access to food.
I mean, the U.K. Is at a level where I can physically go talk to my local MP or my local council member and they potentially report my issue with the Prime Minister, it's pretty good.
Sure we have the House of Lords, but nothing is perfect.
But the Netherlands works fine as a democracy, maybe even better than the UK. We have only 1/4th of the UK's pop, so why not quarter the UK. This is the problem I have with SCE argument. There is no perfect amount of population for democracy. Hell, India does it with 1 billion.
Disciple of Fate wrote: So you should break up the UK? That seems to carry the same argument. The smaller the better right?
In theory, yes. Its a sliding scale, and everyone has a different opinion of where the ideal place on that scale is.
For supporters of the EU, its the EU.
For me, its the Union of England, Scotland and Wales, a tried and tested Union that has endured for 3 Centuries. (United Kingdom).
For DINLT, its Scotland.
This is the exact problem though. A European superstate doesn't have to be a problem, it depends on the competencies the national level gets to preserve. A good part of why the EU doesn't function properly is because only the very supportive and very opposed show up in EU elections.
welshhoppo wrote: It's too big to be democratic so it becomes undemocratic.
As SCE said, try and devise a system of government that covers 500 million people from 28 different counties and probably thousands of different regions that is both fair, democratic and is capable of such flexibility to deal with external issues (like the crisis in Syria) or internal issues (like Greece's economy collapsing.)
When you do let me know, you can tell me how to my gravestone because such a thing is pretty much impossible.
That is a problem of lack of competency. That is not a lack of democracy though. Its member states wanting to go halfway.
And whats wrong with that? What is wrong with nations only desiring a small degree of integration - say, a free trade and movement zone, but not a monetary and fiscal Union? Why do we have to have this false dichotomy of all or nothing?
welshhoppo wrote: It's too big to be democratic so it becomes undemocratic.
As SCE said, try and devise a system of government that covers 500 million people from 28 different counties and probably thousands of different regions that is both fair, democratic and is capable of such flexibility to deal with external issues (like the crisis in Syria) or internal issues (like Greece's economy collapsing.)
When you do let me know, you can tell me how to my gravestone because such a thing is pretty much impossible.
Its simply too late to bind the countries of Europe together into one political entity. Our countries are simply too old, too different, our histories are too long, our values, politics, traditions, legal systems are too diverse. It worked for America because America was built from the ground up, it was founded as a youthful nation of States/former colonies with a lot more in common with each other than the countries of Europe have in common today. But even that was not without its own fair share of bloodshed.
I regard the European Union as an idealistic, Utopian pipe dream that will never work out, not in the way that its proponents hope it will. The only way to make it work will involve tyranny, not democracy.
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Disciple of Fate wrote: So you should break up the UK? That seems to carry the same argument. The smaller the better right?
In theory, yes. Its a sliding scale, and everyone has a different opinion of where the ideal place on that scale is.
For supporters of the EU, its the EU.
For me, its the Union of England, Scotland and Wales, a tried and tested Union that has endured for 3 Centuries. (United Kingdom).
For DINLT, its Scotland.
It took centuries to forge a untied kngdom of similar nations yet alone vastly different.
Its not easy to make a unified country or serris of them.
It takes generations to fully unite. Not years. The EU will always have issues from its size and growth rate.
Isn't it wonderful how all our political discussions eventually swing back around to bloody Brexit, again.
Personally, I'm just enjoying watching UKIP getting slaughtered, and Nigel Farage mourning the failure of his far right spank fantasy dribbling down the drain after Le Pen took a severe pounding by the French.
Doesn't make up for Brexit, obviously, but it's still nice .
In other news, Lib Dem proposed reforms to pensioner benefits,
It is good to see something being proposed about pensioner benefits, a targetted cutting of the winter fuel allowance for those in the 40% tax bracket is a start, but could have also been combined with similar cuts to free TV licences, and travel concessions for the same demographic.
Disciple of Fate wrote: But the Netherlands works fine as a democracy, maybe even better than the UK. We have only 1/4th of the UK's pop, so why not quarter the UK. This is the problem I have with SCE argument. There is no perfect amount of population for democracy. Hell, India does it with 1 billion.
India is a false equivalence.
India is one nation state, with a common cultural identity, values, traditions etc. They are not a Political Union of 28 different nation states.
welshhoppo wrote: It's too big to be democratic so it becomes undemocratic.
As SCE said, try and devise a system of government that covers 500 million people from 28 different counties and probably thousands of different regions that is both fair, democratic and is capable of such flexibility to deal with external issues (like the crisis in Syria) or internal issues (like Greece's economy collapsing.)
When you do let me know, you can tell me how to my gravestone because such a thing is pretty much impossible.
That is a problem of lack of competency. That is not a lack of democracy though. Its member states wanting to go halfway.
And whats wrong with that? What is wrong with nations only desiring a small degree of integration - say, a free trade and movement zone, but not a monetary and fiscal Union? Why do we have to have this false dichotomy of all or nothing?
Why can't we have a two-tier European Union?
You misunderstand. The halfway problem are things like the Euro, members like Greece want it but don't want the ECB to look over its shoulder (we now know why). This means that in many cases states only want the good part but then want to avoid responsibility when it goes wrong. I never meant that it should be a nothing or all case. A two tier EU should work fine as long as you create clear boundaries. Of course what those clear boundaries should be is another question.
Disciple of Fate wrote: But the Netherlands works fine as a democracy, maybe even better than the UK. We have only 1/4th of the UK's pop, so why not quarter the UK. This is the problem I have with SCE argument. There is no perfect amount of population for democracy. Hell, India does it with 1 billion.
India is a false equivalence.
India is one nation state, with a common cultural identity, values, traditions etc. They are not a Political Union of 28 different nation states.
India really isn't so unified as you would think though. That's mainly a well constructed identity that has not been true for history. Certainly they have managed well, but there has been a lot of violence even inside India. I think there are over 30 separatist movements. If the EU manages to hold on long enough we turn into India. As Britain in India and the EU have quite a few parallels in local governance and separate kingdoms/states.
Actually Ive heard DINLT say that he'd be happy with a proper coalition between the seperate states of the U.K. I think it's his dream, he's probably dreaming about it right now......
And with India. The issue is your comparing Eastern and Western society and they are a little bit different. Also, it was designed that way from the get go.
r_squared wrote: Isn't it wonderful how all our political discussions eventually swing back around to bloody Brexit, again.
Personally, I'm just waiting for their buggers to publish their manifestos for me to get my teeth into. I'm a genuine undecided voter right now, so I'm going to deconstruct every single one of their bloody manifesto points, and use that as my guideline, I think.
I'm a little annoyed I'm still waiting on them, quite frankly. They're already campaigning!
Disciple of Fate wrote: India really isn't so unified as you would think though. That's mainly a well constructed identity that has not been true for history. Certainly they have managed well, but their has been a lot of violence even inside India. I think there are over 30 separatist movements. If the EU manages to hold on long enough we turn into India. As Britain in India and the EU have quite a few parallels in local governance and separate kingdoms/states.
And this is a good thing? If bloodshed is the price of unity, perhaps unity is not worth it and India should break up?
Disciple of Fate wrote: India really isn't so unified as you would think though. That's mainly a well constructed identity that has not been true for history. Certainly they have managed well, but their has been a lot of violence even inside India. I think there are over 30 separatist movements. If the EU manages to hold on long enough we turn into India. As Britain in India and the EU have quite a few parallels in local governance and separate kingdoms/states.
And this is a good thing? If bloodshed is the price of unity, perhaps unity is not worth it and India should break up?
Well its not like were going at it at the moment. You tell me if unity is worth it. But the UN records plenty of human rights violations of Indian security forces. I don't think its that bad yet with EU security forces in the UK.
You said India was unified and functions as a democracy. I just pointed out that while their democracy might work out better than in the EU it also requires more violence to keep together.
Disciple of Fate wrote: You said India was unified and functions as a democracy. I just pointed out that while their democracy might work out better than in the EU it also requires more violence to keep together.
No I didn't, you did. "India manages it with 1 billion people".
Disciple of Fate wrote: You said India was unified and functions as a democracy. I just pointed out that while their democracy might work out better than in the EU it also requires more violence to keep together.
No I didn't, you did. "India manages it with 1 billion people".
Yeah they manage to be a functioning democracy with over 1 billion people. I never implied it was a unified nation state or without violence.
I'm really not sure I'd classify a country with an active caste system involving 'Untouchables' as a 'functional democracy'. 'Notional democracy', perhaps.
Yeah they manage to be a functioning democracy with over 1 billion people.
So which is it? You're contradicting yourself.
You said India was unified and functions as a democracy.
At no point did I say this, this is purely your (false) inference. I said that they have more in common than we do, that is all. India is one Nation. We are 28 Nations.
Yeah they manage to be a functioning democracy with over 1 billion people.
So which is it? You're contradicting yourself.
I don't, I agree that it functions as a democracy. I just don't agree that it is as unified.
This is what I said : I just pointed out that while their democracy might work out better than in the EU it also requires more violence to keep together.
EU democracy so far isn't held together by violence, the fact that the UK can vote on Brexit means its peaceful, even if it doesn't function as well as a nominally single state.
In other, non Indian related news, how's about our newspaper headlines this morning. Momentous French election, meaning a new, young, pro-EU leader beating the Frexit champion, and what have the DM and Sun got to say?
Had it been the other way around, I'm absolutely positive Nigel Farage's cum face would have been smugly greeting us all this morning.
Macron's election can be considered a blow to the Brexit process in a couple of ways, firstly it demonstrates categorically that there is support for the EU as an institution, but more importantly for us is....
Mr Macron’s core philosophy is not in doubt. He believes that maintaining the strength of the EU is more important than boosting France’s economic ties with the British.
Mr Macron said last year that the UK could not expect any special privileges once it goes: “I am attached to a strict approach to Brexit.”
Mr Macron seems keen to exploit Brexit in order to boost France’s economy. Some analysts believe that as a former Rothschild banker, he will want to do everything possible to maximise Paris’s position as a financial centre after Britain’s departure.
In his campaign he has been enthusiastic about attracting foreigners to his country. “I will have a series of initiatives to get talented people in research and lots of fields working here to come to France,” he said in London earlier this year. “I want banks . . . researchers, academics and so on.”
No surprise there, but negotiations may have been a bit easier with Le Pen as it would be in her interests to prove to the French that leaving the EU is possible with minimal disruption.
I'm still glad she got comprehensively curb stomped though.
For the European idea, the election of Macron is absolutely great.
The EU is not only a coalition of countries in economic terms, its a project whose aim is the integration of the European people. This is what the EU is about.
wuestenfux wrote: For the European idea, the election of Macron is absolutely great.
The EU is not only a coalition of countries in economic terms, its a project whose aim is the integration of the European people. This is what the EU is about.
wuestenfux wrote: For the European idea, the election of Macron is absolutely great.
The EU is not only a coalition of countries in economic terms, its a project whose aim is the integration of the European people. This is what the EU is about.
But is this what the people of Europe want?
Governments and EU don't want to know that, otherwise they'd hold a referendum
A nation or system's size alone has no bearing on whether a system is democratic or not. The EU is not less democratic just because it is big. Yes, your vote is less powerful when there are more voters, but "democracy" doesn't mean "I get my way!".
There is a lot of merit to discussing decentralization and what level various political decisions should be taken on, but trying to frame it as "more centralization=undemocratic" is lazily counting people connecting "undemocratic" to "bad" in their minds. It's a different type of democracy, sure. It might, depending on context, even be a worse form of democracy. It is, however, still a democracy. Trying to pretend otherwise is folly.
wuestenfux wrote: For the European idea, the election of Macron is absolutely great.
The EU is not only a coalition of countries in economic terms, its a project whose aim is the integration of the European people. This is what the EU is about.
But is this what the people of Europe want?
Governments and EU don't want to know that, otherwise they'd hold a referendum
Anymore referendums and the EU should be remained to "The Neverendum Story."
r_squared wrote: Isn't it wonderful how all our political discussions eventually swing back around to bloody Brexit, again.
Personally, I'm just waiting for their buggers to publish their manifestos for me to get my teeth into. I'm a genuine undecided voter right now, so I'm going to deconstruct every single one of their bloody manifesto points, and use that as my guideline, I think.
I'm a little annoyed I'm still waiting on them, quite frankly. They're already campaigning!
Word in the newspapers is that the Tories will continue with their crackpot scheme of getting immigration down to the 100,000 per year mark
That's worked really well for them...
Despite my anti-EU position, I fully support immigration, believing that in this globalised world, you can't fence the world out, although ultimately, I do agree that a nation's people should have the final say on freedom of movement within that nation.
But I believe that democracy works best the closer you are to it. But if you seperate the people from the decision makers with MEPs, European Commision, President this, president that, and an organisation that grows and grows with unaccountable global trade deals...
Then people are cut off and unrest and bitterness sets in.
This happens with literally every organization of any size. Be it a company of 50 people or a megastate of hundreds of millions. You can see it in the UK where there are multiple elements in multiple areas that all feel cut off, dictated to, and controlled by London & Westminster, and that's at a *far* smaller scale. This is nothing new, and has been the case for hundreds of years and the cause of bloodshed...more than once. Hence why there was so much strife in Ireland throughout the 20th century, a strong SNP today, and rumblings in Wales and Cornwall.
While there is some very legitimate criticism of EU policy, structure, etc, any organization of its size is naturally going to have some level of disconnect and have many people that, no matter how well the EU is devolved/locally connected/etc, will never be pro-EU. Same with the US for much of its existence.
We all know that the USA is not perfect, but at least with your nation, it was designed that way from day 1. And at least you have some checks and balances with SCOTUS,POTUS, states' rights etc etc
Those safeguards don't seem to exist in the EUIMO.
wuestenfux wrote: For the European idea, the election of Macron is absolutely great.
The EU is not only a coalition of countries in economic terms, its a project whose aim is the integration of the European people. This is what the EU is about.
But is this what the people of Europe want?
Governments and EU don't want to know that, otherwise they'd hold a referendum
Anymore referendums and the EU should be remained to "The Neverendum Story."
Britain is the referendum capital these days. We've had AV, Scottish indy, EU, and will probably get another Scottish indy referendum soon.
r_squared wrote: Isn't it wonderful how all our political discussions eventually swing back around to bloody Brexit, again.
Well of course it does, its the defining issue of this General Election. Do you want to just brush it under the carpet and ignore it like Corbyn?
It's the Tories who are making this GE about Brexit, because it guarantees support from ex-UKIP, whilst conveniently allowing them to bury their performance and stance on every other issue.
We should be saying to them, we know about Brexit, but where do you stand on this issue?
As Ketara says,we should have their manifestos by now, especially the conservative one, but they're leaving it as long as possible so that we focus on Brexit, and the big bad EU a bit longer.
wuestenfux wrote: For the European idea, the election of Macron is absolutely great.
The EU is not only a coalition of countries in economic terms, its a project whose aim is the integration of the European people. This is what the EU is about.
But is this what the people of Europe want?
Governments and EU don't want to know that, otherwise they'd hold a referendum
Anymore referendums and the EU should be remained to "The Neverendum Story."
It'd be awesome, it'd be a massive choose EU're own adventure!
r_squared wrote: Isn't it wonderful how all our political discussions eventually swing back around to bloody Brexit, again.
Well of course it does, its the defining issue of this General Election. Do you want to just brush it under the carpet and ignore it like Corbyn?
It's the Tories who are making this GE about Brexit, because it guarantees support from ex-UKIP, whilst conveniently allowing them to bury their performance and stance on every other issue.
We should be saying to them, we know about Brexit, but where do you stand on this issue?
As Ketara says,we should have their manifestos by now, especially the conservative one, but they're leaving it as long as possible so that we focus on Brexit, and the big bad EU a bit longer.
I did wonder about why the conservatives didn't have a manifesto ready even though they chose to trigger the gen election
I just assumed they'd gone of half cocked like they keep doing, but yeah probably tactical.
I suppose they also didn't want labour to build a manifesto in response to it. It'll probably come out the day after labours is released.
Even the vast majority of the cabinet weren't aware of the election until the day it was announced, so I don't think anyone had much notice. Perhaps they will all keep an emergency manifesto on stand by from now on, ready for tweaking and release at a moments notice.
r_squared wrote: Isn't it wonderful how all our political discussions eventually swing back around to bloody Brexit, again.
Personally, I'm just waiting for their buggers to publish their manifestos for me to get my teeth into. I'm a genuine undecided voter right now, so I'm going to deconstruct every single one of their bloody manifesto points, and use that as my guideline, I think.
I'm a little annoyed I'm still waiting on them, quite frankly. They're already campaigning!
It is frustrating, I've followed the big three on social media, and even followed Paul Nuttall (seeing as he's standing in my constituency), and I'm seeing stuff being pumped out regularly by Labour and the Lib Dems, yet very little from the Conservatives.
They also seem to be relying on this "cult of personality" around TM. She's giving very scripted, safe, presentations, and she is giving the impression of being "strong and stable".
The Tories realise that soundbites win, they're repeating theirs ad nauseum and associating it with their leader, a manifesto will just get in the way as people ask questions.
And it's working, even my dear old mum likes Theresa May, and feels she's the safe bet, even though she actually disagrees with many conservative policies. It's bonkers and to be admired. If Jeremy Corbyn could put down his integrity for a minute, and play like the Tories, we could actually have a fight on our hands.
Infact, I'm going to suggest that he should do a Trump, he's popular with his grassroots, so he should ignore the media, and go straight for twitter and really let himself get out there. Slag off the Tories, their policies, their elitism, and the "crooked" media, and make a storm of it.
Worked for Trump.
It is frustrating, I've followed the big three on social media, and even followed Paul Nuttall (seeing as he's standing in my constituency), and I'm seeing stuff being pumped out regularly by Labour and the Lib Dems, yet very little from the Conservatives.
They also seem to be relying on this "cult of personality" around TM. She's giving very scripted, safe, presentations, and she is giving the impression of being "strong and stable".
The Tories realise that soundbites win, they're repeating theirs ad nauseum and associating it with their leader, a manifesto will just get in the way as people ask questions.
And it's working, even my dear old mum likes Theresa May, and feels she's the safe bet, even though she actually disagrees with many conservative policies. It's bonkers and to be admired. If Jeremy Corbyn could put down his integrity for a minute, and play like the Tories, we could actually have a fight on our hands.
I think it's because they actually regard Corbyn as so little a threat, that they don't have to brief against him. Why engage in a public debate when May might not be good at it, or even just have a bad day? Why put up a detailed manifesto when yours is likely paper thing and might inspire awkward questions? Just keep hammering on the obvious point (that Corbyn is bloody inept), point to the Brexit negotiations as the top priority (which they quite possible are, in all fairness), and otherwise keep schtum.
Corbyn, on the other hand, hasn't gotten one out I think because he hasn't got one. So far as I'm aware, his policies are:-
-A very confused one on nuclear disarmament, where he's going to listen to everyone but disagree, get rid of nukes, but keep the subs and jobs, but he might keep the nukes just promise never to use them (??????).
-Re-nationalise the railways because they're a shambles. (I'm not against this, but his reasons for doing so seem more rooted in ideology than logic).
-Raise living standards (somehow).
-Raise a few taxes on some rich people and businesses.
-End student tuition fees (but with no detail on where the money to replace it will come from).
It suits the Tories to make it about Brexit so there's no scrutiny on the NHS. I emigrated from London (where I was born and raised, more of a footie pitch than a playground kid though ) to Australia after 34.5 years on this planet, and currently work for a well known global health insurance and related businesses company.
What's happening to the NHS needs to be stopped now. Private health insurance is absolute garbage, and if you think the Tories or Blairites (if they grab back control of the Labour party) will give you anything other than a similarly s**t system then you're dreaming.
This should be a single issue GE, the issue just isn't Brexit. If you take the NHS for granted now, well, you deserve everything you get in the long run.
Latest ICM poll gives the Tories a record 22 point lead over Labour
God help us...
Since 2010, the Tories have presided over a drop in real wages, purchasing power, a rising deficit, a rising debt, a gak poor trade deficit, and a chronically imbalanced economy, that's almost flat-lining, and yet, the Tories still have the myth about them that they are good for the economy!
I was around when Black Wednesday happened, and it amazes me how short memories are in this nation...
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Baragash wrote: It suits the Tories to make it about Brexit so there's no scrutiny on the NHS. I emigrated from London (where I was born and raised, more of a footie pitch than a playground kid though ) to Australia after 34.5 years on this planet, and currently work for a well known global health insurance and related businesses company.
What's happening to the NHS needs to be stopped now. Private health insurance is absolute garbage, and if you think the Tories or Blairites (if they grab back control of the Labour party) will give you anything other than a similarly s**t system then you're dreaming.
This should be a single issue GE, the issue just isn't Brexit. If you take the NHS for granted now, well, you deserve everything you get in the long run.
True, the NHS isn't perfect, but the alternative is far worse.
wuestenfux wrote: For the European idea, the election of Macron is absolutely great.
The EU is not only a coalition of countries in economic terms, its a project whose aim is the integration of the European people. This is what the EU is about.
But is this what the people of Europe want?
If you ask nationalists, unemployed or Nigel Farrage, then probably not.
But striving for higher goods is never a bad thing.
We had so many wars in Europe during the last centuries that a European nation where people can trade and move freely is the best possible answer.
Since 2010, the Tories have presided over a drop in real wages, purchasing power, a rising deficit, a rising debt, a gak poor trade deficit, and a chronically imbalanced economy, that's almost flat-lining, and yet, the Tories still have the myth about them that they are good for the economy!
I was around when Black Wednesday happened, and it amazes me how short memories are in this nation...
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Baragash wrote: It suits the Tories to make it about Brexit so there's no scrutiny on the NHS. I emigrated from London (where I was born and raised, more of a footie pitch than a playground kid though ) to Australia after 34.5 years on this planet, and currently work for a well known global health insurance and related businesses company.
What's happening to the NHS needs to be stopped now. Private health insurance is absolute garbage, and if you think the Tories or Blairites (if they grab back control of the Labour party) will give you anything other than a similarly s**t system then you're dreaming.
This should be a single issue GE, the issue just isn't Brexit. If you take the NHS for granted now, well, you deserve everything you get in the long run.
True, the NHS isn't perfect, but the alternative is far worse.
The trouble is, even if these problems are directly due to conservative policy. It's up to the opposition to go on the offence and point this stuff out and an effective plan to deal with it, but they just don't seem credible.
If labour loses by the amount predicted, do you think Corybn will resign or just go through with another vote for labour leadership? I have a feeling he'll do the latter and his supporters will vote him in again, then the cycle continues.
Since 2010, the Tories have presided over a drop in real wages, purchasing power, a rising deficit, a rising debt, a gak poor trade deficit, and a chronically imbalanced economy, that's almost flat-lining, and yet, the Tories still have the myth about them that they are good for the economy!
I was around when Black Wednesday happened, and it amazes me how short memories are in this nation...
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Baragash wrote: It suits the Tories to make it about Brexit so there's no scrutiny on the NHS. I emigrated from London (where I was born and raised, more of a footie pitch than a playground kid though ) to Australia after 34.5 years on this planet, and currently work for a well known global health insurance and related businesses company.
What's happening to the NHS needs to be stopped now. Private health insurance is absolute garbage, and if you think the Tories or Blairites (if they grab back control of the Labour party) will give you anything other than a similarly s**t system then you're dreaming.
This should be a single issue GE, the issue just isn't Brexit. If you take the NHS for granted now, well, you deserve everything you get in the long run.
True, the NHS isn't perfect, but the alternative is far worse.
The trouble is, even if these problems are directly due to conservative policy. It's up to the opposition to go on the offence and point this stuff out and an effective plan to deal with it, but they just don't seem credible.
If labour loses by the amount predicted, do you think Corybn will resign or just go through with another vote for labour leadership? I have a feeling he'll do the latter and his supporters will vote him in again, then the cycle continues.
I get this dread feeling that even if Labour only get 100 seats or something, Corbyn will do his impression of the Black Knight from Monty Python
and his followers will vote him in again....
This Conservative party is a football in front of an open goal, and any half-decent opposition would have blasted that ball into the net by now.
If you ask nationalists, unemployed or Nigel Farrage, then probably not.
But striving for higher goods is never a bad thing.
We had so many wars in Europe during the last centuries that a European nation where people can trade and move freely is the best possible answer.
We Europeans are just like Orks, if we ever united we would conquer the world but we are too busy infighting to ever realise that dream!
The problem for Remainer-Tories like me in the current election is that the opposition parties are utterly unpalatable.
Corbyn is a republican so I wouldn't vote for him in a million years and Farron hasn't done enough to convince me that he isn't one of these namby-pamby, hand wringing liberal types.
What I would like to see is a proper right of centre party fronted by Ken Clarke that properly represents conservative political thinking i.e. not crashing out of our global trading block!
Failing that, I feel that I have to vote Tory in the hope that with a large parliamentary majority Teresa May will not feel like she can be held hostage by the extreme right of the party. The thin margin of error in parliament she currently has gives these types of people a disproportionate voice imo.
If you ask nationalists, unemployed or Nigel Farrage, then probably not.
But striving for higher goods is never a bad thing.
We had so many wars in Europe during the last centuries that a European nation where people can trade and move freely is the best possible answer.
We Europeans are just like Orks, if we ever united we would conquer the world but we are too busy infighting to ever realise that dream!
The problem for Remainer-Tories like me in the current election is that the opposition parties are utterly unpalatable.
Corbyn is a republican so I wouldn't vote for him in a million years and Farron hasn't done enough to convince me that he isn't one of these namby-pamby, hand wringing liberal types.
What I would like to see is a proper right of centre party fronted by Ken Clarke that properly represents conservative political thinking i.e. not crashing out of our global trading block!
Failing that, I feel that I have to vote Tory in the hope that with a large parliamentary majority Teresa May will not feel like she can be held hostage by the extreme right of the party. The thin margin of error in parliament she currently has gives these types of people a disproportionate voice imo.
Ken Clarke is one of the few Conservatives I do like. As for you last point, I think the Conservative party is heading for trouble. The voters who left the Tories years ago for UKIP are now flocking back. They'll probably re-join the Tory party and be active at the grassroots and cause all sorts of mischief at the local level. May not be able to ignore them...
AlmightyWalrus wrote: A nation or system's size alone has no bearing on whether a system is democratic or not. The EU is not less democratic just because it is big. Yes, your vote is less powerful when there are more voters, but "democracy" doesn't mean "I get my way!".
There is a lot of merit to discussing decentralization and what level various political decisions should be taken on, but trying to frame it as "more centralization=undemocratic" is lazily counting people connecting "undemocratic" to "bad" in their minds. It's a different type of democracy, sure. It might, depending on context, even be a worse form of democracy. It is, however, still a democracy. Trying to pretend otherwise is folly.
I'm not saying that. I'm saying g that the EU is a worse democracy than a nation state.
They imply that indirectly, but they imply that strongly.
People voted leave, so to the Guardian that meant they were hoodwinked on immigration, of hoodwinked by Farage, or hoodwinked on EU bureaucracy, or hoodwinked over the NHS. The repeated implication is that Leave voters wee gullible and needed shepherding away from these opinions.
No that's what you want it to say and what you are telling others to say. The same thing is at action here that is stated in the article. Changing what it means, changing the context so that others might take your interpretation as what the guardian is doing rather than letting people make up their own mind with all the information to hand.
It says nothing about being hoodwinked, it's saying that those identified by massive amounts as data as undecided or on the fence were bombarded with information in a manner that gives the impression that the Leave argument was the right argument. Both sides talked a load of rubbish but we knew what being the EU was like, everything that was said about being outside was made up and not based on any information that has not been discredited.
All made up, like all of it. Like 100%. You drank the remainer Kool-Aid.
besides when it comes to misinformation you cant top this whopper:
Not surprised you don't see it. The progressive bubble is a real phenomenon and a dangerous one. Take 'safe spacing' for example, where freedom of personal doctrine is achieved by denial of platform, and this occurs in places of education.
That's because my eyes are wide open. The reason such things exist because some groups have overtly hostile to those deemed 'Different' somehow.
This is often the safe spacer excuse. I dont ike what they are saying so lets brand them racist and then ignore their arguments or remove their platform.
Its the same psychology as a witch hunt.
It's a result of people's actions that these places were felt to be necessary. If as a populace people felt comfortable expressing views of who they were without some numbskull being homophobic, racist etc then such places wouldn't be necessary.
Its felt to be necessary due to finger pointing and scaremongering, and critics brave enough to raise objection get added to the list of the unwelcome.
In reality it's no different than a men's only golf club and so on that we have had for a long time where people self segregate.
Mens only clubs, or womens only clubs for that matter don't have that inherent dynamic, they exist because women and men have tendency towards different interests and it allows a forum of like minded people. It only becomes a problem if membership is a social enabler elsewhere.
Regional is just another type of 'local' that's a bit larger.
No its not a 'bit larger' if it was it would have enough electorate to have multiple MP's or you would need to vastly increase the number of parliamentarians.
The whole idea of an MP is that they are local, you can arrange to see them in person and they represent you because you live in the same area, not because you belong to the same party. that is not relevant.
Your MP can interfere on your behalf, and most frequently do, you dont need to be of the same party to appeal to your MP for justice in an issue, and if by listing that became expected it would cheapen parliament.
If, for example, they represent Cambridgeshire does it matter that they then cover the whole of that region rather than some arbitrary area drawn on a map? Would you not prefer to take a point to a more receptive local MP than one that might just ignore it completely because it doesn't agree with the politicians or parties views?
That is not how it works. Say you were dropped from the council housing waiting list due to a problem, or cant get benefit, or had a bad expereinece with your sisters NHS treatment it doesnt matter what party your MP belongs to. And no, actual MPs of party x are not moustache twirlers who will laugh at you because your family is of a non voter demographic and you got screwed over by the system.
What would be worse is having these facilitis parsed off by party, because that would further corrupt the system and because people dont fall into neat party boxes. get a rural multi vacancy constiuency and all the list candidates might end up electing Tories. What is a rural socialist to do then, if MP's only caters for their own.
And the idea that top list candidates are not already protected is farcical anyway those parties want just parachute them into safe seats anyway.
Parachuting should be illegal, people should live in an area for a minimum amount of time before beign alowed to stand there.
But its indicative, any system will be taken advantage of.
But even safe seats are not truly safe, public pressure can get rid of unpopular politicians in very safe seats. It doesnt happen often
With a list system it is virtually impossible to touch top list candidates in major parties.
I'm afraid that it's not just statistical noise when you can get 35% of the vote and win 55% of the seats.
It is, you need to be sufficiently popular in your local constituency to be elected. National percentages dont matter outside of a direct referendum, you can always find statistical abberations if you want to because if the way percentages work. In your system the opposite could occur a town might have representation from an MP from a party with 35% of the vote while 55% voted for a specific unsuccessful candidate, and might be faced with that representative because of support elsewhere.
If 35% of the vote goes to the party then they should get 35% of the seats plus or minus a few percent. It should not be 20% as that is just a mockery of what democracy stands for.
Our democracy means the candidate with the most local seats gets elected. You don't get a representative forced upon you because of polling elsewhere. You get the representative your community elects.
You dont understand this truth because you are still thinking party and not candidate. Candidates don't have to belong to any party, and you only ever vote for the candidate not the party in the UK. If your preferred candidate is say - Joe Smith and is a member of the say - Labour party, you never actually get to vote Labour, you get to vote for Joe Smith. You might choose to vote for Joe Smith because he is Labour, an it would be the most common reason to do so but that is your prerogative as to why you voted for Joe Smith. also people do vote for local candidates even if they would vote for another party in general. This happens rather a lot, and not just from tactical voting. This is what it means to be a local representative.
Everything to do with the % is really just noise, with one exception if the % of votes for Joe Smith is more than any other candidate, the seat is theirs.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: A nation or system's size alone has no bearing on whether a system is democratic or not. The EU is not less democratic just because it is big. Yes, your vote is less powerful when there are more voters, but "democracy" doesn't mean "I get my way!".
There is a lot of merit to discussing decentralization and what level various political decisions should be taken on, but trying to frame it as "more centralization=undemocratic" is lazily counting people connecting "undemocratic" to "bad" in their minds. It's a different type of democracy, sure. It might, depending on context, even be a worse form of democracy. It is, however, still a democracy. Trying to pretend otherwise is folly.
I'm not saying that. I'm saying g that the EU is a worse democracy than a nation state.
You're right, you aren't. Welshhoppo, on the other hand, was.
wuestenfux wrote: For the European idea, the election of Macron is absolutely great.
The EU is not only a coalition of countries in economic terms, its a project whose aim is the integration of the European people. This is what the EU is about.
But is this what the people of Europe want?
Given that 50% of the UK populace voted to stay in Europe and the categorical smashing of nationalist suggestions in both Netherlands and France, Greece voting to stay in despite its debt I think we can say given the evidence that at the moment the answer to this is a definite Yes!
I think it's because they actually regard Corbyn as so little a threat, that they don't have to brief against him. Why engage in a public debate when May might not be good at it, or even just have a bad day? Why put up a detailed manifesto when yours is likely paper thing and might inspire awkward questions? Just keep hammering on the obvious point (that Corbyn is bloody inept), point to the Brexit negotiations as the top priority (which they quite possible are, in all fairness), and otherwise keep schtum.
I wonder though what would happen if Corbyn announced a half a week before the GE that he will stand down regardless of the outcome of the vote. That could put the Tories on the back foot as all the attacks on Corbyn would be 'wasted' and the one thing that is turning off a lot of Labour support is him.
No debate for us. Just a series of set questions and low balls thrown the the leaders individually.
They really are pathetic, no gumption, no guts. We all want to see them go head to head, but TM especially says she'd rather 'meet voters directly', meaning stage managed events where the public and press are kept out.
@ Whirlwind Technicaly Greeks voted against the EU proposal by a large margin. Thankfully our PM realised what was going on broke with some of the lunatics of his party and promptly raised the EU flag high ignoring the referendum.
Note that I voted for him mostly because the opposition are crooks.
Yeesh - Could you at least spoiler this type of text writing, it's not convenient for a lot of people. Either put arguments in larger paragraphs or summarise what you are saying more.
Brexit is on the way and no mass mobilisations or mushroom clouds threatened. Looks like they were wrong.
So let me get this straight, you are arguing that an opinion article in the guardian stating that there are wealthy people in locations are oblivious to the plight of the low paid and why they voted to leave and that a report *in another paper* on what DC said is evidence that the Guardian thinks all Leavers are idiots? That sounds a very surreal argument. The former is even suggesting that some peoples views on Leavers is counter productive because it is not acknowledging the issues that caused such a backlash in the first place. The latter is an article from a different paper reporting on what DC stated so how does that make the Guardian think everyone that voted Leave is an idiot?
On what basis then is the Guardian article made up. They have provided where they have the evidence from and noted where some couldn't be published. On what basis and evidence can you provide that it was made up (and not just because "You say so") otherwise you are just trying to ignore what is being reported. In some ways this is just as bad as some Remainers calling Leavers 'idiots' as you as a Leaver are just calling some Remainers 'liars' or (paraphrasing) deluded.
This is often the safe spacer excuse. I dont ike what they are saying so lets brand them racist and then ignore their arguments or remove their platform.
Its the same psychology as a witch hunt.
Its felt to be necessary due to finger pointing and scaremongering, and critics brave enough to raise objection get added to the list of the unwelcome.
Your response implies a lack of empathy. Suppose you were part of a group that everyday when you walked out the door your don't know when some obnoxious person starts hurling abuse just because of the way you lived your life. Not everyone wants to mentally prepare themselves to try and fight off a verbal (or even physical) assault because of the way they live their life. It doesn't affect me, you or the random nutter next door how they live their life and it is never and excuse for hassling people over they way they live. 'Safe spaces' are there so people know they have somewhere they can go for some time to avoid having to even worry about being accosted because of their lifestyle, how they look or the language they speak. It shouldn't be necessary but it appears some have developed in society to a point where we think it is acceptable to stick our oar into another persons life just because it doesn't coincide with that persons view of the world. Ask yourself whether you would find it acceptable that if you went to a pub for a beer that every tenth person that walked past slated you for having that beer.
No its not a 'bit larger' if it was it would have enough electorate to have multiple MP's or you would need to vastly increase the number of parliamentarians.
The whole idea of an MP is that they are local, you can arrange to see them in person and they represent you because you live in the same area, not because you belong to the same party. that is not relevant.
Your MP can interfere on your behalf, and most frequently do, you dont need to be of the same party to appeal to your MP for justice in an issue, and if by listing that became expected it would cheapen parliament.
Parachuting should be illegal, people should live in an area for a minimum amount of time before beign alowed to stand there.
Then you can apply the same principle to PR regional representation. You would still get a local person from the area and you would also get someone whose views are more likely to align to your own. If you are affected by the bedroom tax how likely is that a Tory MP would actually take this up in any meaningful way when they voted for those same changes. You are much more likely to get a better response and someone who will take it further that also reviles the policy?
It is, you need to be sufficiently popular in your local constituency to be elected. National percentages dont matter outside of a direct referendum, you can always find statistical abberations if you want to because if the way percentages work. In your system the opposite could occur a town might have representation from an MP from a party with 35% of the vote while 55% voted for a specific unsuccessful candidate, and might be faced with that representative because of support elsewhere.
A statistical aberration is when there is a freak result outside the norm (likely 3-5 sigma result, i.e. occurs less than 1/1000 - 1/10000). Consistently having the same result where proportion of votes cast is 20% or so different to the number of seats awarded is not a statistical aberration because it's consistently occurring - this makes it statistical likelihood within the 3 sigma result. What that then implies is that there is a weighting or bias in how the data is being taken. A healthy democratic process ensures that the overall the populaces preference for the parties is roughly equivalent to the number of seats they have. The idea that people generally vote for the candidate they like the most is rather farcical given the Tories current election Manifesto which is made of all of six words of "Strong and Stable" and "Corbyn is rubbish".
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konst80hummel wrote: @ Whirlwind Technicaly Greeks voted against the EU proposal by a large margin. Thankfully our PM realised what was going on broke with some of the lunatics of his party and promptly raised the EU flag high ignoring the referendum.
Note that I voted for him mostly because the opposition are crooks.
I thought they had a second vote though after the first where they were given the option of vote for me, the EU, and the bailout or else lets the tides decide?
No debate for us. Just a series of set questions and low balls thrown the the leaders individually.
They really are pathetic, no gumption, no guts. We all want to see them go head to head, but TM especially says she'd rather 'meet voters directly', meaning stage managed events where the public and press are kept out.
TMs a coward when it comes to actually talking to the public and whenever some does get a word in edge ways she just plays the tape recording for them. Still a coward is just what we need for debates over our ties with the EU isn't it
She has nothing to gain from slugging it out with Corbs, so she is avoiding it. It's tactical.
But that would imply she is scared of losing ground because she *might* be skewered over any number of issues. That makes her a political coward at best and implies a lack of confidence in her own ability to stand by her policies. That is not a good implication for the future health of our country - and we already have seen what happens when she doesn't get here own way, she has a massive playground strop.
But that would imply she is scared of losing ground because she *might* be skewered over any number of issues. That makes her a political coward at best and implies a lack of confidence in her own ability to stand by her policies. That is not a good implication for the future health of our country - and we already have seen what happens when she doesn't get here own way, she has a massive playground strop.
She's an opportunist. But we already knew that from the way she came to power. Being a good opportunist is not necessarily a bad thing either, minimising risk and only taking calculated chances is not a negative trait.
You talk about being a political coward in much the same way as a newbie might deride another soldier on the battlefield for not being willing to run into machine gun fire to take an objective. If she's guaranteed to take nothing but political bullets and the objective is worthless or can be claimed for less damage by waiting for the tactical position to change, it makes perfect sense to hunker down instead.
Frankly, I would argue that practically all good politicians are good opportunists to a lesser degree. Corbyn is a dead threat. Any damage incurred by a handful of media headlines screeching about 'political cowardice' will be forgotten in short order if it means she gets a new full term.
Note that I personally believe it is a point of politicial professionalism and respect to the country that she should stand up in public with the opposition leader at least once anyway. I just think it is a mistake to equate a refusal to do so as 'cowardice', it does make perfectly good sense from her angle.
But that would imply she is scared of losing ground because she *might* be skewered over any number of issues. That makes her a political coward at best and implies a lack of confidence in her own ability to stand by her policies. That is not a good implication for the future health of our country - and we already have seen what happens when she doesn't get here own way, she has a massive playground strop.
She's an opportunist. But we already knew that from the way she came to power. Being a good opportunist is not necessarily a bad thing either, minimising risk and only taking calculated chances is not a negative trait.
You talk about being a political coward in much the same way as a newbie might deride another soldier on the battlefield for not being willing to run into machine gun fire to take an objective. If she's guaranteed to take nothing but political bullets and the objective is worthless or can be claimed for less damage by waiting for the tactical position to change, it makes perfect sense to hunker down instead.
Frankly, I would argue that practically all good politicians are good opportunists to a lesser degree. Corbyn is a dead threat. Any damage incurred by a handful of media headlines screeching about 'political cowardice' will be forgotten in short order if it means she gets a new full term.
Note that I personally believe it is a point of politicial professionalism and respect to the country that she should stand up in public with the opposition leader at least once anyway. I just think it is a mistake to equate a refusal to do so as 'cowardice', it does make perfectly good sense from her angle.
She never rose from the back benches to running thr country by not being a skilled tactician and taking calculated risks to take down opponents and gain allies alike.
She neutralised Borris with good tactics, beat multiple leadership rivals and was a home secretary for years. A job that's not easiest to hold.
She not a coward, she however a solid strategist.
Orlanth wrote: If FPTP was acceptable in 1997 it is acceptable today.
Lib Dems would love it if it benefited them.
FPTP has a superior feature, it separates each component of the election down to is individual MP. The UK system doesn't have people directly voting for party x or party y, they vote for their local representative MP.
This is inherently fair as it parses out democracy to where it should be to an MP and the geographical area they are accountable to.
You talk about being a political coward in much the same way as a newbie might deride another soldier on the battlefield for not being willing to run into machine gun fire to take an objective. If she's guaranteed to take nothing but political bullets and the objective is worthless or can be claimed for less damage by waiting for the tactical position to change, it makes perfect sense to hunker down instead.
Except taking the analogy further it's like May is riding around in a tank, why Corbyn is running around with a club and loin cloth and grunting once in a while. However she is still the PM so she should have the strength of character to believe in the policies she stands by. By hiding she both displays a lack of disdain for the populace at large and actually allowing them to put questions to her. Either she does not believe in her own ability to discuss things with the populace, to persuade them that her arguments are correct; or that she does not believe in her own policies. Either way she is avoiding the situation simply because she knows that she could go on holiday for 6 weeks and still win the election. However whether you want to call it political opportunism it is still cowardice to an extent because it's fear of getting things so badly wrong that she loses (literally she'd have to call everyone morons continuously for this to happen). It might work with enough of the populace but it does not provide optimism that when she comes across other people that really do believe in what they stand for and can articulate it clearly then May is no longer going to be able to hide. If she fears the ability to persuade the populace then she is simply going to be outmatched and outgunned when it comes to the EU.
She never rose from the back benches to running thr country by not being a skilled tactician and taking calculated risks to take down opponents and gain allies alike.
She neutralised Borris with good tactics, beat multiple leadership rivals and was a home secretary for years. A job that's not easiest to hold.
She not a coward, she however a solid strategist.
Seems alot more strategic than Corbyn anyway.
Her approach was more sit on the side at the OK Corral and when the bullets and smoke cleared she waltzed in shot the wounded survivors and then declared victory. She got to where she was not by some clever strategy, but letting other people hang themselves and then move in with squatters rights.
You talk about being a political coward in much the same way as a newbie might deride another soldier on the battlefield for not being willing to run into machine gun fire to take an objective. If she's guaranteed to take nothing but political bullets and the objective is worthless or can be claimed for less damage by waiting for the tactical position to change, it makes perfect sense to hunker down instead.
Except taking the analogy further it's like May is riding around in a tank, why Corbyn is running around with a club and loin cloth and grunting once in a while. However she is still the PM so she should have the strength of character to believe in the policies she stands by. By hiding she both displays a lack of disdain for the populace at large and actually allowing them to put questions to her. Either she does not believe in her own ability to discuss things with the populace, to persuade them that her arguments are correct; or that she does not believe in her own policies. Either way she is avoiding the situation simply because she knows that she could go on holiday for 6 weeks and still win the election. However whether you want to call it political opportunism it is still cowardice to an extent because it's fear of getting things so badly wrong that she loses (literally she'd have to call everyone morons continuously for this to happen). It might work with enough of the populace but it does not provide optimism that when she comes across other people that really do believe in what they stand for and can articulate it clearly then May is no longer going to be able to hide. If she fears the ability to persuade the populace then she is simply going to be outmatched and outgunned when it comes to the EU.
She never rose from the back benches to running thr country by not being a skilled tactician and taking calculated risks to take down opponents and gain allies alike.
She neutralised Borris with good tactics, beat multiple leadership rivals and was a home secretary for years. A job that's not easiest to hold.
She not a coward, she however a solid strategist.
Seems alot more strategic than Corbyn anyway.
Her approach was more sit on the side at the OK Corral and when the bullets and smoke cleared she waltzed in shot the wounded survivors and then declared victory. She got to where she was not by some clever strategy, but letting other people hang themselves and then move in with squatters rights.
However you see, she did it. She made it to top past alot of capable challengers.
If letting your opponents waste ammo, deplete there own strengh before making your move. Then that's a valid strategy.
Why not let others weaken before you make your move. Its good strategy to not waste your own "troops" as it where and let another do some of the fighting for you.
It worked for William the Conqueror.
He was crowned king that way. Harolds force had spent its strengh already somewhat, William was fresh.
Either way she is avoiding the situation simply because she knows that she could go on holiday for 6 weeks and still win the election. However whether you want to call it political opportunism it is still cowardice to an extent because it's fear of getting things so badly wrong that she loses (literally she'd have to call everyone morons continuously for this to happen).
I don't even think it's that. There has to be a literal prize to be acquired to make it worth sticking your head over the political parapet, something to seize out and storm and claim. In this situation, there isn't. There is literally nothing to be acquired, only things to be lost. Whether the harm potentially incurred is great or minimal, it's harm incurred for no purpose.
So she's not bothering because there's nothing to gain, and potentially up to everything to lose. Who in their right minds would? I think she should from a professional standpoint, but in her shoes, I'm not sure I would either. It would be terrible strategy. If there was any real chance of this election going doolally, she'd never have called it. With that in mind, why risk any form of reputational damage like Broon/Duffy that you don't have to?
You call it cowardice, but I'm sure any Dark Eldar or Alpha Legion player out there would call it pure pragmatism.
Her approach was more sit on the side at the OK Corral and when the bullets and smoke cleared she waltzed in shot the wounded survivors and then declared victory. She got to where she was not by some clever strategy, but letting other people hang themselves and then move in with squatters rights.
Eh, half and half. She would have been balancing Cameron and Osborne's demand she involve herself with the remain campaign on one hand, and her own personal views (which I have heard were ever so slightly leaning towards the leave side) next to the political flak being thrown out by the Leave campaign on the other. Which was no doubt mildly nervewracking, usually when the PM demands his Cabinet get in there, there's a certain degree of obligation.
So she submarined, which is apparently something she wasn't unknown for doing before. The posh boys generally ignored her because they only ever included her as a token woman anyway, and she wasn't exactly such a charismatic figure that Leave went out of their way to recruit her. Then Cameron took his toys and ran away, Gove fell on his own sword, Leadsom was very clearly outed as lying on her own CV (and being a bit clueless otherwise), and Osborne knew he had no hope ascending just yet in Cameron's footsteps. None of that was any real accomplishment on her part.
Bojo though? That was a very canny bit of politicking. If she screws up every other political decision she ever makes, her effective removal of Bojo from the field remains a masterstroke.
I disagree, TM is playing the Strong unt Stable card for all its worth. If she's so strong, then she could easily demonstrate that.
Besides, her actions reek of weakness and cowardice. She's flip flopped several times over issues, and she backs down when confronted. The EU must be quite pleased she's heading up negotiations, they'll be able to push her around like a play doh.
Corbyn, on the other hand is made of sterner stuff. He's batting off vitriolic attacks daily, from every direction and has stuck by his principles throughout his career, no matter what.
Personally, I know who I'd rather have sitting across the table from Michel Barnier.
And another point, look at their priorities. We know, for a fact that the Tories will go in to defend the rights of big business and their friends interests, and will sell us down the river.
Corbyn will genuinely be battling for the people of the UK, because that's what he genuinely believes in.
You're a boxer, it's round 12. Youre way up on points, do you risk it all to go charging in and slug it for a potential knockout? While putting yourselves at danger at being knocked out yourself? Or you stay back and keep doing what you're doing, knowing your going to win anyway?
Thinking like that is how Apollo Creed lost the Heavyweight title back in 1977.
Having bravery, and guts, and strengh is one thing.
Having strategy is quite another. If TM can win without having to take excess risk, falling into traps and such. She will. She is not the shiny showman like Cameran was, or some of his allies.
Different tactics and approaches favor different people.
Plus the time Corbyn has to mount various defenses, defend self and party is time he not election working.
All the time he battling internal he ain't getting external and fighting this election.
B - its generally accepted policy the opposition leader or sitting who loses resigns out of responsibility.
(there suggesting he may hang on in even after losing a election)
I'm not generally a fan of the whole resign once you lose thing as a role. In saying that, depending on the scale of loss it might be a good idea for Corbyn. But it could very well be a car is not right now as opposed to "we as a nation reject your policies."
This is speaking generally though and not in reference to current events.
Compel wrote: I'm not generally a fan of the whole resign once you lose thing as a role. In saying that, depending on the scale of loss it might be a good idea for Corbyn. But it could very well be a car is not right now as opposed to "we as a nation reject your policies."
This is speaking generally though and not in reference to current events.
If he can at least hold or keep losses minimal, he could hang on saying he halted the rout and held at least a party who can effectively oppose.
If he takes heavy losses then yes. Also for sake of party as if he does the MP's are gonna go for blood on him with renewed vigour.
She has nothing to gain from slugging it out with Corbs, so she is avoiding it. It's tactical.
So that's why she's also avoiding the press and the public?
Her entire campaign seems to be to hide from everyone and bash Corbyn. To me it seems like she or her puppeteer are terrified of letting her lose to screw up again. That she's more of a liability by talking to the public instead of hiding from them.
But then she got where she was by staying quiet whilst everyone else kept shooting themselves in the foot.
r_squared wrote: errrr.... She's flip flopped several times over issues, and she backs down when confronted. The EU must be quite pleased she's heading up negotiations, they'll be able to push her around like a play doh.
Corbyn, on the other hand is made of sterner stuff. He's batting off vitriolic attacks daily, from every direction and has stuck by his principles throughout his career, no matter what.
I think, perhaps, we have very different perceptions of the woman. But that's fine.
And another point, look at their priorities. We know, for a fact that the Tories will go in to defend the rights of big business and their friends interests, and will sell us down the river.
.......this though.....really? The same old 'evil Tories are here to line their friends pockets' malarkey? I'm getting really tired of challenging this particular (and exceedingly sloppy) conspiracy theory. I honestly don't know if I can bother to do it a third time.
She has nothing to gain from slugging it out with Corbs, so she is avoiding it. It's tactical.
So that's why she's also avoiding the press and the public?
Her entire campaign seems to be to hide from everyone and bash Corbyn. To me it seems like she or her puppeteer are terrified of letting her lose to screw up again. That she's more of a liability by talking to the public instead of hiding from them.
But then she got where she was by staying quiet whilst everyone else kept shooting themselves in the foot.
Yeah, during the EU referendum, they nick named May 'The Submarine.'
It's all in Tim Shipman's book, which I would recommend to anybody if they want to find out what went on behind the scenes last year.
Bojo really is useless. Gove IS a weasel of the highest order, and Osborne surprisingly, seems to be the only one who knew what he was doing at the time.
Compel wrote: I'm not generally a fan of the whole resign once you lose thing as a role. In saying that, depending on the scale of loss it might be a good idea for Corbyn. But it could very well be a car is not right now as opposed to "we as a nation reject your policies."
This is speaking generally though and not in reference to current events.
If he can at least hold or keep losses minimal, he could hang on saying he halted the rout and held at least a party who can effectively oppose.
If he takes heavy losses then yes. Also for sake of party as if he does the MP's are gonna go for blood on him with renewed vigour.
Expect to see Corbyn do his Black Knight impression after June. I'm tempted to join Labour myself after June 8th, because at the rate of Corbyn's cabinet shuffles, I'll be Shadow Welsh secretary within days
You're a boxer, it's round 12. Youre way up on points, do you risk it all to go charging in and slug it for a potential knockout? While putting yourselves at danger at being knocked out yourself? Or you stay back and keep doing what you're doing, knowing your going to win anyway?
Thinking like that is how Apollo Creed lost the Heavyweight title back in 1977.
Corbyn doesn't care if he loses the election and all those within the party who oppose him jump ship. He would be much happier to convert the party into an ideologically pure echo chamber for himself than actually aim to lead the country.
Future War Cultist wrote: Corbyn doesn't care if he loses the election and all those within the party who oppose him jump ship. He would be much happier to convert the party into an ideologically pure echo chamber for himself than actually aim to lead the country.
My General Election wish list is more or less what it was in 2015: 50 SNPMPs, and Nick Clegg getting a hard boot to the rear.
I've long resigned myself to a Tory victory, so Corbyn going down with the ship is no surprise or no big deal to me.
I got my lib dem leaflets in the mailbox today. - 2 different kinds of leaflets, 1 A3, the other a folded A4.
The A3 one has everything on the A4 one, plus some other stuff. No real difference between them.
Pretty much every statement on both leaflets should have an annotation afterwards: *Citation Needed. And no, referring to an opinion piece on a newspaper isn't a citation, that's just shifting the buck.
Come on, Lib Dems, if you think Grammar Schools are a horrible idea, or horribly implemented, show me why. I don't even really know what a Grammar School *is* exactly.
Don't just say:
"Will Campaign for funding for our schools."
Lib Dems: *Tick*
Conservatives: X
That gives me no information at all. And I'm sure, at some point, the tories will campaign for funding for schools, it's a pointless statement. The degree of the campaigning though, and the extent of the funding, THAT's the question.
To those of you who actually like the EU, doesn't it bother you that this wino is in such an important and highly paid position?
Speaking for myself, of course it bothers me. The man's clearly not the right person for the job.
Not really bothering.
Merkel has the say in the EU. She criticized Junker for his meeting with May last week.
Whilst Juncker may or may not be a bit of a knob, he is not "Teh EU". He does not control the EU or the member states, whose individual governments have significant influence over the course of action.
From that angle, Juncker doesn't bother me to a great degree. He's just one guy, not the God-Emperor.
This guy is meant to be a senior figure in the EU in a very promint role.
No, you aint the guy for the job if your judgement is that bad.
i don't like EU but this guy is just a liability it seems.
did he drink too much or somthing?
As I already said, this guy is a liability. But he cannot decide something on his own. The EU has better negotiators like Timmermanns and Mogherini.
The brexit negotiations will be led by Merkel and other influential premier ministers like the French Macron.
Apparently May's team cottoned on to all the criticism about her stage managed appearances and have started letting her have interviews with actual punters as of yesterday, according to the Guardian.
Also a very interesting opinion piece in there today about how corbyn this and brexit there is still ignoring the underlying structural trembling in the Labour party; there's an interview with a bloke in Wales talking about how his mum and her dad have always voted Labour but he just doesn't care anymore. To him, Corbyn, Miliband, Borwn and Blair all roll into one posh professional politician blur of a machine, so he couldn't care less. The article rightfully points out that with their loyal zombie voterbase starting to die off and none of the new working class giving two hoots about it, Labour is in serious trouble whatever the election result.
Ketara wrote: To him, Corbyn, Miliband, Borwn and Blair all roll into one posh professional politician blur of a machine, so he couldn't care less. The article rightfully points out that with their loyal zombie voterbase starting to die off and none of the new working class giving two hoots about it, Labour is in serious trouble whatever the election result.
Reminds me of my impression:
"Rich scumbag pawns of union bosses that have bribed their way to power. " One could also add in some thoughts relating to 'double dealing, manipulation and backstabbing' conversed with the stereotypical Tory equivalent of, "their Great Grandparents double dealing, manipulation and backstabbing."
It really does seem a ripe time for newer parties, - an SNP equivalent in England. But we had this discussion before, so.... Meh, no point retreading old ground.
Ketara wrote: Apparently May's team cottoned on to all the criticism about her stage managed appearances and have started letting her have interviews with actual punters as of yesterday, accoridng to the Guardian.
Also a very interesting opinion piece in there today about how corbyn this and brexit there is still ignoring the underlying structural trembling in the Labour party; there's an interview the journalist with a bloke in Wales talking about how his mum and her dad have always voted Labour but he just doesn't care anymore. To him, Corbyn, Miliband, Borwn and Blair all roll into one posh professional politician blur of a machine, so he couldn't care less. The article rightfully points out that with their loyal zombie voterbase starting to die off and none of the new working class giving two hoots about it, Labour is in serious trouble whatever the election result.
Ketara wrote: To him, Corbyn, Miliband, Borwn and Blair all roll into one posh professional politician blur of a machine, so he couldn't care less. The article rightfully points out that with their loyal zombie voterbase starting to die off and none of the new working class giving two hoots about it, Labour is in serious trouble whatever the election result.
Reminds me of my impression:
"Rich scumbag pawns of union bosses that have bribed their way to power. " One could also add in some thoughts relating to 'double dealing, manipulation and backstabbing' conversed with the stereotypical Tory equivalent of, "their Great Grandparents double dealing, manipulation and backstabbing."
It really does seem a ripe time for newer parties, - an SNP equivalent in England. But we had this discussion before, so.... Meh, no point retreading old ground.
The problem is how do you implement this? The system is rigged so that unless you have the money or supported by a major party your chance of being elected is minimal simply because those that are paid poorly simply can't afford to drop everything, campaign and then find they haven't got anywhere and are up to the eyeballs in debt. How are you expecting a new party arise unless they have a major backer. The only party that did grow was UKIP and they had significant multimillionaire backers who viewed the EU as holding back their profits over awkward things like human rights, environmental concerns and so on. Now Tories have become newUKIP old UKIP are being dropped like a bag of manure because the Tories now give them what they want. The mantra of 'evil EU' (and lets not forget the proportion of the population that just don't want immigration despite the fact it's the only way it keeps the country's future sustainable long term) has got into the psyche of enough people that it swung the vote the way they wanted.
"They" have done a good job the world over to put the myth "worker's rights= economic ruin" though. That's the justification people over here have for voting for our local conservatives, despite more than a decade of transparent corruption and debt.
Ketara wrote: Apparently May's team cottoned on to all the criticism about her stage managed appearances and have started letting her have interviews with actual punters as of yesterday, accoridng to the Guardian.
Also a very interesting opinion piece in there today about how corbyn this and brexit there is still ignoring the underlying structural trembling in the Labour party; there's an interview the journalist with a bloke in Wales talking about how his mum and her dad have always voted Labour but he just doesn't care anymore. To him, Corbyn, Miliband, Borwn and Blair all roll into one posh professional politician blur of a machine, so he couldn't care less. The article rightfully points out that with their loyal zombie voterbase starting to die off and none of the new working class giving two hoots about it, Labour is in serious trouble whatever the election result.
Seems to me that Labour has moved away from their 'working-class'... and maybe even moving a wee be more leftish politically.
It's not quite as simple as this. There's also a lot of support by young people of the Labour party. The problem is that they don't vote. There's a suggestion that if 30% of the youth population actually voted the way the polls indicate then Labour would win convincingly. The problem is convincing enough to go out and vote.
However it's not just the Labour party that have an issue with their future. Labour's current appeal is to less of it's old core roots, but there are less and less of these people (and will have to move more central in the future if it is to survive as a political firce). However it does have a lot of grass root support. On the other hand the Tories have the opposite issue - they generally appeal to the middle earners that get along just fine but hate the thought of having to pay anymore to the state than they have to (effectively a 'selfish' vote). However their grass root support is dwindling because they are all old and dying off making them ever more reliant on rich sponsors and 'groomed' politicians. This is making both sides ever more pandering to a certain group of people at the expense of the populace as a whole. The only party that is growing and is generally youthful is the Lib Dems at the moment (and SNP if you include Scotland).
It's not just a revamp of the parties we need, ones that actually respect the populace rather than see them as a tool in their own never-ending power plays but we need a complete shake up of the political system as a whole to re-engage vast swathes of the populace.
The problem is how do you implement this? The system is rigged so that unless you have the money or supported by a major party your chance of being elected is minimal simply because those that are paid poorly simply can't afford to drop everything, campaign and then find they haven't got anywhere and are up to the eyeballs in debt. How are you expecting a new party arise unless they have a major backer. .
Errr....I'm afraid that if this were even remotely accurate, Labour simply wouldn't exist.
Remember, the people of say, 1900, had an absolute fraction of the wealth, power, and communication capabilities that we do today. Yet they managed to build a movement and several political parties which culminated in Attlee's government. We talk about Kickstarter now, bit political movements were the real early stars of crowdfunding!
If Labour meant anything at all to the working, or even the middle classes in reality, they'd stick their hands willingly into their pockets to affect change. They don't because they have no faith in the party. If even all those people spamming facebook/twitter/the BBC with specious arguments about Corbyn being the next coming of christ gave a £1 for every ten posts, Labour wouldn't be in a financial hole. But they don't, because they don't like him /that much!
Complaining about Tories is easy. Actually forgoing a coffee or video game to help prop up a political party? Nah.
The problem is how do you implement this? The system is rigged so that unless you have the money or supported by a major party your chance of being elected is minimal simply because those that are paid poorly simply can't afford to drop everything, campaign and then find they haven't got anywhere and are up to the eyeballs in debt. How are you expecting a new party arise unless they have a major backer. .
Errr....I'm afraid that if this were even remotely accurate, Labour simply wouldn't exist.
Remember, the people of say, 1900, had an absolute fraction of the wealth, power, and communication capabilities that we do today. Yet they managed to build a movement and several political parties which culminated in Attlee's government. We talk about Kickstarter now, bit political movements were the real early stars of crowdfunding!
If Labour meant anything at all to the working, or even the middle classes in reality, they'd stick their hands willingly into their pockets to affect change. They don't because they have no faith in the party. If even all those people spamming facebook/twitter/the BBC with specious arguments about Corbyn being the next coming of christ gave a £1 for every ten posts, Labour wouldn't be in a financial hole. But they don't, because they don't like him /that much!
Complaining about Tories is easy. Actually forgoing a coffee or video game to help prop up a political party? Nah.
Its also leaders who are inspiring people to part with there money...
reds8n wrote: so first of all May was only allowing pre selected/approved questions from the press
-- which didn't go down well -- and then changed at the next event to the usual format.
Corbyn meanwhile has now banned Buzzfeed from future events
Seems like they are both taking tips form Trump then. It's really appalling though that the press are forced to ask staged 'easy to answer' questions on both sides. This is becoming less and less like democracy and some dystopian country. What happened to freedom of speech? I suppose the Tories were right that they were indeed taking back control (of hope) and replacing it with fear.
The NYT is offering a Brexit-themed six-day tour of London for $6,000 a head.
... ..... one might suggest there;s a few things more interesting than that one can find to do in London
It's a lot of money, but they probably do get a t-shirt where they are "pointing a laughing at England".
.. Oh and May has come out in favour of Fox hunting
Brilliant... what was this about Brexit and voting Tories would maintain the environmental controls. Maybe she should be let off in a middle of a field and chased down by a pack of hounds hunting for blood and then tear here limb from limb just so she could experience what a fox must go through.
I think the problem is that people forget that politics is a very broad spectrum, and that a lot of people on the left don't get along or have aligned goals. What is good for one branch of the left can be bad for another.
To seize on one example right now, take immigration. The more well-educated and employed types tend to love immigration. Love of humanity, boost to the economy, cultural acceptance for all, etcetc. Lots of nice positive good wholesome moral Liberal principles that it ties into.
To the actual working classes, what they see is more along the line of increased competition for jobs, a weakening of the Union, their high street suddenly covered in foreign signs (Polski sklep, etc), a bunch of foreign criminals muscling in on the local bad boys (who even if they didn't like, at least they went to school with them), rent prices going up due to the increased economy/demand, and so on.
So a good chunk of the left wing working class, although they despise the Tories, voted Brexit. I mention that one because it's the most obvious sign of disconnect recently between what the left wingers who run the political parties like, and what the left wingers who always used to do the grassroots like.
Corbyn has more in common with Tim Farron than he does Clement Attlee, or even Bob Crow. He's a well educated, liberal London luvvie with a slightly morbid fascination with the Hard left (that is to say, the Marxist/Soviet end of things). He hangs around at 'Stop the War' conferences and grows nice wholesome organic vegetables in his little private plot whilst reading of dark and dangerous places. And there's nothing wrong with that. But he's just as distanced from the people who made the Labour Party what it was as Blair and the neo-Labour pro- business plastic political types were, just in a different way. Politics isn't just a simple graph, where you go one way or the other. Just because Corbyn isn't right wing doesn't mean that he's the same type of left-wing as the working classes of Great Britain have historically inclined towards.
I don't know if there's anyone left in any of the parties who actually champions British socialism anymore. But until Corbyn moves, we won't see if they're hiding in the Labour party or not.
Errr....I'm afraid that if this were even remotely accurate, Labour simply wouldn't exist.
Remember, the people of say, 1900, had an absolute fraction of the wealth, power, and communication capabilities that we do today. Yet they managed to build a movement and several political parties which culminated in Attlee's government. We talk about Kickstarter now, bit political movements were the real early stars of crowdfunding!
You can't seriously consider that the 1900's are the same as today? Yes Labour started as a grass roots campaign but then the costs of doing that were not prohibitive because there was already support for such a party, it was just they were separated by travel time rather than disparate views that prevented them merging.
However we are talking about a new party today. It would be easy to contact people but getting enough to actually join a new party (and noting there aren't many niches left) would be a hell of a job. If we had a president like France then it would be easier, but here you have to support multiple candidates, advertising campaigns and so on. You would need significant backing to get things going.
If Labour meant anything at all to the working, or even the middle classes in reality, they'd stick their hands willingly into their pockets to affect change. They don't because they have no faith in the party. If even all those people spamming facebook/twitter/the BBC with specious arguments about Corbyn being the next coming of christ gave a £1 for every ten posts, Labour wouldn't be in a financial hole. But they don't, because they don't like him /that much!
I think you are bit behind the times on this one. Labour's finances are improving now. I read an article (can't find it now damn it - it talked about the strange circumstances Labour were in in that overall popularity was low but income was increasing) that they are now out of debt because of an increase income. Labour's income in 2015 was £51.5m compared to just under £40m in the previous year. So people are still willing to fund Labour one way or another.
You can't seriously consider that the 1900's are the same as today? Yes Labour started as a grass roots campaign but then the costs of doing that were not prohibitive because there was already support for such a party, it was just they were separated by travel time rather than disparate views that prevented them merging.
However we are talking about a new party today. It would be easy to contact people but getting enough to actually join a new party (and noting there aren't many niches left) would be a hell of a job. If we had a president like France then it would be easier, but here you have to support multiple candidates, advertising campaigns and so on. You would need significant backing to get things going.
Please tell me you aren't seriously insisting, that it is harder to start or gain backing for a successful left-wing political movement today than in 1900. Please.
To the actual working classes, what they see is more along the line of increased competition for jobs, a weakening of the Union, their high street suddenly covered in foreign signs (Polski sklep, etc), a bunch of foreign criminals muscling in on the local bad boys (who even if they didn't like, at least they went to school with them), rent prices going up due to the increased economy/demand, and so on.
Except some of these are nothing to do with the EU/freedom of movement and trade but have been spun to deflect the populaces anger and blame. Both competition for jobs and increased rent prices etc are due to political UK mismanagement and deflection. If you look at the US, a country *built* on immigration, it now has the largest economy in the world. A larger work force actually drives the economy because you can support smaller proportional industries. if 0.01% of the population plays wargames then a population of 1 million supports a wargaming population of about 10,000; if immigration grows that to 10million then suddenly you have 100,000 wargamers. That allows the support of a much larger industry and hence jobs and growth. The failing has occurred because some people were left behind by society and government whereas they should have been given every assistance to develop and move forward so they could also gain from the extra wealth. House rents are going up because house building is (and has been for some time) deliberately held back to boost profits (hence creating an artificial shortage). We are now in a situation where house building is at its lowest since the 1920s http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/house-building-tories-labour-healey_uk_5910b87ce4b0d5d9049eb915?708 and still declining. All the housing policies have done is move more money/profits into the house builders hands. Yet politicians (especially Tories) have been happy to blame the EU and this seeped into a proportion of the populaces views where by now thinks like foreign signs/UK criminals are 'better than EU ones'/weakening of the union is just a bigotry and racism undercurrent. Yet it was used as a tool by politicians (and still is) to create more fear and anger in a certain element of the populace so they are manipulated to vote a certain way.
You can't seriously consider that the 1900's are the same as today? Yes Labour started as a grass roots campaign but then the costs of doing that were not prohibitive because there was already support for such a party, it was just they were separated by travel time rather than disparate views that prevented them merging.
However we are talking about a new party today. It would be easy to contact people but getting enough to actually join a new party (and noting there aren't many niches left) would be a hell of a job. If we had a president like France then it would be easier, but here you have to support multiple candidates, advertising campaigns and so on. You would need significant backing to get things going.
Please tell me you aren't seriously insisting, that it is harder to start or gain backing for a successful left-wing political movement today than in 1900. Please.
No what I am saying is that, as you pointed out, there were already groups of people that had fundamentally the same views but were separated by distance. Hence it was likely only a matter of time as communications improved that these groups merged.
What we are talking about here is a brand new party that is distinctly different from any of the others (so Labour/Tory/UKIP/LDs/Green etc) in such a reasonable fashion to be able to gain a foothold in parliament and that this would require vast sums of money to achieve to both advertise as well as employ candidates, marketing managers, place adverts and so on.
The problem is how do you implement this? The system is rigged so that unless you have the money or supported by a major party your chance of being elected is minimal simply because those that are paid poorly simply can't afford to drop everything, campaign and then find they haven't got anywhere and are up to the eyeballs in debt. How are you expecting a new party arise unless they have a major backer. .
Errr....I'm afraid that if this were even remotely accurate, Labour simply wouldn't exist.
Remember, the people of say, 1900, had an absolute fraction of the wealth, power, and communication capabilities that we do today. Yet they managed to build a movement and several political parties which culminated in Attlee's government. We talk about Kickstarter now, bit political movements were the real early stars of crowdfunding!
If Labour meant anything at all to the working, or even the middle classes in reality, they'd stick their hands willingly into their pockets to affect change. They don't because they have no faith in the party. If even all those people spamming facebook/twitter/the BBC with specious arguments about Corbyn being the next coming of christ gave a £1 for every ten posts, Labour wouldn't be in a financial hole. But they don't, because they don't like him /that much!
Complaining about Tories is easy. Actually forgoing a coffee or video game to help prop up a political party? Nah.
Given that New Old Labour's renaissance was built on the votes of the cut-price £3 membership, I would say you have some financial logic in your argument.
One of Labour's problems is that the parliamentary party, backed by the bulk of the full-price activists (local party committees, and so on) don't believe in Korben and basically have been railroaded into his leadership by the cheap-rate votes.
To the actual working classes, what they see is more along the line of increased competition for jobs, a weakening of the Union, their high street suddenly covered in foreign signs (Polski sklep, etc), a bunch of foreign criminals muscling in on the local bad boys (who even if they didn't like, at least they went to school with them), rent prices going up due to the increased economy/demand, and so on.
Except some of these are nothing to do with the EU/freedom of movement and trade but have been spun to deflect the populaces anger and blame. Both competition for jobs and increased rent prices etc are due to political UK mismanagement and deflection. If you look at the US, a country *built* on immigration, it now has the largest economy in the world. A larger work force actually drives the economy because you can support smaller proportional industries. if 0.01% of the population plays wargames then a population of 1 million supports a wargaming population of about 10,000; if immigration grows that to 10million then suddenly you have 100,000 wargamers. That allows the support of a much larger industry and hence jobs and growth. The failing has occurred because some people were left behind by society and government whereas they should have been given every assistance to develop and move forward so they could also gain from the extra wealth. House rents are going up because house building is (and has been for some time) deliberately held back to boost profits (hence creating an artificial shortage). We are now in a situation where house building is at its lowest since the 1920s http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/house-building-tories-labour-healey_uk_5910b87ce4b0d5d9049eb915?708 and still declining. All the housing policies have done is move more money/profits into the house builders hands. Yet politicians (especially Tories) have been happy to blame the EU and this seeped into a proportion of the populaces views where by now thinks like foreign signs/UK criminals are 'better than EU ones'/weakening of the union is just a bigotry and racism undercurrent. Yet it was used as a tool by politicians (and still is) to create more fear and anger in a certain element of the populace so they are manipulated to vote a certain way.
You can't seriously consider that the 1900's are the same as today? Yes Labour started as a grass roots campaign but then the costs of doing that were not prohibitive because there was already support for such a party, it was just they were separated by travel time rather than disparate views that prevented them merging.
However we are talking about a new party today. It would be easy to contact people but getting enough to actually join a new party (and noting there aren't many niches left) would be a hell of a job. If we had a president like France then it would be easier, but here you have to support multiple candidates, advertising campaigns and so on. You would need significant backing to get things going.
Please tell me you aren't seriously insisting, that it is harder to start or gain backing for a successful left-wing political movement today than in 1900. Please.
No what I am saying is that, as you pointed out, there were already groups of people that had fundamentally the same views but were separated by distance. Hence it was likely only a matter of time as communications improved that these groups merged.
What we are talking about here is a brand new party that is distinctly different from any of the others (so Labour/Tory/UKIP/LDs/Green etc) in such a reasonable fashion to be able to gain a foothold in parliament and that this would require vast sums of money to achieve to both advertise as well as employ candidates, marketing managers, place adverts and so on.
Ignoring the real fascists and communists, who don't have any mass appeal at the moment, the established parties span the viable political spectrum. Where do you see your proposed new party fitting in, in terms of real policy aims?
Ignoring the real fascists and communists, who don't have any mass appeal at the moment, the established parties span the viable political spectrum. Where do you see your proposed new party fitting in, in terms of real policy aims?
Erm I wasn't? This was a linked conversations started by Compel stating we need new parties and I was querying where they would fit in and how they would gain enough support and money given that the system is weighted against new parties (but if we had presidential elections for example it would be easier as per the France elections).
On the other hand if I was to start a new party I think I would go for Total Annihilation party. My manifesto is that we are trying to kill ourselves as quickly as possible anyway through poisoning the planet, fighting over resources and generally being obnoxious to each other. Hence lets put everyone out their misery and launch all the nukes in the world and remove any trace of the human race. It would be a new mass extinction event but the world will carry on and somethings will survive and hopefully another creature will evolve and learn from our mistakes. What do you think?
Alternatively it could be the Doom party which would be to open gates to hell and let all the demonspawn in. It might make the world a nicer place to live in...
For non-Scottish dakka members, let me tell you why the Labour party is dying.
I'll tell you about Glasgow and the West of Scotland. An area Labour dominated for 50+ years.
Here's a small sample of what went wrong:
I'm the head of Council X. Council houses need to be fixed. My brother has a building firm. Yeah, it'll cost the taxpayer more, and the other bid tenders are better, but he's my brother and family comes first. I'm sure you understand...
Scottish Labour: we oppose Trident! London: No you don't. Scottish Labour: We love trident!
Why did we nominate this person to be the MP for Constituency X? Yes, he's hopeless, he's missed votes in the House of Commons because he was too drunk, but hey, I went to school with this guy...
And so on and so on...
Corbyn will bury the Labour party, but it was dead long before he became leader...
I used to be a Labour voter, and take it from me, the Labour party was heading for trouble even in the Kinnock/John Smith days.
It was an empty shell back then, and the fact that it was an empty shell is the reason why Blair and Campbell could hijack it and shift it to the right.
For sure, Blair could win elections, but he had no idea what to do with that power. It's like a dog chasing a car. Once it catches one, it's clueless on the next move...
The irony is that Blair could win elections, but had no policy. Corbyn has policy, but can't win an election.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: For non-Scottish dakka members, let me tell you why the Labour party is dying.
I'll tell you about Glasgow and the West of Scotland. An area Labour dominated for 50+ years.
Here's a small sample of what went wrong:
I'm the head of Council X. Council houses need to be fixed. My brother has a building firm. Yeah, it'll cost the taxpayer more, and the other bid tenders are better, but he's my brother and family comes first. I'm sure you understand...
Given what I think you are implying I'm assuming then that both the Councillor and the brother's firm were prosecuted for fraud (which is a police matter). There are very strict rules relating to procurement and if they are in breach of these then they are liable to go to jail (and all other bidders will be able to claim costs from the Council). Is this what happened?
Scottish Labour: we oppose Trident! London: No you don't. Scottish Labour: We love trident!
Trident is always a tricky issue. It gives people elsewhere a warm fluffy feeling that MAD practices keep them safe (not really). It gives local people the twitches knowing they are in the path of a direct hit if things do go south. They do bring in a lot of technical expertise and specialist jobs. It's a waste of money and could be better spent elsewhere (lets say a space program).
Why did we nominate this person to be the MP for Constituency X? Yes, he's hopeless, he's missed votes in the House of Commons because he was too drunk, but hey, I went to school with this guy...
This is a party issue and should be sorted, but it's an ongoing issue that the flaws of friends and family are ignored; that's an evolved trait. How many parents think their children are angels when in reality they are spoilt disruptive little brats in reality? However it can also be a sign of mental illness and this is something we could all fall prey to.
Corbyn will bury the Labour party, but it was dead long before he became leader...
Labour could reinvent themselves, but they are never going to achieve much by sitting on the far left because it will never appeal to centre right part of the population that believe that the money they earn should be all there's to spend (but quite happily whine about the NHS when the service they need is no longer there and never put the two together). It's not like these people are bad, it's just a natural evolutionary trait to keep resources for the local group just like all apes do (at a very basic level).
Whirlwind wrote: [
Except some of these are nothing to do with the EU/freedom of movement and trade but have been spun to deflect the populaces anger and blame.....
I'll be honest guv, you start off saying how none of it is immigration's fault, before moving on to post an essay about how the government mismanaged it. In other words, you're mixing up what you perceive as a failed mitigation of the problem itself and a problem existing at all.
Your average politically unaware/uncaring bloke in the street doesn't know or care about any of that. To seize on one issue (housing), he has two facts. There used to be council housing, and you could get it. Now there's a load of immigrants, and there isn't any council housing, because the immigrants are living in what little council housing there is.
You can sit there and pontificate about how what it really shows is a failure of the government to adequately plan and manage the level of immigration to the country. Or you could flip the coin around and say it's because they failed to build enough houses. Or you could even stick the coin on the edge and say that there wouldn't have been enough housing regardless of immigrants due to bad planning. Whatever you like. It doesn't mean diddly squat to that politically unaware/uncaring bloke, because you're talking about matters of which he is either unaware/cannot understand, or doesn't care about by definition.
To reiterate, he knows one thing for sure. And that's that the council housing that exists is full of immigrants. The solution? No immigrants=more council housing.
It's crude, it's simple, but...it's also kind of true in a way! You might think it's a terrible solution, point to all the horrible ramifications that can result from the policies needed to affect that, and more, but he won't listen. He doesn't care about in depth politics, that's his entire raison d'etre.
The failure of the Liberal class which has predominated in the three largest parties (and it is all three, our Tories are socialists compared to most right wingers in the rest of the globe) has produced a situation in which this fellow and his cohorts are on the losing side of things, and so he will vote for those crude, simplistic solutions. Because nobody in thoe main parties is prepared to do what it takes to make life better for him with regards to things he actually cares about. And Corbyn is likely no better there than any of the major candidates any of the major parties have spat out in the last twenty years.
As evidence, I proffer the buildup of UKIP support, the collapse of Labour power, and the ever increasing voter base which seems to either swing behind what is derided as 'populist issues' or not vote at all. This transient 'populist' voterbase is nothing more than the chickens of twenty years mismanagement on a variety of issues by a hollowed class of political elites coming home to roost.
No what I am saying is that, as you pointed out, there were already groups of people that had fundamentally the same views but were separated by distance. Hence it was likely only a matter of time as communications improved that these groups merged.
What we are talking about here is a brand new party that is distinctly different from any of the others (so Labour/Tory/UKIP/LDs/Green etc) in such a reasonable fashion to be able to gain a foothold in parliament and that this would require vast sums of money to achieve to both advertise as well as employ candidates, marketing managers, place adverts and so on.
I think that many of the problems you ascribe as existing right now also existed before. Have you read about the scattered level of the left wing vote through the early twentieth century? Every mum and his dog had a socialist party, and they used to disagree on everything from international strategy (socialism in one country or revolutions throughout the world?!) to the typeface on the front of the local left wing rag (and if they couldn't agree, there'd be a new one published with a slightly different name!)
It was however, a much different world back then. Problems such as they had back then (such as paying your party dues or eating properly that week) have more or less vanished and been replaced by other factors (such as the growth of the entertainment industry; it used to be the case that political affairs were of far more interest to the nation for general discourse). All factors considered, I don't believe it would actually be any more or less difficult than it used to be.
Given that New Old Labour's renaissance was built on the votes of the cut-price £3 membership, I would say you have some financial logic in your argument.
One of Labour's problems is that the parliamentary party, backed by the bulk of the full-price activists (local party committees, and so on) don't believe in Korben and basically have been railroaded into his leadership by the cheap-rate votes.
The issue I would suspect Labour has is that not many of those £3 members were willing to go to £30 members, and not many of them will stick around once Corbyn disappears post-election. They struck a financial goldmine with the fellow, but I'm inclined to think it's a shallow one which won't address the structural issues they possess around fundraising.
Ignoring the real fascists and communists, who don't have any mass appeal at the moment, the established parties span the viable political spectrum. Where do you see your proposed new party fitting in, in terms of real policy aims?
See, that's the thing. I don't believe that they do span the political spectrum, not if you look at it outside of a 'Are you left or right wing' exercise. As mentioned, the parties all jostle in the middle for the same liberal-esque policies in a very haphazard short termist way. The most obvious indicator is how they all copy-paste ideas from each other with such alarming regularity. If I deleted a manifesto headline, you'd be hard-pressed to tell who it actually came from for the most part, they all focus on the same few mantras.
What's more, they all focus their campaigns on who they're not. This year has been a spectacular example of it. Corbyn and co don't have policies, they're just not the Tories. Theresa May doesn't need policies, she just needs to reassure you she's not Corbyn. We've actually reached a summit now where they're all practically conceding that policy is just the icing on the cake, and the cake is 'We're not that guy/gal'.
British socialism is, I would venture, something that arose from the desperation of the working classes to change the government from the inside; to legally elect a body of politicians who would deal with the issues pressing to them without having to spill blood to do it. That desperation is what led them to subscribe what little they had to the party, it's what forced the Unions, who were nominally politically unaffiliated, into bankrolling it, it's what made them turn out in droves to try and seek to build a better and fairer future for their children. To enable them to better themselves, as they saw it, to move up and on in the world.
In this day and age, what would such a party's policies look like? I suspect it would want to suck in all the utilities that have clearly demonstrated issues with private ownership. I also think it would push for the return of the Grammars, like May, the bettering of the 'self' through hard work and academic ethos were highly valued. Keynesian economics would be the order of the day. There would be mass planning and erection of state housing, but it would be allied to concepts of a 'fair value' acquisition of land (which private landowners would hate). Tax breaks for businesses set up along the lines of John Lewis which permit employees to take home a bonus and treat their workers well. A final end to these military adventures, and a rationing of charitable aid around projects proven to work. Loosening of regulation around entrepreneurship and grants to help start businesses, but a higher rate of tax upon it. The level of debt you have from University would be tied to the grade you had coming out of it.
I'm not pulling this entirely out of my arse, I'm trying to conceptualise what a Clement Attlee led Government would do facing the country of today. But what very clearly emerges in even a rudimentary thought exercise is a party that really has absolutely no equivalent in contemporary British politics.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: For non-Scottish dakka members, let me tell you why the Labour party is dying.
I'll tell you about Glasgow and the West of Scotland. An area Labour dominated for 50+ years.
Here's a small sample of what went wrong:
I'm the head of Council X. Council houses need to be fixed. My brother has a building firm. Yeah, it'll cost the taxpayer more, and the other bid tenders are better, but he's my brother and family comes first. I'm sure you understand...
Given what I think you are implying I'm assuming then that both the Councillor and the brother's firm were prosecuted for fraud (which is a police matter). There are very strict rules relating to procurement and if they are in breach of these then they are liable to go to jail (and all other bidders will be able to claim costs from the Council). Is this what happened?
That seems overly optimistic. Council corruption is pretty common, seems to be everywhere I've lived, rural and city alike. There are many cases of relatives to councillors getting contracts or favourable treatment for planning issues, particularly when the majority of the council are mates with each other. Sometimes blatant favouritism that makes the newspapers, particularly Private Eye, but the councillors rarely lose their position. Sometimes they get a slap on the wrist but as long as they don't get caught actually breaking the law or lining their own pockets they get away with it. Not all corruption is like that when I lived in Tower Hamlets, when the mayor was actually ballot stuffing and diverting funds for political support.
This case close to my parents has a councillor bought local authority land, then had the planning restrictions lifted by the council massively increasing its value for building housing stock and then gave it to their children's company. Sure, nothing illegal was done, it's technically above board, but these purchases and planning application are sure easy when all your mates are on the council. In more recent years he had to resign over a different matter instead.
. Oh and May has come out in favour of Fox hunting
Brilliant... what was this about Brexit and voting Tories would maintain the environmental controls. Maybe she should be let off in a middle of a field and chased down by a pack of hounds hunting for blood and then tear here limb from limb just so she could experience what a fox must go through.
Its not as stupid as it sounds.
First many Tory seats are rural, and in the rural areas fox hunting is popular, it is part of the rural way of life. Sure not everyone is a fan, but it has more support than most people would believe either from the assumption that blood sports are just for "toffs" or from ignorance that the rural communities in England particularly still exist.
It is also defensible as a policy fox hunting is abhorent to the urban population, but that is the point. The urban population have a majority and have made their feelings shown, however we are supposedly a society of minority tolerance and the rural British are a minority with their own culture and they feel they have been repeatedly pissed on.
If we are supposed to be tolerant to religious practices that go against our society norm, such as wearing a burka, why not allow people to do their traditional hunts. Its not like we have a vegan society, and plenty of people who care about the cruelty of fox hunting are happy to keep eating budget fried chicken and chips, the vast majority of which comes from factory farming.
We demand tolerence for religious practices, atheist practices, LGBT - even when its in peoples faces, and we celebrate when festivals happen to this effect. We arent all gay, ad most who are not would want nothing to do with it for themselves, but we learn to be tolerant of things we don't want to be part of.
Yet in spite of that in spite of the gross hipocrisy of our food industry and endemic cruelty required to keep mass foodstuffs affordable, despite having a culture where female segregation, disempowerment and discrimination is ok so long as it happens within a minority practice. The rural British cant hunt a fox if they want to, because tolerence doesnt apply to them.
The supporting rhetoric is in place and is fairly clever: tolerence is supposedly for all, so therefore be tolerant what you don't like. It is enough to back a new bill.
May doesnt need to do this, the rural vote will likely go Tory anyway, but there is a clamour for it in the villages, hence 'favourable' comments at this time.
You need not worry though, while cementing the rural vote is important, hence vague comments now Theresa May has never been one for doing anyone a favour she need not do, and will look to the urban vote first and will not propose any fox hunt repeal bill. It will be an empty promise. Theresa May has long been known as either 'May or May not' or Theresa May, but probably wont', she is fairly self absorbed even by politician standards and from those who know of her it can be fairly said she doesn't give a feth for anyone but herself. A fox hunt repeal will cause her problems she doesn't need, so promises will be made now and forgotten later.
I'm not pulling this entirely out of my arse, I'm trying to conceptualise what a Clement Attlee led Government would do facing the country of today. But what very clearly emerges in even a rudimentary thought exercise is a party that really has absolutely no equivalent in contemporary British politics.
Attlee would be unelectable today. He'd be a technocrat rather than the charismatic leadership of the current crop of politicians.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: For non-Scottish dakka members, let me tell you why the Labour party is dying.
I'll tell you about Glasgow and the West of Scotland. An area Labour dominated for 50+ years.
Here's a small sample of what went wrong:
I'm the head of Council X. Council houses need to be fixed. My brother has a building firm. Yeah, it'll cost the taxpayer more, and the other bid tenders are better, but he's my brother and family comes first. I'm sure you understand...
Given what I think you are implying I'm assuming then that both the Councillor and the brother's firm were prosecuted for fraud (which is a police matter). There are very strict rules relating to procurement and if they are in breach of these then they are liable to go to jail (and all other bidders will be able to claim costs from the Council). Is this what happened?
That seems overly optimistic. Council corruption is pretty common, seems to be everywhere I've lived, rural and city alike. There are many cases of relatives to councillors getting contracts or favourable treatment for planning issues, particularly when the majority of the council are mates with each other. Sometimes blatant favouritism that makes the newspapers, particularly Private Eye, but the councillors rarely lose their position. Sometimes they get a slap on the wrist but as long as they don't get caught actually breaking the law or lining their own pockets they get away with it. Not all corruption is like that when I lived in Tower Hamlets, when the mayor was actually ballot stuffing and diverting funds for political support.
This case close to my parents has a councillor bought local authority land, then had the planning restrictions lifted by the council massively increasing its value for building housing stock and then gave it to their children's company. Sure, nothing illegal was done, it's technically above board, but these purchases and planning application are sure easy when all your mates are on the council. In more recent years he had to resign over a different matter instead.
In response to my earlier post, here's some evidence of what I'm talking about, and why Labour have almost died in Scotland. It wasn't overnight, but the gradual drip drip drip of sleaze and corruption played its part. And yes, I'm well aware the Tories are probably even worse.
That's just the tip of the iceberg over the years. Type Glasgow + Council + Corruption into google and you'll be surprised what come up.
The law of averages tells you that some of these people were guilty of fraud and sleaze.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Well, feth me with a fish fork!
CPS to press no charges against Tory MPs over election fraud.
Well, I never saw that coming!
This key passage is the most important:
The Act also makes it a technical offence for an election agent to fail to deliver a true return. By omitting any ‘Battle Bus’ costs, the returns may have been inaccurate. However, it is clear agents were told by Conservative Party headquarters that the costs were part of the national campaign and it would not be possible to prove any agent acted knowingly or dishonestly. Therefore we have concluded it is not in the public interest to charge anyone referred to us with this offence.
So any old battle bus can roll into town, drop off activists and material, but because the local agents won't be in the know, and because the costs are part of the national campaign, it won't matter!
Because that battle bus is taking pensioners down the Old Kent Road for jellied eels, and is in no way influencing local votes!
This country is corrupt beyond repair!
Craig Murray is saying on his BlogSpot that at media events, May gets questions in advance and can veto questions she doesn't like!
Not sure if this has happened to anybody else here, but I had Labour knock on the door today. I guess Mays black ops style drop and extraction at the local steel works rattled them When I told them I was not voting Labour because of Brexit they assumed I was in favour of it and asked if anybody else in the house would be voting Labour. The idea that I voted to remain and would not be voting Labour because of there Brexit position seemed to puzzle them.
The Act also makes it a technical offence for an election agent to fail to deliver a true return. By omitting any ‘Battle Bus’ costs, the returns may have been inaccurate. However, it is clear agents were told by Conservative Party headquarters that the costs were part of the national campaign and it would not be possible to prove any agent acted knowingly or dishonestly. Therefore we have concluded it is not in the public interest to charge anyone referred to us with this offence.
Then surely it's party headquarters that should be investigated for this then?
Ketara wrote: Your average politically unaware/uncaring bloke in the street doesn't know or care about any of that. To seize on one issue (housing), he has two facts. There used to be council housing, and you could get it. Now there's a load of immigrants, and there isn't any council housing, because the immigrants are living in what little council housing there is.
And that's the point. It's about educating the public at large and explaining the issues at hand (whether that be by good or poor judgement decisions). That immigration isn't the reason for the housing crisis and is more to do with falling development and a decrease in the median number of people by household. For the lowest paid it has not been helped by both parties forcing councils to sell vast swathes of their stock for knock down prices without any viable financial way of replacing them; and this continues with more relaxed planning laws allowing builders to provide less affordable housing and trying to put through that housing associations must also allow people to buy houses at knock down prices.
However these are difficult things to address (and admit to) and are reliant on suitable well managed long term policies to facilitate the change to sustainable housing development for everyone. Instead both Labour and Tories allowed the slow growth of blame to be placed on the immigrants because it is a simplistic message that deflects from the real reason; this is compounded that a number of papers like the Daily Fail regularly blame immigrants for everything from it being cloudy to terrorism when it simply isn't true. When people are 'educated' in this way and consistently then yes they will believe that immigration is the root of the issue when it simply is not. There are more fundamental issues that is causing these issues. This then simply becomes a lack of ongoing education of the populace; and ultimately the simplistic messages allow for the growth of populist messages that feed this cycle of misinformation (and it becomes about telling people what they want to hear rather than what they should hear).
In this day and age, what would such a party's policies look like? I suspect it would want to suck in all the utilities that have clearly demonstrated issues with private ownership. I also think it would push for the return of the Grammars, like May, the bettering of the 'self' through hard work and academic ethos were highly valued. Keynesian economics would be the order of the day. There would be mass planning and erection of state housing, but it would be allied to concepts of a 'fair value' acquisition of land (which private landowners would hate). Tax breaks for businesses set up along the lines of John Lewis which permit employees to take home a bonus and treat their workers well. A final end to these military adventures, and a rationing of charitable aid around projects proven to work. Loosening of regulation around entrepreneurship and grants to help start businesses, but a higher rate of tax upon it. The level of debt you have from University would be tied to the grade you had coming out of it.
Grammar schools drive inequality however because they do benefit those with wealth (rather than ability) - all the evidence supports this. Here is the latest one:-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-39786477 That doesn't help those that work 'hard' if they are from a poor background. You also penalise those that develop later than others (let not forget the Einstein's potential was not recognised until after he left school).
Every person has the ability to work hard. It's putting them into an environment that allows, promotes and rewards this behaviour but without sacrificing those that don't so that they can always join in that ethic if they wish. Grammar schools effectively damn a significant fraction of the population simply based on the ethic of an undeveloped person in the early teenage years. No one knows what potential someone has and when that might be identified. How many children at 11 to 13 are really thinking that they should be bettering themselves; this is driven by their parents.
Also I've got to query why the level of debt should be tied to the grade you get out. Wouldn't that just drive universities to maximise the highest marks and make them easier so it is an easier sell to the undergraduates. What makes a 3rd class engineer worse than a 1st class historian. The first class historian might just go on and read books in a stuffy office for years; the third class engineer may go on to design the next generation of electric engines that solves the worlds energy issues. Why should someone be stigmatised financially simply because of another persons view on their future potential. I know people that were top of the class that have had nervous breakdowns and are very far form the potential a top of the class would imply; whereas I know people nowhere near the top of the class that now run successful businesses. Why should any of us be able to make that prediction about someone else's future?
It is also defensible as a policy fox hunting is abhorent to the urban population, but that is the point. The urban population have a majority and have made their feelings shown, however we are supposedly a society of minority tolerance and the rural British are a minority with their own culture and they feel they have been repeatedly pissed on.
If we are supposed to be tolerant to religious practices that go against our society norm, such as wearing a burka, why not allow people to do their traditional hunts. Its not like we have a vegan society, and plenty of people who care about the cruelty of fox hunting are happy to keep eating budget fried chicken and chips, the vast majority of which comes from factory farming.
Because it is a barbaric practice of slaughtering animals by ripping them into pieces after they have been exhausted. From my perspective any practice that creates needless suffering of animal should be outlawed regardless of where it is applied. Although I do also oppose battery farms, the chickens are not ripped to pieces whilst still alive and should be humanely slaughtered (but again do think they should be banned). We do not hunt foxes for food, it is done for the fun of a blood sport. We are quite happy to condemn a puppy farm that causes needless suffering to dogs and yet a wild animal like a fox it is OK to do? There are lots of practices that used to be enacted but no longer because they are inhumane/cruel/barbaric etc. I'm sure there is a minority of people that would love to rip cats limb from limb when they excrete their waste on the garden when they trespass or the dog that fouls the front yard but that doesn't make it acceptable. So why should fox hunting be entertained? Because there is a minority does not make something acceptable. There is no reason to hunt a fox; hunting trails can be just as lively and is the same apart from the needless butchery of a wild animal at the end of it.
This case close to my parents has a councillor bought local authority land, then had the planning restrictions lifted by the council massively increasing its value for building housing stock and then gave it to their children's company. Sure, nothing illegal was done, it's technically above board, but these purchases and planning application are sure easy when all your mates are on the council. In more recent years he had to resign over a different matter instead.
In response to my earlier post, here's some evidence of what I'm talking about, and why Labour have almost died in Scotland. It wasn't overnight, but the gradual drip drip drip of sleaze and corruption played its part. And yes, I'm well aware the Tories are probably even worse.
That's just the tip of the iceberg over the years. Type Glasgow + Council + Corruption into google and you'll be surprised what come up.
The law of averages tells you that some of these people were guilty of fraud and sleaze.
Yes there are corrupt people in this world; that is not open to question. But it applies everywhere just look at Rolls Royce for example, and even Trump in China if implications are to be believed. However you do have to be wary that a small percentage does not make *all* Councils corrupt. There are likely to be tens of thousands of contracts awarded nationally each year. That there are only a few corrupt is a testament more to the strength of the systems. I can also provide example of where officers have awarded contracts to the wife's firm, but they were caught, but it does not make that whole council corrupt. You have to be careful in the bias of reporting. The media do not report on every successful procurement because it is boring news, they only report on the small number of corrupt ones. That makes it appear that the problem is bigger than it really is - again it does not say that there aren't a few bad eggs though!
CPS to press no charges against Tory MPs over election fraud.
Well, I never saw that coming!
This key passage is the most important:
The Act also makes it a technical offence for an election agent to fail to deliver a true return. By omitting any ‘Battle Bus’ costs, the returns may have been inaccurate. However, it is clear agents were told by Conservative Party headquarters that the costs were part of the national campaign and it would not be possible to prove any agent acted knowingly or dishonestly. Therefore we have concluded it is not in the public interest to charge anyone referred to us with this offence.
Basically the CPS are implying that are likely to be guilty parties but there isn't enough evidence against any individual to take a challenge to court. After some high profile cases CPS are cautious against taking high risk prosecutions; and yes I am sure there is a level of concern of the political fallout if people taken to court weren't deemed to be guilty. On the other hand maybe they should introduce criminal proceedings against the body themselves and attempt to recover any money as proceeds of crime?
There was an interesting piece on Radio 4 this evening, concerning immigration and the schools place crisis.
To summarise, in the late 90s the birth rate was pretty low and Labour felt confident in promising small class sizes for all because the amount of children feeding into the system was declining.
Everything was fine untll 2003, when there was a sudden leap in the birth rate. This was not caused by immigration, which didn't start until 2004. Immigration of course did not help, and the situation now is that 18% of 5-year olds are from non-British, non-EU mothers, 10% are from EU mothers, and only 72% from British mothers.
Labour and Tory government's having ignored the increasing birth rate, there is now a school places crisis despite "record" amounts of money being spent on schools.
Daily mail are touting what looks to be a leaked labour manifesto.
I only skimmed article as late and on phone so links not as easy.
If that's true and even with daily mail slant right.
It does not seem to read well for labour.
It reads... Well . I don,t think its quite the manifesto for this election and the section on brexit, there's no no deal option if true and presents that they will take a bad deal over no deal.
Because it is a barbaric practice of slaughtering animals by ripping them into pieces after they have been exhausted. From my perspective any practice that creates needless suffering of animal should be outlawed regardless of where it is applied.
Fox hunts tend to end fairly quickly. Also the kills is by the hounds, its animal on animal, this happens all the time. It is part of the natural order.
Although I do also oppose battery farms, the chickens are not ripped to pieces whilst still alive and should be humanely slaughtered (but again do think they should be banned).
Factory farms are home to all sorts of lingering deaths. Point remains there are a lot of factory farming laws, but theree is also the need to provide low cost chicken to the urban population.
We do not hunt foxes for food, it is done for the fun of a blood sport.
Hunting is one of the primal acts of man. Those still in touch with nature often do hunt, either for food or sport. The ideology that is it barbariac is taken from the perspective of the urban man who is separated from nature by his environment. It is at the point where a lot of urbanites couldnt kill for food even if they wanted to, though most could in dire need, yet only a portion of those are actual vegetarians. Attitudes are different.
Now you might consider that removing a womans equal rights is barbaric, yet because we have multi culturalism and tolerance and (a form of) equality we overlook gross sexism in minority communities.
It is quite possibly worse to effectively take most of a human womans rights away than to mistreat a fox. Yet one is acceptable in the UK and the other is not.
I'm sure there is a minority of people that would love to rip cats limb from limb when they excrete their waste on the garden when they trespass or the dog that fouls the front yard but that doesn't make it acceptable.
So why should fox hunting be entertained?.
Ok, you can have individuals want to do anything. We have laws to stop individual actions. Now in the analogy given, we don't allow people to slaughter cats because
First, cats are private property, second, it isn't a cultural activity, third, It is not acceptable in its milieu.
However fox hunting doesn't offend private property laws of itself, hunts had to work around those territories where it was not permitted. Second it is a cultural activity by a people group. Third it is acceptable in its local area. You say its barbaric, the rural people say its not, they say its their culture and who are you to overrule them.
While we don't allow urban population to slaughter cats, you can buy poisons on the open market, and they are liberally used for the immediate convenience of the population. Most of those poisons are hazardous for the environment and cause lingering deaths on the animals that eat them, which are often the wrong ones.
If you want to rid yourself of local fauna just buy poison dump it and be happy, you can buy it in most convenience stores, is that damaging, most likely, is that cruel, certainly. But it isnt happening to fluffy foxes and badgers, so you don't notice, or care.
Because there is a minority does not make something acceptable.
We have a lot of legislation which says exactly the opposite. However it omits rural peoples rights, and they are just about the only demographic whose culture is not respected and is still discriminated against.
There is no reason to hunt a fox; hunting trails can be just as lively and is the same apart from the needless butchery of a wild animal at the end of it.
There is no reason to buy a sports car (they accelerate too fast and encourage speeding), play golf (you can play tennis instead and use all that land to build homes), play wargames (you can encourage the youth of tomorrow to focus on pastimes that don't glorify violence), eat beef (we could use beefstock land for daily or arable use and feed far more people), eat pork (so that other faiths are not offended by what we eat)....
There are fair reasons to do all those things and more, including hunting a fox. In the latter case it can be summed up as - because its the culture of the rural communities.
There is a strong ethic of allowing multiculturalism to actually apply in full, and for tolerance to apply in full, wheras currently it does not. This means that the urban majority gets to tolerate fox hunting and other rural pastimes as exercised by rural people in their own communities. I would go as far as to say that fox hunting should be legitimised as long as other minority culture activities are also legitimised out of the need for the government to fulfill equality and diversity. It activists want to then re-ban fox hunting they should have to get the rural communities to agree rather than force the majority culture upon them.
This idea that 'rural communities' want fox hunting is a myth. It's toffs and those in the horse riding and stabling industry that want it, most in rural communities have no interest, and the 'pest control' argument trotted out is nonsense. Even among farmers and smallholders there isn't full support,, as fox hunts can do more damage than good when charging around having dogs on the loose, all for the sake of killing one fox at a time.
So Orlanth, are you also going to argue for reinstatement of bear baiting or cock fighting? Both banned decades ago as cruel and inhumane blood sports. Note that they were urban working class blood sports. Hare coursing and badger lamping (rural working class blood sports) were also banned a long time ago.
The only ones that survived until recently, were the upper class pursuits of fox and deer hunting with dogs, funny that?
Also, it's still perfectly legal to hunt in this country, if you're into that primal stuff. You just have to do it with a gun and no more than two (IIRC) tracking dogs. So the idea that you can't fulfill that primal need, should you chose is bs. You just can't do it by watching animals tear each other to pieces
Blood sports are a barbaric medieval hangover and the vast majority in this country do not want them to exist anymore. This is a democracy and will of the people is to be respected. (As we are told oh so often these days).
To return to a more central topic,, I keep hearing the phrase "no deal or bad deal" in regards to the Brexit negotiations. This presupposes there is also the possibility of a "good deal".
I know that No Deal means trading with the EU on standard WTO tariffs, and the need to renegotiate a number of treaties on visas and extradition. There would also have to be a resolution of the positions of the EU citizens in the UK, and the UK citizens in the EU.
In my view a Good Deal will involve some considerable access to the Free Market or customs union, plus financial services passporting. This as I understand it requires open borders which is off the menu since the key factor is to control EU immigration.
Therefore I would like more information about what a Bad Deal is going to look like.
Ketara touches on the key issue that I'll be interested to see play out in this election.
In 2017, an internationalist socialist has more common ground with a free market liberal than he does with a socialist nationalist. On the other side, a social conservative should be more inclined to make common ground with a socialist nationalist than with a free marketeer.
How the two main parties (in the US and the UK) have come even this far without fracturing and remaking themselves is unknown to me, but Western politics is going to keep throwing up oddities like Trump, Sanders, Corbyn, WIlders, Le Pen, Grillo, Macron ad infinitum until we establish a working, communicable new political discourse that isn't based on early 20th century political economy and 1960s social activism.
I think fox hunting ought to be legal. I'd be happy for all the other animal blood sports to be brought back too.
I'd be even happier to see the range of legal human blood sports expanded.
Up to now, these things have been dealt with on an ad hoc, almost taboo culture basis, not by establishing moral first principles and arguing over those, and then implementing what's agreed upon.
I can be a professional NFL player or boxer and pretty much assure myself of an early death involving dementia. I can throw myself out of an aeroplane or off a building for fun or I can try to climb a mountain with a kill rate of 9/10, but I can't engage in a rapier duel to first blood with another consenting adult. Duelling was outlawed because it was an extension of vendetta justice and not in line with a rule of law, criminal justice system, not because it was 'barbaric' as some people assert. If you view it as an extreme sport, you'd have to permit it or you'd have to advocate banning the other things I mentioned.
Same goes for the animal thing, you have to be a vegan in 2017 if you want to argue to ban fox hunting, if you're not, you're a hypocrite or you hold two contradictory opinions.
Orlath - There's no such thing as 'atheist practices'.
Same goes for the animal thing, you have to be a vegan in 2017 if you want to argue to ban fox hunting, if you're not, you're a hypocrite or you hold two contradictory opinions.
No you don't. You could weigh the suffering of animals towards the benefit we get from that suffering and decide that the benefit to society outweighs the suffering of animals in one case and doesn't in another case.
In response to people who responded to my earlier post about the CPS not prosecuting the Tories for electoral fraud, it gets worse and worse.
What kind of mickey mouse justice system do we have in this nation?
Look at this quote from the CPS official statement.
However, it is clear agents were told by Conservative Party headquarters that the costs were part of the national campaign and it would not be possible to prove any agent acted knowingly or dishonestly. Therefore we have concluded it is not in the public interest to charge anyone referred to us with this offence.”
So the agents' defence is that CCHQ told them it was legal, so that makes it legal?
If I tell person X that it's ok to murder somebody and person X murders somebody, person X can use that as a defence in court because I told them murder was legal!!!!
Holy horsegak! Any judge or jury would laugh that defence out of town...
But the CPS think it's ok for the Tories to go down that route
And even more risible is the Tory defence that because everybody else is doing it, that makes it ok...
I'll start robbing banks and see how that line of defence stands up in court. I doubt if a judge would be impressed.
Same goes for the animal thing, you have to be a vegan in 2017 if you want to argue to ban fox hunting, if you're not, you're a hypocrite or you hold two contradictory opinions.
No you don't. You could weigh the suffering of animals towards the benefit we get from that suffering and decide that the benefit to society outweighs the suffering of animals in one case and doesn't in another case.
Then you'd be saying that the benefit of the pleasure of eating meat as opposed to eating other foods is in some way objectively more real or important than the benefit of pursuing your chosen sporting leisure activity. To the extent that it's possible to parse between these two activities, it's pretty clear that eating meat is the less valuable of the two, what with usable farming land surface, greenhouse gas emission and health implications of eating lots of meat vs health benefits of doing sport and the fact that there's an historical/cultural aspect to it.
Therefore I would like more information about what a Bad Deal is going to look like.
Free trade in goods only, services still subject to some restrictions. Supervision by EU agencies in which the UK will no longer have a say.
A Canada-lite deal, basically.
That sounds to me a lot better than No Deal (but not as good as being in the EU) however I suspect the EU agency supervision will be vetoed by the hardcore sovereignty fans.
Ultimately it is a question of whether people value economic factors over political ones.
The Labour manifesto is pretty feeble, wishy-washy stuff. It's like a 1970s throwback.
I have no doubt that the Tories and the Lib Dems will produce a similar level of mediocrity...
We're looking at years of managed decline from people who ought to be counting paper-clips in some minor company in the middle of Yorkshire or somewhere similar.
On Sky BloodSports 1 now, The Dogs Ripping Each Other Apart Cup . On Sky BloodSports 2, Disabled Jousting.
You're trying to be ironic and clever, but the fact is that would be fantastic and you know it.
I didn't say otherwise, you read a lot that isn't there. I think if bringing back all bloodsports went to a referendum it would have an excellent chance, as above the press would love it, Sky Bet could offer 'which dog loses a leg but keeps fighting' special, all that. Would be a great USP for the New UK.
Howard A Treesong wrote: This idea that 'rural communities' want fox hunting is a myth. It's toffs and those in the horse riding and stabling industry that want it, most in rural communities have no interest, and the 'pest control' argument trotted out is nonsense.
This is patently untrue. To the point that rural Trades Unions opposed the hunting ban. trades unionist are rarely 'toffs'.
Even among farmers and smallholders there isn't full support,, as fox hunts can do more damage than good when charging around having dogs on the loose, all for the sake of killing one fox at a time.
Nothing has universal support. You can also find people in towns who understand that people should be allowed to enjoy thier traditional rural activities without people of a different culture prohibiting them because of their own intolerant views.
Jadenim wrote: So Orlanth, are you also going to argue for reinstatement of bear baiting or cock fighting? Both banned decades ago as cruel and inhumane blood sports. .
No I didn't say that, and if you read carefully you can see why. Both of those were urban, and were rejected by urban communities. They were also enclosed so the 'natural' pursuit of a hunt did not occur.
Also, it's still perfectly legal to hunt in this country, if you're into that primal stuff. You just have to do it with a gun and no more than two (IIRC) tracking dogs.
The permission for two dogs is largely to allow loopholes that permit some forms of hunting to occur while selectively banning fox hunting.
Blood sports are a barbaric medieval hangover and the vast majority in this country do not want them to exist anymore. This is a democracy and will of the people is to be respected. (As we are told oh so often these days).
As explained before, that is an urban opinion, that is being imposed on a minority community over its own culture. Minorities have the right to have their culture protected even if the majority is against or disinterested in them.
This is why there is a move to restore it in the rural community.
Part of the problem that ires rural communities is that they are shat on, particularly by Labour urban politicians but also by Tories with urban constituencies. in the last decade we had a massive rise of 'compo culture' under New Labour, with people getting large amounts of compensation from the government, and also community grants targeted at minorities, yet after the Foot and Mouth outbreak in 2000-1 most farmers were never compensated at all. The heavy handedness and lack of consideration for rural communities by New Labour was noticed heavily, and repeated in several policies. This was exasperated by the continued rhetoric on equality multi-culturalism and tolerance and value-to-society which repeatedly was seen to apply to just about any community other than their own.
To add to that while rural pursuits like fox hunting were being targeted for a ban other minorities could get away with anything, even when it was already illegal. New Labour patently turned a blind eye to female circumcision, and importing of underage brides from the Indian subcontinent. The combo of some minorities being allowed to bypass much needed human rights legislation due to multi-culturalism, while indigenous minorities were being faced with heavy handed legislation that took away their cultural root. Foxes are de-facto not more important than female rights issues, but somehow were more actionable.
The third 'combo' that riled the rural communities was the fox hunting had long been considered a legal grey area. It was understood that urban communities didnt like it and didnt want it, but the cultural continuation of the rural communities was understood by prior governments, New Labour took several societal grey areas and polarised a 'solution' to them by fiat. The linking doctrine relevant most here being that of abortion. In the UK abortion was also a grey area, you could de facto have an abortion for any reason a woman wanted, but technically it had to be necessary. This status had continued since the 60's and was culturally stable. Mistakes during casual sex were not formally considered a good excuse, but the abortion was available anyway. New Labour turned that on its head removing the moral ambiguity placed by society. Abortions were to become a full 'human right' even if they occur solely as a result of careless casual sex.
It was not hard to notice that it was now a human right to be allowed to kill an unborn child solely as a result of convenience of 'having fun', but it was at the same time completely illegal to kill a fox as a result of 'having fun'.
I don't think rural communities have been particularly "shat on" by any government.
The facts are that 70 years ago, 20% of the population was employed in agriculture and now it is 2%. This was a result of mechanisation, in other words the same modernisation that has also "shat on" coal mining, dock workers and car manufacturing, all leading to great reductions of traditional working class jobs that whatever their disadvantages sustained communities in town and country alike.
You can't actually build a lot of new jobs into a rural community to replace farming without turning the area into a non-rural community. What you tend to get instead is people commuting to nearby towns and cities.
The facts are that 70 years ago, 20% of the population was employed in agriculture and now it is 2%. This was a result of mechanisation,.
The Uk had a notedly efficient agricultural sector. However the 2% also includes a recent drop due to housing pressures. Rural properties are being bought as holiday homes, cutting availability and jacking house prices up at the same time. There are also problems due to corporate feudalism.
Mechanisation hasn't shat on UK agriculture or agricultural communities, a lack of focus on their community and its needs, to the point of some governments blatantly ignoring them is the problem.
in other words the same modernisation that has also "shat on" coal mining, dock workers and car manufacturing, all leading to great reductions of traditional working class jobs that whatever their disadvantages sustained communities in town and country alike.
The two are not the same. manufacturing was replaced by service sector economy and the UK urban economy has done well from it. Not everywhere has prospered though, but then again the UK has more manufacturing than people think.
You can't actually build a lot of new jobs into a rural community to replace farming without turning the area into a non-rural community. What you tend to get instead is people commuting to nearby towns and cities.
Not necessarily true. There is a small rural service sector, spas resorts etc, but that they need transport accessibility they largely draw manpower from urban rather than local communities. Some rural communities survive on traditional industries, specialist food production that is viable on a small scale production with wide distribution, mostly honey products and brewing. A lot of specialist tech industries move to rural locations, normally these are the ind that provide very specific services often in the aeronautical or defense industry. Scratch the surface and there is a lot of stuff out in the rural areas, but the core rural communities are being squeezed, an they are not blind to that.
Same goes for the animal thing, you have to be a vegan in 2017 if you want to argue to ban fox hunting, if you're not, you're a hypocrite or you hold two contradictory opinions.
No you don't. You could weigh the suffering of animals towards the benefit we get from that suffering and decide that the benefit to society outweighs the suffering of animals in one case and doesn't in another case.
Then you'd be saying that the benefit of the pleasure of eating meat as opposed to eating other foods is in some way objectively more real or important than the benefit of pursuing your chosen sporting leisure activity. To the extent that it's possible to parse between these two activities, it's pretty clear that eating meat is the less valuable of the two, what with usable farming land surface, greenhouse gas emission and health implications of eating lots of meat vs health benefits of doing sport and the fact that there's an historical/cultural aspect to it.
Objectivity doesn't enter into it, we judge that we get more utility than disutility out of eating meat but less utility than disutility from killing animals for fun.
I just read the funniest thing by a Tory supporter on facebook. He claimed the 50% tax rate for highest earners was reduced to 45% in order to create 'an incentive for them to work harder, earn more wages and more productivity which meant more taxes being paid by the rich and wealthy and less tax being paid by the poorest'.
I actually spat my tea out I'm laughing so hard. How could anyone type that with a straight face, let alone believe it!
Now they're complaining that Corbyn's car 'injured' a journalist. If you're going to deliberately crowd a moving vehicle you obvious risk having your feet run over.
Then you'd be saying that the benefit of the pleasure of eating meat as opposed to eating other foods is in some way objectively more real or important than the benefit of pursuing your chosen sporting leisure activity. To the extent that it's possible to parse between these two activities, it's pretty clear that eating meat is the less valuable of the two, what with usable farming land surface, greenhouse gas emission and health implications of eating lots of meat vs health benefits of doing sport and the fact that there's an historical/cultural aspect to it.
That's not really correct. We eat meat because we are as a species omnivores and we have evolved to have a small amount of that material in our diet. Until we can grow meat and protein substitutes (at which point killing animals for meat becomes unnecessary) then eating meat is part of a requirement of our metabolism. However these animals (in the UK) are raised to certain standards with welfare in mind and that their death is quick and painless as possible without stressing the animal. What you don't do when you want a steak is get out the chainsaw and hack off part of the rump and then leave the animal to suffer before dying. The butchering of a fox by a hunt has nothing to do with feeding the population but is basically some people getting a hard on whilst they torture a random animal. The slaughtering of calf by slitting it's throat and letting it's heart beat out the blood whilst it suffocates is just as bad as fox hunting so there are forms of meat manufacture that are also barbaric (and as pointed out before I don't agree with battery farms). It's the same with anything that puts an animal through unnecessary stress and suffering (for example cutting off a sharks fin and then throwing the shark back in the water to drown).
Howard A Treesong wrote: Now they're complaining that Corbyn's car 'injured' a journalist. If you're going to deliberately crowd a moving vehicle you obvious risk having your feet run over.
Unnecessary, nobody needs a fake news story to discredit comrade Corbyn.
Also he is a public figure, and one trapped in a car. Dip Pro police actually do have the right to break the law while defensive driving. Regular police and emergency services can only do so 'at their own risk'. All the police driver has to claim is that trapping Corbyn's car jeapordises his safety and it can legally tread on toes (sic).
Political consequences can still occur, but the road law is automatically on the side of a Dip Pro car that is in potential danger, and as leader of the opposition Corbyn is entitled to Dip Pro.
There are lots of practices that used to be enacted but no longer because they are inhumane/cruel/barbaric etc.
Such as.
The romans thought rape was acceptable (especially after conquering a city). Slavery and so on. We now understand the suffering out acts can cause and as we are (supposedly) an intelligent species then that understanding should bring an ability to understand the impacts we have on the world around us and the effects it has. It's not really acceptable to say some people should be allowed to continue barbaric acts because they are in a minority, otherwise why not just allow humans sacrifices in satanic rituals?
The hunts can still go out, chase a trail and so on. The only thing they can't do is barbarically butcher a fox at the end of it.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Howard A Treesong wrote: Now they're complaining that Corbyn's car 'injured' a journalist. If you're going to deliberately crowd a moving vehicle you obvious risk having your feet run over.
I've got to wonder whether this is a traffic accident or a reportable work injury to the HSE. BBC could be in a lot of trouble if they don't provide health and safety advice about not being ran over (to be fair it's probably something all the reporters and camerapeople have training on).
But actually putting age verification into practice is guaranteed to be a disaster, that at will undoubtedly prevent adults from accessing porn, and at worst lead to an Ashley Madison-style privacy catastrophe.
One idea is that users register their age at the Post Office.
Kilkrazy wrote: It was a recordist or cameraman from the BBC. Just an unlucky accident.
Yes, but the BBC still have a duty of care over their staffs health. That means ensuring the correct protective gear for their staff, being given proper training etc. For example being cameraperson in a crush chasing after cars driving into and out of driveways would you assume carry a reasonable risk of feet being run over. Therefore the BBC should really be providing protective gear (and maybe a high vis jacket).
But actually putting age verification into practice is guaranteed to be a disaster, that at will undoubtedly prevent adults from accessing porn, and at worst lead to an Ashley Madison-style privacy catastrophe.
One idea is that users register their age at the Post Office.
" Book of 1st class and a spank license please. "
Basically middle England is a prude (but almost certainly partake).
Hmmm, lovely state censorship. Also don't forget as PO are now privately run they will probably sell your details to every company going. Hence your letter box will become full of adverts for penis enlargers, female Viagra and whatever other nonsense automated spambots send out. It could in fact have the opposite effect as everyone's letter boxes gets filled up with such junk and then parents will have to explain to their children what it all means.
Realistically though such censorship could be far worse meaning children use underground sites that could make them far more vulnerable.
In what fething universe is it "controversial" that the PM of the Uk ( or one would suggest anyoneanywhere) be extremely cautious when deciding whether or not to kill millions of people ?
Same goes for the animal thing, you have to be a vegan in 2017 if you want to argue to ban fox hunting, if you're not, you're a hypocrite or you hold two contradictory opinions.
No you don't. You could weigh the suffering of animals towards the benefit we get from that suffering and decide that the benefit to society outweighs the suffering of animals in one case and doesn't in another case.
Then you'd be saying that the benefit of the pleasure of eating meat as opposed to eating other foods is in some way objectively more real or important than the benefit of pursuing your chosen sporting leisure activity. To the extent that it's possible to parse between these two activities, it's pretty clear that eating meat is the less valuable of the two, what with usable farming land surface, greenhouse gas emission and health implications of eating lots of meat vs health benefits of doing sport and the fact that there's an historical/cultural aspect to it.
Objectivity doesn't enter into it, we judge that we get more utility than disutility out of eating meat but less utility than disutility from killing animals for fun.
Oh, I see. Then objectivity doesn't enter into it, I judge that you are wrong.
But actually putting age verification into practice is guaranteed to be a disaster, that at will undoubtedly prevent adults from accessing porn, and at worst lead to an Ashley Madison-style privacy catastrophe.
One idea is that users register their age at the Post Office.
" Book of 1st class and a spank license please. "
Pf all the things to legislate and worry about with a massive nation changing event happening.
And the sheer cost of the whole plan, data bases, registering systems, forma, staff. ...
Hey.. I'm so so and so. A admin for the government Porn licensing authority....
Yaya fun job titles lol.
Then you'd be saying that the benefit of the pleasure of eating meat as opposed to eating other foods is in some way objectively more real or important than the benefit of pursuing your chosen sporting leisure activity. To the extent that it's possible to parse between these two activities, it's pretty clear that eating meat is the less valuable of the two, what with usable farming land surface, greenhouse gas emission and health implications of eating lots of meat vs health benefits of doing sport and the fact that there's an historical/cultural aspect to it.
That's not really correct. We eat meat because we are as a species omnivores and we have evolved to have a small amount of that material in our diet. Until we can grow meat and protein substitutes (at which point killing animals for meat becomes unnecessary) then eating meat is part of a requirement of our metabolism. However these animals (in the UK) are raised to certain standards with welfare in mind and that their death is quick and painless as possible without stressing the animal. What you don't do when you want a steak is get out the chainsaw and hack off part of the rump and then leave the animal to suffer before dying. The butchering of a fox by a hunt has nothing to do with feeding the population but is basically some people getting a hard on whilst they torture a random animal. The slaughtering of calf by slitting it's throat and letting it's heart beat out the blood whilst it suffocates is just as bad as fox hunting so there are forms of meat manufacture that are also barbaric (and as pointed out before I don't agree with battery farms). It's the same with anything that puts an animal through unnecessary stress and suffering (for example cutting off a sharks fin and then throwing the shark back in the water to drown).
I could make a more convincing an argument from evolutionary psychology that combative sports and those which most closely replicate the 'hunt' serve an evolved psychological need than that eating meat serves a dietary one.
No good nutritionist will tell you that meat is a necessary part of the human diet. I'm a weightlifter and a big time meat eater, but I recognise that eating meat is a lifestyle choice, not a need based on my omnivorous nature. We have an appendix, male nipples and a vestigial tail (and generally maladapted spine and hip girdle arrangement), that doesn't mean we should be living as do the primate who still have these traits in their fully functional form. You're welcome to disagree but the science won't back you up on this, there are cheaper, healthier sources of dietary protein than meat and dairy and they are environmentally less damaging to farm. We currently can't grow meat substitutes in an economically viable way, but my proposition about hypocrisy was very specifically temporal in that regard, so I don't know what point you think you're making there.
As far as the relative suffering involved, well now you're clearly doing mental and ethical gymnastics to try to make it right. There's so much to unpack here I don't even know where to start. I'm going to let your rather hysterical tone and the flagrantly evocative and selective language you use when talking about fox hunting, but the detachment and resignation with regards animal farming, speak for itself, I think.
Firstly, the big thing. Meat and dairy farming is a massive industry, in terms of sheer scale the overall suffering inflicted on animals by their use in blood sports would be infinitesimal compared to that inflicted by their farming for food, even if we agreed some preposterous differential in the suffering quotient involved in the two practices of 100 to 1.
The next thing which you seem ethically and morally blind about is that these animals live a life before they die. An animal bred and reared and kept for its meat has as pitiful and pointless an existence as it's possible for a living organism to be said to have, if such terms are meaningful when talking about animals (which I assume you must believe they are). There's absolutely nothing that says an animal used in blood sports can't be wild its whole life until the very day of its death, or at least kept as well as the most loved and treasured purpose trained dog.
As for the death itself, I think it's fair to concede that farmed animals, in general and in the West, are slaughtered as humanely as is economically viable. However I'm not as certain as you that this process is less stressful for the animal than the kind of life or death struggle involved in the climax of a blood sport event, for which animals are evolved. My personal favourite mechanism for making blood sports involving animals more ethical is for there to be a significant possibility of the animal's escape and, where hunting or fighting with humans is involved, for the animal to kill the human. That's ancillary though, I think even if the death was agreed to be brutal and horrifying in the case of sport and totally painless and blissful in the case of the meat industry (you'd have to have spent more time on a killing floor than I have to be able to expound so confidently on this I think) that's as nothing compared to the issues of scale, life value and relative worth in terms of the human experience involved.
But actually putting age verification into practice is guaranteed to be a disaster, that at will undoubtedly prevent adults from accessing porn, and at worst lead to an Ashley Madison-style privacy catastrophe.
One idea is that users register their age at the Post Office.
" Book of 1st class and a spank license please. "
Pf all the things to legislate and worry about with a massive nation changing event happening.
And the sheer cost of the whole plan, data bases, registering systems, forma, staff. ...
Hey.. I'm so so and so. A admin for the government Porn licensing authority....
Yaya fun job titles lol.
You can add lifting the ban on fox hunting to the list of pointless stuff the Tories want to do after June 8th.
So to sum up: you'd better not be a disabled fox from Romania claming benefits after June 8th, because the Tories will be after you...
But actually putting age verification into practice is guaranteed to be a disaster, that at will undoubtedly prevent adults from accessing porn, and at worst lead to an Ashley Madison-style privacy catastrophe.
One idea is that users register their age at the Post Office.
" Book of 1st class and a spank license please. "
Pf all the things to legislate and worry about with a massive nation changing event happening.
And the sheer cost of the whole plan, data bases, registering systems, forma, staff. ...
Hey.. I'm so so and so. A admin for the government Porn licensing authority....
Yaya fun job titles lol.
You can add lifting the ban on fox hunting to the list of pointless stuff the Tories want to do after June 8th.
So to sum up: you'd better not be a disabled fox from Romania claming benefits after June 8th, because the Tories will be after you...
That's the future of Conservative Britain...
Better yet, add a fox with a spare room in your den, have a 5 cubs and you like watching foxy ladies online lol.
That fox be having a bad day. All it else needs is a name, Jeroemy Crobyn and ots day even worse!
I could make a more convincing an argument from evolutionary psychology that combative sports and those which most closely replicate the 'hunt' serve an evolved psychological need than that eating meat serves a dietary one.
You could try, but you'd still be wrong. Everyone has a dietary need for protein, yet not everyone has a psychological compulsion to hunt. You can get the same psychological effects without watching a dog tear a fox apart. Sports, actual hunting, etc.
So this horsegak about the rich going abroad and trickle down economics is just that: horsegak!
I'm convinced it's actually trickle up economics: Give the poor a stack of cash and it'll end up in the savings account of the rich within a few transactions (they'll have to spend it in businesses owned by the rich), but give the rich a stack of cash and it'll end up in the savings account of the rich immediately (because they don't need to spend it).
I could make a more convincing an argument from evolutionary psychology that combative sports and those which most closely replicate the 'hunt' serve an evolved psychological need than that eating meat serves a dietary one.
You could try, but you'd still be wrong. Everyone has a dietary need for protein, yet not everyone has a psychological compulsion to hunt. You can get the same psychological effects without watching a dog tear a fox apart. Sports, actual hunting, etc.
So this horsegak about the rich going abroad and trickle down economics is just that: horsegak!
I'm convinced it's actually trickle up economics: Give the poor a stack of cash and it'll end up in the savings account of the rich within a few transactions (they'll have to spend it in businesses owned by the rich), but give the rich a stack of cash and it'll end up in the savings account of the rich immediately (because they don't need to spend it).
I like the sound of trickle up economics.
I honestly believe that flying helicopters over Britain and dumping cash on random towns would probably boost the economy more. Critics would say that the poor would spend it on booze and cigarettes, but at least then, the government would get money back from the duty on booze and cigarettes and thus help with the balance sheet.
Therefore I would like more information about what a Bad Deal is going to look like.
Free trade in goods only, services still subject to some restrictions. Supervision by EU agencies in which the UK will no longer have a say.
A Canada-lite deal, basically.
That sounds to me a lot better than No Deal (but not as good as being in the EU) however I suspect the EU agency supervision will be vetoed by the hardcore sovereignty fans.
Ultimately it is a question of whether people value economic factors over political ones.
Pretty much. But of course accepting the first thing Europe puts on the negotiating table would probably be perceived as losing face so not sure how it will end up.
I could make a more convincing an argument from evolutionary psychology that combative sports and those which most closely replicate the 'hunt' serve an evolved psychological need than that eating meat serves a dietary one.
You could try, but you'd still be wrong. Everyone has a dietary need for protein, yet not everyone has a psychological compulsion to hunt. You can get the same psychological effects without watching a dog tear a fox apart. Sports, actual hunting, etc
To restate the obvious, since you've apparently decided to wade in without having read the preceding arguments; there are other, better, cheaper and more environmentally sound sources of dietary protein than meat and dairy.
I didn't say everyone has a psychological need to hunt. Are you saying that everyone has a physiological need to eat meat? No, so I won't pretend that you did, even if it would be convenient for me to do so. Read. Understand. Respond. It's a tried and tested method. If you want to have a conversation with yourself don't jump into someone else's.
What I said was that a stronger argument could be made for the psychological benefits of hunt-replicating sports involving the use of animals than for the nutritional benefits of eating meat, even assuming that one wished to avoid the unnecessary suffering of animals.
Therefore I would like more information about what a Bad Deal is going to look like.
Free trade in goods only, services still subject to some restrictions. Supervision by EU agencies in which the UK will no longer have a say.
A Canada-lite deal, basically.
That sounds to me a lot better than No Deal (but not as good as being in the EU) however I suspect the EU agency supervision will be vetoed by the hardcore sovereignty fans.
Ultimately it is a question of whether people value economic factors over political ones.
Pretty much. But of course accepting the first thing Europe puts on the negotiating table would probably be perceived as losing face so not sure how it will end up.
The first three things on the table are:
1. Status of EU citizens living abroad. This applies as much to the Britons living in Spain as the Polish living in the UK.
2. Status of the land border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. This will be a 300 miles long interface between an EU and a non-EU country. Since the independence of Eire, the hardness of the border has varied depending on various factors. It isn't impossible to have a soft border and the 30,000 people who commute to work daily over it would prefer to keep it. In fact many people of both parts of Ireland think that Brexit makes re-unification less unthinkable, due to economic factors. This of course would remove the problem entirely.
3. The so-called £85 billion bill for projects that the UK has already subscribed to. This includes things like the pensions of soon-to-be-ex-EU employees of British nationality.
The Daily Rant has been highly exercised about the monstrous injustice of point 3, but it's actually only 4.5% of the UK's annual GDP, so if paid over a period of several years it would be pretty neglible, assuming people care more about economic than nationalistic factors.
Which brings us back to the key point of the whole thing.
3. The so-called £85 billion bill for projects that the UK has already subscribed to. This includes things like the pensions of soon-to-be-ex-EU employees of British nationality.
They don't need to. A mate of mine in Luxembourg told me all British EU employees havr been briefed they can keep their posts if they want to.
It's different if you're there as a representative of the UK in some commission, but career civil servants will keep their jobs.
Those who have been there for enough years for the most part are applying for French/Belgian/Lux citizenship however. Just in case.
As per the Irish border it really depends on how hard Britain wants the border to be, but even then provisions can be made for border areas. For example residents of the Tangiers region can enter Ceuta and Melilla without a Visa.
They still can't take up employment and they still need a visa for the mainland (or any other EU country for that matter) but for isolated territories like islands it's a template to look at.
I think the paying in bill would be easier to swallow if we continue to reap benefits of certain projects at the same time. Us being expected to keep paying in but cut off from such assets isn't reasonable. But as we're being expected to agree to keep paying up front before other discussion, I don't know what we're getting.
We shouldn't keep paying in billions in to prop them up with nothing back at the same time. The attitude that after decades of paying in we have no return on EU assets because it's all gone into some black hole that all belongs to 'the EU' of which we have nothing, is very dubious. Who exactly owns it then? If every country left? A handful of plutocrats in Brussels?
Howard A Treesong wrote: I think the paying in bill would be easier to swallow if we continue to reap benefits of certain projects at the same time. Us being expected to keep paying in but cut off from such assets isn't reasonable. But as we're being expected to agree to keep paying up front before other discussion, I don't know what we're getting.
We shouldn't keep paying in billions in to prop them up with nothing back at the same time. The attitude that after decades of paying in we have no return on EU assets because it's all gone into some black hole that all belongs to 'the EU' of which we have nothing, is very dubious. Who exactly owns it then? If every country left? A handful of plutocrats in Brussels?
That is something for the negotiation.
As far as I understand it, part of the bill will pay for things like pensions for British EU employed staff (whether they keep their jobs or not, they are still due a pension.) Some of the bill is for commitments to cross-EU projects that Britain is leaving of its own choice (Ha!) and cannot expect to remain part of. IN this case, it's all very well to take the view that blah blah quid pro auo but that isn't going to happen and unless you want to cut off your nose to spite you face, you had better accept that the UK needs to butter up the EU to keep some degree of the access to the free market and so on that our economy needs.
Or just say feth 'em, we'll take our chances on living in a shoe box eating gravel for the next 10 years because SOV RIN TEEEEE!!!
As far as I understand it, part of the bill will pay for things like pensions for British EU employed staff (whether they keep their jobs or not, they are still due a pension.) Some of the bill is for commitments to cross-EU projects that Britain is leaving of its own choice (Ha!) and cannot expect to remain part of. IN this case, it's all very well to take the view that blah blah quid pro auo but that isn't going to happen and unless you want to cut off your nose to spite you face, you had better accept that the UK needs to butter up the EU to keep some degree of the access to the free market and so on that our economy needs.
Something like half the exit bill will eventually go back to the UK with interest. The rescue package to Ireland and the emergency loans to Ukraine the UK signed guarantee for.
OK, maybe the Ukrainian loans aren't 100% secure, but it's pretty safe as far as development aid goes, and you're giving Putin the finger in the process, which is a nice bonus.
Therefore I would like more information about what a Bad Deal is going to look like.
Free trade in goods only, services still subject to some restrictions. Supervision by EU agencies in which the UK will no longer have a say.
A Canada-lite deal, basically.
That sounds to me a lot better than No Deal (but not as good as being in the EU) however I suspect the EU agency supervision will be vetoed by the hardcore sovereignty fans.
Ultimately it is a question of whether people value economic factors over political ones.
Pretty much. But of course accepting the first thing Europe puts on the negotiating table would probably be perceived as losing face so not sure how it will end up.
The first three things on the table are:
1. Status of EU citizens living abroad. This applies as much to the Britons living in Spain as the Polish living in the UK.
2. Status of the land border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. This will be a 300 miles long interface between an EU and a non-EU country. Since the independence of Eire, the hardness of the border has varied depending on various factors. It isn't impossible to have a soft border and the 30,000 people who commute to work daily over it would prefer to keep it. In fact many people of both parts of Ireland think that Brexit makes re-unification less unthinkable, due to economic factors. This of course would remove the problem entirely.
3. The so-called £85 billion bill for projects that the UK has already subscribed to. This includes things like the pensions of soon-to-be-ex-EU employees of British nationality.
The Daily Rant has been highly exercised about the monstrous injustice of point 3, but it's actually only 4.5% of the UK's annual GDP, so if paid over a period of several years it would be pretty neglible, assuming people care more about economic than nationalistic factors.
Which brings us back to the key point of the whole thing.
the problem with point three is that we don't know what we are getting for it. If they said that we want an £85bn bill, but in exchange we guarantee the rights of UK citizens, give you a free trade deal, agree to reimburse the UK investment in the EU bank and pay back the UK proportion of EU assets - plus allow the UK to stay in beneficial mutual agreements (like the sciences) then sure - most reasonable people would be happy to pay it (or at least pay something in the ballpark)
This bill is none of these, it's "Pay me £85bn and MAYBE we'll come to agreement on the other things" no country in it's right mind would pay that. Oh - and as for 'it's for pensions', even the EU admits it's actually for things like funding future EU initiatives and the farming policy - and interestingly even EU lawyers admit that legally we don't have to pay a thing - which make you wonder what the EU politicians are playing at.
Stranger83 wrote: - and interestingly even EU lawyers admit that legally we don't have to pay a thing - which make you wonder what the EU politicians are playing at.
Nope, that's a very severe misquote. EU lawyers have said they don't have the means to enforce payment.
Which is natural because the usual way EU gets fines, etc paid is by withholding EU funds going to that country, and this not being a trade dispute it can't be taken up to the WTO.
Stranger83 wrote: - and interestingly even EU lawyers admit that legally we don't have to pay a thing - which make you wonder what the EU politicians are playing at.
Nope, that's a very severe misquote. EU lawyers have said they don't have the means to enforce payment.
Which is natural because the usual way EU gets fines, etc paid is by withholding EU funds going to that country, and this not being a trade dispute it can't be taken up to the WTO.
And outside the EU. Their courts do not have jurisdiction (ie the main EU court that's not national) or payment against us. They could rule but have no legal enforcement powers.
The only way is Hague, or UN etc.
And they would not take such a case at any rate sensibly.
The EU has not said that the UK must pay it 100 B Euros for unspecified services. They have said there are a number of financial commitments the UK made as part of its membership, such as the pension fund for EU civil servants, which need to be resolved as part of resigning membership.
The total of these is not known, because it has to be worked out, and of course the UK can argue about what gets presented.
The EU has said that the detail of this financial settlement is one of the three key points that must be resolved before moving on to the negotiations about the post-Brexit situation.
While the EU does not have the means to compel payment, fairly obviously the EU is not going to be favourably disposed towards the UK if the situation is not resolved satisfactorily, and we will end up with a bad Brexit negotiation that will lead to a worse situation for Britain in the end.
Kilkrazy wrote: The EU has not said that the UK must pay it 100 B Euros for unspecified services. They have said there are a number of financial commitments the UK made as part of its membership, such as the pension fund for EU civil servants, which need to be resolved as part of resigning membership.
The total of these is not known, because it has to be worked out, and of course the UK can argue about what gets presented.
The EU has said that the detail of this financial settlement is one of the three key points that must be resolved before moving on to the negotiations about the post-Brexit situation.
While the EU does not have the means to compel payment, fairly obviously the EU is not going to be favourably disposed towards the UK if the situation is not resolved satisfactorily, and we will end up with a bad Brexit negotiation that will lead to a worse situation for Britain in the end.
Actually, they originally said £50bn, then increased it by £40bn to cover the EU farm subsidies, so we know that at least £40n is because they EU still wants the UK to pay for EU programs rather than reduce the program considering it now has less money (or ask other contries to finally pay into the pot)
As for that £50bn being for pensions - the average pension pot in the EU is circa £150k - now we all know the EU is a mass gravey train so lets say they all have a £1mn pound pension pot - for this to make £50bn it would mean the EU has 50,000 employees (which it hasn't) and that the UK is solely responsible for the accrued pension pots (which it isn't)
Now off cause the EU is going to want some money from us - they want the best deal for the EU. The fact is however that the way to do a negotiation is to do a negotiation, not make a demand with a promise that you may negotiate in the future.
It's pretty basic really, considering we have no obligation to pay £80bn at all then the EU needs to sit down and talk with us if they want us to pay it and explain what we are getting for that money. If they don't then we definitely should just walk away, and I don't think there is a single country in the world that would judge us for doing so as not a single one of them would pay that either.
Stranger83 wrote: - and interestingly even EU lawyers admit that legally we don't have to pay a thing - which make you wonder what the EU politicians are playing at.
Nope, that's a very severe misquote. EU lawyers have said they don't have the means to enforce payment.
Which is natural because the usual way EU gets fines, etc paid is by withholding EU funds going to that country, and this not being a trade dispute it can't be taken up to the WTO.
And outside the EU. Their courts do not have jurisdiction (ie the main EU court that's not national) or payment against us. They could rule but have no legal enforcement powers.
The only way is Hague, or UN etc.
And they would not take such a case at any rate sensibly.
That's very debatable though, it could fall under the jurisdiction because these treaties were made when the UK was still a EU member. It also depends if this needs to be resolved before they can complete article 50 negotiations, if the UK hasn't left yet the ECJ certainly will have jurisdiction. Its a lot of legal games anyway with some settlement in the middle.
Its also about reputation in the world, a country that does not pay its contractual debts so to speak is not looked on favourably. Will the negative reputation costs outweigh the actual costs? Hard to say.
Kilkrazy wrote: The EU has not said that the UK must pay it 100 B Euros for unspecified services. They have said there are a number of financial commitments the UK made as part of its membership, such as the pension fund for EU civil servants, which need to be resolved as part of resigning membership.
The total of these is not known, because it has to be worked out, and of course the UK can argue about what gets presented.
The EU has said that the detail of this financial settlement is one of the three key points that must be resolved before moving on to the negotiations about the post-Brexit situation.
While the EU does not have the means to compel payment, fairly obviously the EU is not going to be favourably disposed towards the UK if the situation is not resolved satisfactorily, and we will end up with a bad Brexit negotiation that will lead to a worse situation for Britain in the end.
Actually, they originally said £50bn, then increased it by £40bn to cover the EU farm subsidies, so we know that at least £40n is because they EU still wants the UK to pay for EU programs rather than reduce the program considering it now has less money (or ask other contries to finally pay into the pot)
As for that £50bn being for pensions - the average pension pot in the EU is circa £150k - now we all know the EU is a mass gravey train so lets say they all have a £1mn pound pension pot - for this to make £50bn it would mean the EU has 50,000 employees (which it hasn't) and that the UK is solely responsible for the accrued pension pots (which it isn't)
Now off cause the EU is going to want some money from us - they want the best deal for the EU. The fact is however that the way to do a negotiation is to do a negotiation, not make a demand with a promise that you may negotiate in the future.
I don't think you're understanding the process. Negotiations will start with the exit bill. Once that's settled talks will resume on trade, movement, etc.
EU wants to agree formula for Britain's exit bill, not final amount
EU officials said the possible bill of 55 to 60 billion euros that has been mentioned in Brussels since last year was only a very rough estimate.
Any number bandied out by the press has no relevance until both parties agree to the methodology, and since the May government has not lifted a finger the war is fought on the media front alone... and the clock is ticking.
And again, half the bill are credit guarantees to Ireland and Ukraine which will be repaid with interest at the same time those countries.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: I've been on God's Earth for 40 odd years, and in that time, one theme keeps repeating itself time after time:
If you raise taxes, the rich will take their money elsewhere and they won't invest etc etc
We know from things like the Panama papers that the rich are actively avoiding and evading tax regardless of what the tax rate is.
They do not want to pay. Period.
So this horsegak about the rich going abroad and trickle down economics is just that: horsegak!
Yet this myth persists year after year.
Its not a myth, your error is in not understanding the defintiion between rich and super-rich.
The rich have to move accounts etc and set up offshores etc, and will do so.
The super rich simply don't pay tax, end of. any tax they do pay is at a knock down percentage and then the government has to negotiate for it.
It would be nice to get companies like Amazon to pay tax, or major hedge fund managers. Nothing changes for them.
Your 'average' millionaire will move sticks if they have to. This is what they did in the 60's and 70's.
Now most governments will not go as far as 60's- 70's higher rate taxation. But Corbyn is hell bent on bringing back the 70's trades unionism, and has a loony list of what he will want to pay for. Most of these things are 'nice' (if we overlook the heavy hand of the old left needed to maintain this spending on the backs of the populace) but we cant afford them all. +5% higher rate would just be the start. Corbyn is not unintelligent, he wont want to tell people about the 70% or so higher rate he would need to implement, and that is a realistic minimum, I don't think he would have any problems with a full 90% high rate tax if it would buy him the Trades Union controlled loony left dream of his.
Kilkrazy wrote: The EU has not said that the UK must pay it 100 B Euros for unspecified services. They have said there are a number of financial commitments the UK made as part of its membership, such as the pension fund for EU civil servants, which need to be resolved as part of resigning membership.
The total of these is not known, because it has to be worked out, and of course the UK can argue about what gets presented.
The EU has said that the detail of this financial settlement is one of the three key points that must be resolved before moving on to the negotiations about the post-Brexit situation.
While the EU does not have the means to compel payment, fairly obviously the EU is not going to be favourably disposed towards the UK if the situation is not resolved satisfactorily, and we will end up with a bad Brexit negotiation that will lead to a worse situation for Britain in the end.
Actually, they originally said £50bn, then increased it by £40bn to cover the EU farm subsidies, so we know that at least £40n is because they EU still wants the UK to pay for EU programs rather than reduce the program considering it now has less money (or ask other contries to finally pay into the pot)
As for that £50bn being for pensions - the average pension pot in the EU is circa £150k - now we all know the EU is a mass gravey train so lets say they all have a £1mn pound pension pot - for this to make £50bn it would mean the EU has 50,000 employees (which it hasn't) and that the UK is solely responsible for the accrued pension pots (which it isn't)
Now off cause the EU is going to want some money from us - they want the best deal for the EU. The fact is however that the way to do a negotiation is to do a negotiation, not make a demand with a promise that you may negotiate in the future.
I don't think you're understanding the process. Negotiations will start with the exit bill. Once that's settled talks will resume on trade, movement, etc.
EU wants to agree formula for Britain's exit bill, not final amount
EU officials said the possible bill of 55 to 60 billion euros that has been mentioned in Brussels since last year was only a very rough estimate.
Any number bandied out by the press has no relevance until both parties agree to the methodology, and since the May government has not lifted a finger the war is fought on the media front alone... and the clock is ticking.
And again, half the bill are credit guarantees to Ireland and Ukraine which will be repaid with interest at the same time those countries.
No, I do get that that is the process that the EU wants. I'm just saying that is not how negotiations work.
I've been involved I numerous negotiations in my life, both with new customers and leaving customers and I have never in my year of negotiations gone into a negotiation saying 'the fee is £xxx and once you agree to pay that we'll talk about what you get for that money'
I'm just saying that isn't how negotiations work - they never have and I'm prepared to say right now that is bet everything I own that they never will be done this way. If you dont legally owe anything (which even the EU lawyers agree we dont) then you need to discuss what you are prepared to offer for the money you want, if your not going to do that then why would anyone I their right mind agree to that?
If you wanted to buy Apple's from me and I said if you pay me £1 I may discuss selling you an Apple would you agree to that?
Again, I do agree that if we do get a deal on things like the EU space program and such we should pay into the EU budget - but to pay without knowing what we are getting, and with no legal obligation to pay would just be insane.
What about what I said is not the situation though?
While t there are a few things that we will need to pay as they are things that have already been spent (such as the EU employee pensions that have already been accrued) as I've already pointed out the bill for these is considerably less than the £50bn (or £80bn at current count) and will probably be more than covered by the £7bn we have in the EU investment bank or the circa £27bn that is our portion of EU property and loans made by the EU - so in terms of actual legal requirements to pay then we are.more than covered.
The rest of it is money that is yet to be spent - which there is no legal requirement to pay as the EU could (and indeed like any other government that suffers a massive drop in expected income,should) do is reduce spending, but it'll never do that. It therefore want a the UK to pay in still - which is fair IF we are getting something in return, but what isn't fair is to expect us to pay in without.knowing what we are going to get for the money - and I defy anyone to pay a bill that they don't ha e to pay without knowing what they will get for that money (and if you disagree please send me a pm of your address so I can send you a bill for £200 and I might the send you £200 of minis for your collection)
What about what I said is not the situation though?
While t there are a few things that we will need to pay as they are things that have already been spent (such as the EU employee pensions that have already been accrued) as I've already pointed out the bill for these is considerably less than the £50bn (or £80bn at current count) and will probably be more than covered by the £7bn we have in the EU investment bank or the circa £27bn that is our portion of EU property and loans made by the EU - so in terms of actual legal requirements to pay then we are.more than covered.
The rest of it is money that is yet to be spent - which there is no legal requirement to pay as the EU could (and indeed like any other government that suffers a massive drop in expected income,should) do is reduce spending, but it'll never do that. It therefore want a the UK to pay in still - which is fair IF we are getting something in return, but what isn't fair is to expect us to pay in without.knowing what we are going to get for the money - and I defy anyone to pay a bill that they don't ha e to pay without knowing what they will get for that money (and if you disagree please send me a pm of your address so I can send you a bill for £200 and I might the send you £200 of minis for your collection)
Aye. They want promise of payment for what is yet unknown.
If we where making a net gain vs EU assets then yes. We need to pay them whatever that gain is valued at. And contribute to say space program id we want benefits.
But not pay 50-80 billion pounds! For no guarantee of what that large amount of money would get.
A sum equal to at least 2 entire years of defense and procurement budgets.
We should not be handing the EU a blank cheque to spend as they wish. They need to be very specific as to what we're paying for, and what concessions we'll get in return (trade, space programs, intelligence etc).
But that's how contracts wirk; you break the contract, settle the bill and negotiate a new contract.
There will be plenty of to and fro to establish which parts we should pay, but I've no objection to paying for projects we started, and settling the bill before we move on.
Shadow Captain Edithae wrote: We should not be handing the EU a blank cheque to spend as they wish. They need to be very specific as to what we're paying for, and what concessions we'll get in return (trade, space programs, intelligence etc).
That's exactly why the amount isn't confirmed. The amounts that have been bandied about are all from financial institutions and likely an aggregate amount of what they believe is the UKs existing liabilities and commitments over the next ten years or so. These are likely to be split as follows:-
Ongoing revenue commitments (pensions for example) from for example UK citizens working for the EU on the UK's behalf dependant on how that is split. You might have teams specifically tasked to complete a project that the UK signed up to until completion or other revenue expenditure that the UK has contractually agreed to be a part for a certain period of time. One way or another the UK will have to pay these because it has already committed contractually to them. Either it pulls out and has to pay the costs for terminating the contract early or it continues until the end of the project/expenditure.
You have ongoing capital projects that the UK has signed contractually to contribute to. This could be building new schools throughout the EU (as an example only). As above if it terminates the contract then as with most (sensible) contracts the party terminating has to pay costs (or it commits until the end of the project)
You have committed projects, so ones where ink has been applied but work has not yet commenced (so say it has a 2019 start date). In this case dependent on the contract there may or not be a break clause that allows the UK to step away without having to pay costs (say it was for building schools in Libya and the UK pulling out just means less schools). Alternatively a major project may not have a break clause as you simply can't pull the plug on one large capital project (lets say building a spaceport in Spain). In this case there will likely again be termination costs.
Finally there are those which the project that are still in the preparation phase and there has been little financial expenditure. As there is no committed contract the UK can choose whether it stays or leaves these projects (and will need to commit one way or another to the project in the negotiations and then it would be liable for these costs) - for example lets say it's discussions on new batch of satellites to monitor air pollution. If it stays in then it can access the data, if not it either ignores the issue or has to contract out for it's own satellites (which might still be 75% of the cost of the EU project).
HOWEVER
The thing that people forget is that same applies to the EU as well. It is likely to have financial commitments to the UK as well (for example redeveloping a run down area in Huddersfield). This is where the negotiations come in - if the UK wants the EU to continue funding this then this may be on the proviso it commits a 'regional development fund' until 2025. However the negotiations might result in the UK not having to commit to the this fund but that the EU will pull out of the Huddersfield project and any of the existing liabilities the UK will have to bear (for example the UK government may drop the project and pay off any existing contracts and then let the area that was going to be redeveloped to go to ruin). The UK payment to the EU might go down on this, but some of this 'saving' might have to be paid to contractors for termination of contracts.
Hence the final total will be a combination of all these factors. There are papers and MPs (like Boris the clown) that are showing a complete misunderstanding of what the discussion on the financial implications mean.
Shadow Captain Edithae wrote: We should not be handing the EU a blank cheque to spend as they wish. They need to be very specific as to what we're paying for, and what concessions we'll get in return (trade, space programs, intelligence etc).
Exactly. Present us a very clear itemised balance like any accountent would understand.
Our assets and money owed to us, held in trust, loans we gave. Etc.
, our money we owe, prices for various aspects of the EU deal costed and listed.
That are fixed including "exit fee" and per anaum charges.
Holding the 8 June general election is expected to cost the taxpayer more than £143m, the BBC understands.
The government estimate is an increase of 16% from the £123m it budgeted for the 2015 general election.
The price tag reflects the scale of the operation to staff tens of thousands of polling stations, process millions of votes and distribute candidates' mailings.
The cost of last year's EU referendum was similar.
That cost the taxpayer around £142m.
Taking the 2015 election as a guide, around 7.6 million postal votes were sent out. There were over 46 million poll cards and ballot papers printed to reflect 650 separate candidate lists for the election.
On the day of the vote itself, 41,000 polling stations were staffed for many hours by tens of thousands of people.
That evening, more than 30 million votes were counted by tens of thousands of people sorting through thousands of ballot boxes.
Holding national votes has become an expensive business.
Based on the government's estimate, obtained from the Cabinet Office and Northern Ireland Office, this would become the UK's most expensive election.
Since 2010, holding by-elections have on average each cost close to £240,000.
Costs for 8 June are higher than previous elections because this poll is being held on a stand-alone basis. Often joint local and national elections are held, where administrative costs can be shared between different bodies polling on the same day, such as councils.
Campaign trail
The anticipated costs may also reflect expectations over turnout, the number of candidates and parties standing and how many people are expected to vote.
The deadline to hold the national poll on the same day as this May's local elections had passed by the time Theresa May surprised many in Westminster and called for a snap election.
As a result, returning officers in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have been allocated up to £101.6m in total for the 8 June poll.
The cost of delivering election mailings for candidates is expected to match the £41.7m spent on the 2015 general election, according to the Cabinet Office.
Spending by individual candidates and political parties on the campaign trail is treated separately.
For the 2015 general election, there was a total reported spend of over £39m by 57 parties and 23 non-party campaigners, according to the Electoral Commission.
What about what I said is not the situation though?
While t there are a few things that we will need to pay as they are things that have already been spent (such as the EU employee pensions that have already been accrued) as I've already pointed out the bill for these is considerably less than the £50bn (or £80bn at current count) and will probably be more than covered by the £7bn we have in the EU investment bank or the circa £27bn that is our portion of EU property and loans made by the EU - so in terms of actual legal requirements to pay then we are.more than covered.
The rest of it is money that is yet to be spent - which there is no legal requirement to pay as the EU could (and indeed like any other government that suffers a massive drop in expected income,should) do is reduce spending, but it'll never do that. It therefore want a the UK to pay in still - which is fair IF we are getting something in return, but what isn't fair is to expect us to pay in without.knowing what we are going to get for the money - and I defy anyone to pay a bill that they don't ha e to pay without knowing what they will get for that money (and if you disagree please send me a pm of your address so I can send you a bill for £200 and I might the send you £200 of minis for your collection)
THe following:
A settled bill has not yet been presented.
The Brexit negotiations open with this as one of three points, which I mentioned earlier in the thread.
This basic fact invalidates everything you have argued. I don't know what else to say.
You agree that we shouldn't pay for things like farm subsidies once we are out as that is an ongojng expense and and not something already spent, you are just waiting until the EU presents us with the bill before you state that - that's fair enough.
For the record, the 50bn (increased to £80bn) comes direct from the EU ''negotiation' team so it's reasonable to assume this is the rough figure they are aiming for - the fact that it includes ongoing expenses is also direct from the EU 'negotiation' team so again it's reasonable to assume they are including this in the £50bn.
You agree that we shouldn't pay for things like farm subsidies once we are out as that is an ongojng expense and and not something already spent, you are just waiting until the EU presents us with the bill before you state that - that's fair enough.
For the record, the 50bn (increased to £80bn) comes direct from the EU ''negotiation' team so it's reasonable to assume this is the rough figure they are aiming for - the fact that it includes ongoing expenses is also direct from the EU 'negotiation' team so again it's reasonable to assume they are including this in the £50bn.
Things yet to be spent are not just farming subsidies, but things like the European space program, the Erasmus programme, science research projects, and many other things that are well under way. Things that were costed and agreed based on how much funding every party agreed to put in. We could just pull out and say we want no more part of them, but that would be hugely damaging to the work and to the UK as we would lose all hope of access to other projects in future. The final bill can't be nailed down at the moment for two reasons 1) it depends on the date. The longer we wait, the smaller the codes as we continue to pay in now and 2) there is some disagreement over how much of ongoing costs we should pay, and which work. It's not just pensions.
You agree that we shouldn't pay for things like farm subsidies once we are out as that is an ongojng expense and and not something already spent, you are just waiting until the EU presents us with the bill before you state that - that's fair enough.
For the record, the 50bn (increased to £80bn) comes direct from the EU ''negotiation' team so it's reasonable to assume this is the rough figure they are aiming for - the fact that it includes ongoing expenses is also direct from the EU 'negotiation' team so again it's reasonable to assume they are including this in the £50bn.
Things yet to be spent are not just farming subsidies, but things like the European space program, the Erasmus programme, science research projects, and many other things that are well under way. Things that were costed and agreed based on how much funding every party agreed to put in. We could just pull out and say we want no more part of them, but that would be hugely damaging to the work and to the UK as we would lose all hope of access to other projects in future. The final bill can't be nailed down at the moment for two reasons 1) it depends on the date. The longer we wait, the smaller the codes as we continue to pay in now and 2) there is some disagreement over how much of ongoing costs we should pay, and which work. It's not just pensions.
See - we seem to actually agree here. I also thing there are certain EU projects we should try to stay in and that it's only right that we pay our fair share of that, but working out which we want to stay in and which we don't (and how much we should pay for each) Is a negotiation, and the EU has said no negotiation until we agree to pay the bill - but they are refusing to say what we get for that bill because they won't negotiate on it.
Who suggested a detailed itemized bill from the EU that we can look over before agreeing to anything? I think that's a great idea. A demand for a cash payment without question is insulting. And we can actually see what they plan to do with it and what they've been doing.
Future War Cultist wrote: Who suggested a detailed itemized bill from the EU that we can look over before agreeing to anything? I think that's a great idea. A demand for a cash payment without question is insulting. And we can actually see what they plan to do with it and what they've been doing.
And the other thing is that it allows the negotiators to engage in some horse-trading.
For example, if the EU are legally committed to funding a new play park in Hull for say, £2 billion
and Britain is legally committed to paying £2 billion to refurbish Juncker's office (ok, I know an extreme example )
May was Home Secretary for 7 years, and was ultimately responsible for cyber-security, so she should be carrying the can for this.
Unsurprisingly, our fawning and gak poor media are letting her off the hook.
Add Tory budget cuts to the NHS and it's a surprise that this never happened sooner, and yet, we're looking at a Tory landslide...
"Patch your IT."
"We don't wanna."
"Patch your IT."
"We don't wanna, we'd rather buy stuff."
"Ok, sure, that's your choice, they're your funds. But you should patch your IT."
"Our IT broke, it's all your fault!"
Dail Mail reported that there were as many as 50+ breaches of NHS systems which the NHS failed to report to Police...I don't think you can pin this on the Tories, at least not 100%.
As much as people here would love a convenient scapegoat...
May was Home Secretary for 7 years, and was ultimately responsible for cyber-security, so she should be carrying the can for this.
Unsurprisingly, our fawning and gak poor media are letting her off the hook.
Add Tory budget cuts to the NHS and it's a surprise that this never happened sooner, and yet, we're looking at a Tory landslide...
"Patch your IT."
"We don't wanna."
"Patch your IT."
"We don't wanna, we'd rather buy stuff."
"Ok, sure, that's your choice, they're your funds. But you should patch your IT."
"Our IT broke, it's all your fault!"
The buck stops at the desk of whatever man or woman is in charge of a company/army/business/agency etc etc
The excuse that underlings wouldn't obey the person at the top doesn't wash me
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Shadow Captain Edithae wrote: Dail Mail reported that there were as many as 50+ breaches of NHS systems which the NHS failed to report to Police...I don't think you can pin this on the Tories, at least not 100%.
As much as people here would love a convenient scapegoat...
The Tories have been in power since 2010. In that time, MI5/GCHQ/NCA etc etc have issued numerous warnings about this kinda thing.
If the Tories are ignoring advice from the experts, then they should carry the can for it.
If the Tories are ignoring advice from the experts, then they should carry the can for it.
You're missing my point. Its not the Tories ignoring expert advice, its the hospitals themselves who are allegedly neglecting to notify Police of cyber attacks and breaches of their systems.
If the Tories are ignoring advice from the experts, then they should carry the can for it.
You're missing my point. Its not the Tories ignoring expert advice, its the hospitals themselves who are allegedly neglecting to notify Police of cyber attacks and breaches of their systems.
If they where not reporting attacks. Then weaknesses where not also being checked and back doors left unlocked.
If they never report it, the security patches are not known they are needed.
So that causes a problem.
If its not sent to police, then no one can track source, and track the back door they exploited.
I would like to know Jeremy Hunt's opinion of the performance of the NHS he has been in charge of for the past 7 years.
After explaining the IT security crisis, he should explain the nursing crisis, the GP crisis, the social care crisis, the waiting times crisis, and that will be enough to be going on with.
If the Tories are ignoring advice from the experts, then they should carry the can for it.
You're missing my point. Its not the Tories ignoring expert advice, its the hospitals themselves who are allegedly neglecting to notify Police of cyber attacks and breaches of their systems.
If they where not reporting attacks. Then weaknesses where not also being checked and back doors left unlocked.
If they never report it, the security patches are not known they are needed.
So that causes a problem.
If its not sent to police, then no one can track source, and track the back door they exploited.
My understanding is that a lot of the vulnerable computers were running WinXP which is no longer updated. There's no one group that are responsible.
The likelihood is that the organisations affected all were running old operating systems was because they needed to because of software compatibility. Microsoft are notorious for making new OS not completely backwards compatible. If you have a database that runs fine in XP if MS introduce a new system then you have to go through a rigorous check to make sure the program runs properly. If it doesn't then you have to go back to the software designers, but what if they have gone out of business etc? Then you have to create a new system and barring the delays procuring it you also need to ensure you can somehow export and then import all the old data securely and correctly. This is a mammoth task, that last thing you need is a database screwing up medical records and putting the wrong pills to patients (or asking for a kidney to be removed in the operating theatre instead of the appendix).
So you can blame the NHS for not implementing new software quick enough (but that's hardily something you can do instantly)
You can blame the government for not funding the upgrades properly (making the NHS choose between upgrading and patient care)
You can blame Microsoft for pushing forward the end dates for supporting old systems without really consulting as to who it impacts.
There's not really one person to blame here. It's a catalogue of issues that eventually result in a major vulnerability.
Future War Cultist wrote: Who suggested a detailed itemized bill from the EU that we can look over before agreeing to anything? I think that's a great idea. A demand for a cash payment without question is insulting. And we can actually see what they plan to do with it and what they've been doing.
And the other thing is that it allows the negotiators to engage in some horse-trading.
For example, if the EU are legally committed to funding a new play park in Hull for say, £2 billion
and Britain is legally committed to paying £2 billion to refurbish Juncker's office (ok, I know an extreme example )
then we can agree to cancel those things out.
Hopefully, our negotiators will see that.
Makes sense, unfortunately it would also require level headed responsible adults on at least one side of the table.
If the Tories are ignoring advice from the experts, then they should carry the can for it.
You're missing my point. Its not the Tories ignoring expert advice, its the hospitals themselves who are allegedly neglecting to notify Police of cyber attacks and breaches of their systems.
Also it has been revealed that the "Tories" warned the NHS, but NHS management did not listen. The defence secretary is a political position, the NHS managmenent is not, or at least not directly.
For what it's worth, even if you hate the various papers referenced (I certainly do), Auntie Beeb was saying much the same.
I will admit to one thing that I don't understand about it all. Places I've worked in the past have had the whole 'ageing IT' and legacy software problem and some may have very well used Windows XP.
But, as far as I know, what happened was they negotiated various 'extended support' services, with, say, Microsoft, or oracle, or whoever it was. Sure, it was more expensive in the long run, but that was a problem for the next yearly accounts.
None of the places I have worked for have ever gone. "Welp, it's out of support now, oh well. Guess that's saved us a few bucks."
At the very worst I've seen someone senior go. "Ok then. Yes, we realise and acknowledge some IT issue is a problem we don't have a solution for at this moment. I understand and accept and carry that risk."
Whirlwind wrote: The likelihood is that the organisations affected all were running old operating systems was because they needed to because of software compatibility. Microsoft are notorious for making new OS not completely backwards compatible. If you have a database that runs fine in XP if MS introduce a new system then you have to go through a rigorous check to make sure the program runs properly. If it doesn't then you have to go back to the software designers, but what if they have gone out of business etc? Then you have to create a new system and barring the delays procuring it you also need to ensure you can somehow export and then import all the old data securely and correctly. This is a mammoth task, that last thing you need is a database screwing up medical records and putting the wrong pills to patients (or asking for a kidney to be removed in the operating theatre instead of the appendix).
Fortunately that's not how medical records, prescriptions or referrals work.
I suspect I'm going to find out exactly how huge this whole thing was first thing tomorrow morning.
It's very good to warn the NHS while hobbling them with cuts. What they did was warn them, then wash their hands of the matter instead of facilitating actual improvements
Howard A Treesong wrote: It's very good to warn the NHS while hobbling them with cuts. What they did was warn them, then wash their hands of the matter instead of facilitating actual improvements
Because it was intended for the cuts to hit overmanagement, not security.
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Baragash wrote: Even if the Tories warned the NHS and the NHS ignored it, the Tories are still responsible for following up and making sure it actually gets done.
The government is not responsible for low tier work. If a farmer forgets to milk his cows, its not the fault of the MAFF.
Government ministers have other responsibilities other than making sure hospital computers get windows updates. The hospitals were warned, NHS management should have acted.
Shadow Captain Edithae wrote: Dail Mail reported that there were as many as 50+ breaches of NHS systems which the NHS failed to report to Police...I don't think you can pin this on the Tories, at least not 100%.
As much as people here would love a convenient scapegoat...
There are attacks and breaches all of the time. If companies started to report every attack on their systems to the police the police would not be able to cope. Most companies of any size gets attempts every day. The NHS probably gets hundreds. I am assuming, from what has happened, that the NHS processes will say that you only report it to the police or information commissioner if it is either a legal requirement (data loss) or a major incident that is the result of an external attack. No point in doing anything else. The police will get flooded, and will have no idea what to do with it. They are struggling to deal with harassment on facebook
Howard A Treesong wrote: It's very good to warn the NHS while hobbling them with cuts. What they did was warn them, then wash their hands of the matter instead of facilitating actual improvements
Because it was intended for the cuts to hit overmanagement, not security.
No, the cuts were intended to hit "non frontline staff". Which means IT, as well as many other administrative functions. The Tories believe that anyone that is not a Doctor or Nurse is not adding value and is needless bureaucracy. The government moved 1 billion a year from the NHS capital spend budget to the revenue budget because they believe that anyone not directly treating patients is a waste, and voters agree.
Whistle-blowers are liberty's best defence against corrupt governments, so this plan speaks volumes.
Naturally of course, it's fine for the government to spy on the public and demand passwords, but heaven forbid the public should get to know what the government is up too...
This, on top of vetted questions from the media, a camera shy Prime Minister, and a fawning press, is fast making the UK a wretched place to live...
Strong and stable government sounds like something from Nazi Germany. Should we be surprised? Anybody who has been keeping an eye on May since her days as Home Secretary, should not be surprised in the least.
The real tragedy here is the apathy of the British public who are sleepwalking into this...
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Shadow Captain Edithae wrote: How exactly is the Government responsible when a hospital neglects to inform the Police of attempted cyber attacks?
Chain of command. Of course the person at the top is not responsible for every missing box of paper clips, but if paper clips are not being bought, losses continue, warnings issued are being ignored, then the boss at the top needs to know or find out the reasons why, and do something about it. If they don't, they carry the can. With power comes responsibility.
It's all about the leadership and the culture of leadership in this situation.
In this NHS example, if incidents are not reported to the police, then the top dog needs to ask why. Leaders can't plead ignorance.
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Baragash wrote: Even if the Tories warned the NHS and the NHS ignored it, the Tories are still responsible for following up and making sure it actually gets done.
Exactly. Nail on the head.
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Kilkrazy wrote: I would like to know Jeremy Hunt's opinion of the performance of the NHS he has been in charge of for the past 7 years.
After explaining the IT security crisis, he should explain the nursing crisis, the GP crisis, the social care crisis, the waiting times crisis, and that will be enough to be going on with.
Like Cameron before him, Hunt has abandoned ship. It's a trait amongst this party these days. Gove ran off and let somebody else clean up the mess, and famously, May was known as the submarine during the referendum.
The government moved 1 billion a year from the NHS capital spend budget to the revenue budget because they believe that anyone not directly treating patients is a waste, and voters agree.
That is a skewed outlook.
Let me give an example of the type of reduction the Tories are achieving.
Back last decade there were moves to implant buffer managers to make 'efficiencies' that existing managment didnt want to be seen being responsible for. An example I know involved a hospital on Herttfordshire where to save money five hospital porters were laid off and not replaced. To do this a management position was created and the vacancy filled to have someone to action the reductions. When all was said and done the hospital had saved some money, which helped the existing administrators look good for promotion and the hospital had replaced five useful working staff with a junior manager without and actual portfolio who didn't really do anything beyond collecting pay.
This sort of BS happens a fair bit in government, and is rife in the NHS hospitals trusts.
The Tories wanted to sever the deadwood managment posts that are rooted in the NHS bureaucracy, most of which happened under New Labour.
I don't know where you get the idea that IT staffing is being cut. In fact I can pretty much confirm (because I know that the security hoops the database staff in the NHS have to go through are very stringent from close hand info) the opposite as the NHS has central databasing (which is the core vulnerability here) and there are layers of security to protect patient data (which ironically prevents the data from being stolen quite effectively, but doesnt prevent the hospital databases from being encrypted my stolen military hackware).
There is a lot of grandstanding going on right now, but the hard fact is that the NHS relies on computerised file systems linking patient data to all points of contact, and is finding itself vulnerable to hacking tools generated by top level intelligence agencies for the purpose of crippling government infrastructure. While asshats in basements might have these tools now that is a recent development and they were designed on a much higher level and were not in the public sphere.
Future War Cultist wrote: Who suggested a detailed itemized bill from the EU that we can look over before agreeing to anything? I think that's a great idea. A demand for a cash payment without question is insulting. And we can actually see what they plan to do with it and what they've been doing.
That was me. A detailed accountent style debt and credit account statement listing all our both owed amounts and credits against it.
Then a sum total for each section, and a end result listing how far we are in debt by.
Now this can also link to a report that has in full detail thr exit cost on brexit day, any per monthly, yearly etc owed payments we agreed to, and anything we are owed in payment from other things.
Simply put a bill that any business would respect. Not just a demand.
With that bill we can negoiate the final payment that's agreeable to UK and EU.
Whistle-blowers are liberty's best defence against corrupt governments, so this plan speaks volumes.
The real tragedy here is the apathy of the British public who are sleepwalking into this...
It's not even whistle-blowers though. This is people asking under freedom of information legislation and then being made a criminal by telling other people about it.
Of course freedoms of the populace being reduced by an authoritarian government that doesn't like to be questioned was, well, something warned about because of the illusion of taking back control.
Come on Scotland go independent then I can move north to somewhere more rational!
Honestly I think anyone earning less than approx. £60k-70k per annum and voting Tories is a bit like Turkeys voting for Christmas and putting the battery farm and slaughterhouse in charge because of the impacts on them and their family.
Almost half of European businesses have started looking to replace British suppliers with competitors from inside the EU after concerns about higher tariffs after Brexit, according to a new survey.
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https://www.ft.com/content/47450c12-3951-11e7-ac89-b01cc67cfeec
More than one-quarter of European supply chain managers intend to re-shore all or part of their supply chains to Europe, with 46 per cent anticipating a greater proportion of their supply chain being removed from the UK, based on research by the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply, which surveyed over 2,000 global supply chain managers.
“Diplomats either side of the table have barely decided on their negotiating principles and already supply chain managers are deep into their preparations for Brexit,” said Duncan Brock of Cips.
“Both European and British businesses will be ready to reroute their supply chains in 2019 if trade negotiations fail and are not wasting time to see what happens,” he added.
British businesses have made less progress in replacing European suppliers. Nearly one-quarter of British firms have not done any work to prepare for Brexit, according to Cips.
While significant numbers have started planning for the impact of new tariffs on imports, which are likely to be introduced if the UK leaves the EU single market, only one-third said they were actively searching for alternative suppliers based in the UK to replace their current EU-sourced supply chain.
The institute said the reshoring of supply chains by British companies back to the UK could represent a significant opportunity for small businesses looking to pick up new contracts.
But it added that the costs of Brexit for business — whether because of the weaker pound or the introduction of tariffs on imports — were likely to be passed on to small suppliers and eventually consumers.
The effects of sterling devaluation are already being felt by both companies and consumers, with companies reducing the size of consumer products — as Mondelez did with its Toblerone bar last year — or increasing prices, as Unilever tried with its Marmite spread. Almost two-thirds of the British companies surveyed said their supply chains had become more expensive as a result of the fall in sterling since the referendum last summer, with nearly one-third being forced to renegotiate some contracts as a result.
British managers were not optimistic about the prospects for trade talks. Almost 40 per cent said they believed the UK had a weak negotiating position, with 33 per cent concerned about a lack of supply chain expertise and knowledge in Britain.
IT is an integral part of the 'frontline' process, overmanagement isn't.
To someone who understands IT, sure, it's a frontline process. To everyone else (and that includes almost all of management), IT is a cost centre which provides no value. You slash the NHS budget, and the IT department is going to be one of the first things to get cut. This is the natural result of doing so, but there's no way you can convince the management of that at the time.
IT is an integral part of the 'frontline' process, overmanagement isn't.
To someone who understands IT, sure, it's a frontline process. To everyone else (and that includes almost all of management), IT is a cost centre which provides no value. You slash the NHS budget, and the IT department is going to be one of the first things to get cut. This is the natural result of doing so, but there's no way you can convince the management of that at the time.
A expense yes.
If you want anything modern to function in any way these days, it's a huge part of your logistics, strategy and systems
The NHS needs a inhouse dedicated software and hardware ICT team developing new software, systems security and upgrading the NHS off its ancient machines it still uses. Cheaper than paying contractors.
No, I do get that that is the process that the EU wants. I'm just saying that is not how negotiations work.
I've been involved I numerous negotiations in my life, both with new customers and leaving customers and I have never in my year of negotiations gone into a negotiation saying 'the fee is £xxx and once you agree to pay that we'll talk about what you get for that money'
I'm just saying that isn't how negotiations work - they never have and I'm prepared to say right now that is bet everything I own that they never will be done this way. If you dont legally owe anything (which even the EU lawyers agree we dont) then you need to discuss what you are prepared to offer for the money you want, if your not going to do that then why would anyone I their right mind agree to that?
If you wanted to buy Apple's from me and I said if you pay me £1 I may discuss selling you an Apple would you agree to that?
Again, I do agree that if we do get a deal on things like the EU space program and such we should pay into the EU budget - but to pay without knowing what we are getting, and with no legal obligation to pay would just be insane.
Again: no. EU lawyers have said they don't have the means to enforce any payments. That's why there is a negotiation (or rather there will be, because the UK hasn't provided anything beyond "we don't want to pay")
But this isn't paying for anything. That's an exit bill, a form of severance pay for compromises acquired during EU membership. What the UK gets for that is, basically, getting out of the EU debt-free and with the blessing of the bloc. The UK can walk out, or apparently not even walk in in the first place, but then trade defaults to WTO rules, and likely not going any further for an extended period.
Once that's settled, the UK has to decide what's the kind of deal they want from the EU. If it's trade in goods only (like Canada or South Korea) no further payments should be needed other than whatever European institutions the UK wants to participate in (ESA, EURATOM, CERN, etc.)
If they want to look further (for example, include services) it starts to look more like a Norway or Switzerland deal... which in addition of paying into the EU budget require freedom of movement which apparently are off-limits, so realistically are not going to happen.
No, I do get that that is the process that the EU wants. I'm just saying that is not how negotiations work.
I've been involved I numerous negotiations in my life, both with new customers and leaving customers and I have never in my year of negotiations gone into a negotiation saying 'the fee is £xxx and once you agree to pay that we'll talk about what you get for that money'
I'm just saying that isn't how negotiations work - they never have and I'm prepared to say right now that is bet everything I own that they never will be done this way. If you dont legally owe anything (which even the EU lawyers agree we dont) then you need to discuss what you are prepared to offer for the money you want, if your not going to do that then why would anyone I their right mind agree to that?
If you wanted to buy Apple's from me and I said if you pay me £1 I may discuss selling you an Apple would you agree to that?
Again, I do agree that if we do get a deal on things like the EU space program and such we should pay into the EU budget - but to pay without knowing what we are getting, and with no legal obligation to pay would just be insane.
Again: no. EU lawyers have said they don't have the means to enforce any payments. That's why there is a negotiation (or rather there will be, because the UK hasn't provided anything beyond "we don't want to pay")
But this isn't paying for anything. That's an exit bill, a form of severance pay for compromises acquired during EU membership. What the UK gets for that is, basically, getting out of the EU debt-free and with the blessing of the bloc. The UK can walk out, or apparently not even walk in in the first place, but then trade defaults to WTO rules, and likely not going any further for an extended period.
Once that's settled, the UK has to decide what's the kind of deal they want from the EU. If it's trade in goods only (like Canada or South Korea) no further payments should be needed other than whatever European institutions the UK wants to participate in (ESA, EURATOM, CERN, etc.)
If they want to look further (for example, include services) it starts to look more like a Norway or Switzerland deal... which in addition of paying into the EU budget require freedom of movement which apparently are off-limits, so realistically are not going to happen.
The fact they they have no means to enforce payment means there is no debt anywhere but it their own head.
I could say right now that you owe me £40000 as my 'fee' for having this discussion with you, it doesn't actually mean that you do and since I couldn't enforce it then the debt only exists in my mind.
The EU is a partnership, if one party want a to leave they are legally responsible for a portion of the liabilities AT THE POINT OF LEAVING - not future liabilities even if they were agreed when they were partners. They are also not responsible for a severence payment, unless it was in the terms of the partnership - you can try to get one but that is simply unenforceable.
If the debt isn't enforceable under any means then it isn't actually a debt - plain and simple.
Now I agree we may well pay something to the EU to maintain good relations and keep a free trade deal - or keep membership of certain EU institutions, but this is what the negotiation is for - we shouldn't (and I don't think we actually will) pay that money without know that we are going to get something better than what we'll get if we just walk away - and that requires a negotiation to be held - something the EU so far has said will not be done.
To make it clear, what I'm saying here is that if the EU said that we don't want to do a trade deal until we've sorted out what the status of the UK is first, and that means seeing if they want to be in any part of the EU and agreeing any fee for that, then this is fine (and even makes sense as you might want to have free trade in science equipment if we want to be part of the EU science centre, and not if we arnt) but that isn't what the EU has said - they have said pay the bill (which exists nowhere but in our head) and then we'll discuss what type of relationship you want.
In my view you are getting a bit tied up in the semantics of what legally constitutes a debt.
The simple fact is, the EU has said the UK needs to settle the three points I have mentioned before, and then the negotiations about trade terms can begin.
We need those negotiations to be a success. The economic and political damage of Brexit is big enough without increasing it for a minor win in the pre-negotiations.
Kilkrazy wrote: In my view you are getting a bit tied up in the semantics of what legally constitutes a debt.
The simple fact is, the EU has said the UK needs to settle the three points I have mentioned before, and then the negotiations about trade terms can begin.
We need those negotiations to be a success. The economic and political damage of Brexit is big enough without increasing it for a minor win in the pre-negotiations.
We don't need it to be a win at any cost however. Yes I would prefer a deal with the EU (indeed I have said so multiple times), but only if it'll put us on a better footing than if we got no deal. Paying £80bn and potentially having nothing to show for it does not put us in a better position, plain and simple.
Now if they are prepared to negotiate what we get for that £80bn then fair enough, but to pay it without that negotiation is something nobody anywhere in the world would do - and the UK shouldn't either.
The notional figure of £80B has to be worked through in the first rounds of negotiation, along with the Ireland border and the status of EU citizens, and it is likely to go down rather than up.
If the final bill turned out to be £80B, though, it would be the best investment ever if it helped us get a good deal about Brexit as a whole.
I think Brexit is a bigger threat to the EU than Britain, personally. Leaving without a deal in place will be painful, it'll damage our economy, but we'll endure.
The EU on the other hand NEEDS Britains budgetary contributions. The EU is propped up by the big 3 member states - Germany, France...and the UK. Britain leaving is a huge blow to the EU, Germany will have to pick up the slack (which German taxpayers won't like), or investments and wealth transfer to the Eastern European member states will have to be cut (which eastern Europeans won't like). Which is why the EU desperately needs to obtain such a huge cash payout from us, they need it to soften the blow.
Brexit is an existential threat to the EU. If it goes well for us, and badly for the EU, the EU is at risk of breaking up.
Kilkrazy wrote: The notional figure of £80B has to be worked through in the first rounds of negotiation, along with the Ireland border and the status of EU citizens, and it is likely to go down rather than up.
If the final bill turned out to be £80B, though, it would be the best investment ever if it helped us get a good deal about Brexit as a whole.
I partly agree - if the final 'bill ' is £80bn and the UK gets everything it wants then it's a bargain, on the other hand if the 'bill' is £80bn and the UK still goes to WTO rules then it was a rip off
Which (and I hate to sound like a stuck record) brings me back to the fact that we shouldn't agree to pay for anything until we know what we are getting for that, which means we need to have a negotiation and the EU says no negotiation until we agree to pay the 'bill'
The EU has not "presented a bill". They have said there are three matters to be resolved -- the Irish border, the status of EU citizens, and the outstanding UK commitments to EU programmes -- these have not been quantified yet -- before trade negotiations can begin.
Obviously nothing is going to be done while the UK is having a general election, so the whole matter is on the back burner for at least month.
The EU has not "presented a bill". They have said there are three matters to be resolved -- the Irish border, the status of EU citizens, and the outstanding UK commitments to EU programmes -- these have not been quantified yet -- before trade negotiations can begin.
Obviously nothing is going to be done while the UK is having a general election, so the whole matter is on the back burner for at least month.
We seem to largely be arguing the same point here - which is that we should only pay the bill once we know what we are getting for it.
You believe (and forgive me if I'm wrong) that the EU intends to present us with a 'fee' (I'm going to switch from bill as it implies we have an obligation to pay) to remain I certain aspects and institutions of the EU and then sit down and talk with us about what parts we want and what parts we don't and then we'll come to an agreement over what we can stay in and what the actual fee for that is.
Now if that is the case I fully agree with this - I just don't see the EU doing this as they refer to it as a bill (implying we have to pay what the bill is) and they have stated that there can be no negotiation until the bill is paid. I've taken this to mean that they want us to pay the 'bill" and will at a future date tell us what we get for that money (which may be nothing) which I'm sure you agree we would be silly to agree to?
So really we are arguing for the same thing - the only real difference is that you seem to have a better opinion about how the EU is going to head into the negotiations than I do.
As for EU citizens, I don't see this being an issue as long as the demands are reasonable as we've been trying to sort this for some time. We are happy to give them the same rights as any English man. We cannot give them protection under the EU supreme court as that'll be EU laws and I'm not aware of any country anywhere in the world that allows immigrants to still live under the law of the country of their origin.
The Irish border might be a little more difficult, but I don't believe either side has a desire for a hard border so should be fairly easy to achieve.
Automatically Appended Next Post: So I got interested in seeing what the actual Brexit bill is - i.e. 1/28th of the EU Liabilities less 1/28th of the EU assets, which is what the actual bill is and legally enforceable and what the international community would turn their backs on us if we walked away from.
Quite a long way short of 100BN. Now in fairness these are the 2015 accounts, it may be a little higher than 2.58BN, but 97.42BN higher? I highly doubt that!
We don't need it to be a win at any cost however. Yes I would prefer a deal with the EU (indeed I have said so multiple times), but only if it'll put us on a better footing than if we got no deal. Paying £80bn and potentially having nothing to show for it does not put us in a better position, plain and simple.
It depends on how much we value our world standing. How will we get on at the international stage if we get a reputation for ignoring debts? Everyone will be wary of us cheating them out of money.
Now if they are prepared to negotiate what we get for that £80bn then fair enough, but to pay it without that negotiation is something nobody anywhere in the world would do - and the UK shouldn't either.
They are prepared to negotiate the break payment, and what our ongoing benefits/liabilities are, but this comes before we agree the trade terms. Just like any contract where one party terminates it.
The EU aren't asking for 80bn as part of a trade deal; they are asking for it to settle our current obligations, and it will have no bearing on what deal we get later (though I'd be willing to put money on us getting a worse deal if we refuse to pay what we owe, and realistically 80bn is peanuts compared to what we make from the EU).
The Guardian newspaper is reporting a boost for Brexit. The ECJ has ruled on trade deals, and they're saying that national parliaments have less power to veto than was first thought.
I'd post the link but I'm on the move with an old phone.
We don't need it to be a win at any cost however. Yes I would prefer a deal with the EU (indeed I have said so multiple times), but only if it'll put us on a better footing than if we got no deal. Paying £80bn and potentially having nothing to show for it does not put us in a better position, plain and simple.
It depends on how much we value our world standing. How will we get on at the international stage if we get a reputation for ignoring debts? Everyone will be wary of us cheating them out of money.
Now if they are prepared to negotiate what we get for that £80bn then fair enough, but to pay it without that negotiation is something nobody anywhere in the world would do - and the UK shouldn't either.
They are prepared to negotiate the break payment, and what our ongoing benefits/liabilities are, but this comes before we agree the trade terms. Just like any contract where one party terminates it.
The EU aren't asking for 80bn as part of a trade deal; they are asking for it to settle our current obligations, and it will have no bearing on what deal we get later (though I'd be willing to put money on us getting a worse deal if we refuse to pay what we owe, and realistically 80bn is peanuts compared to what we make from the EU).
/sigh
We've been over this, the UK owes the difference between current liabilities and assets. It does Not 'owe' for future expenses that the EU has not begun yet. Based on this -according to the EU own accounts - the bill is 2.58bn
Nobody in the world is gonna care if we refuse to pay for things the EU would like to do but hasn't started yet - mainly because they wouldn't do the same either.
•The Conservative vote share is up, sometimes dramatically so, since the last general election in every region of the UK.
•Labour are down on their 2015 vote haul in every region of the UK except the South West and South East where they were already performing poorly.
•The Liberal Democrat vote share is up in most regions, but only by small margins.
•UKIP’s vote share is down seven to ten points in all regions except Scotland and London, where they were already performing poorly.
Big shift... no?
Is it because the folks really likes Mays? Or is this more of a back-end referendum of Brexit?
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: The Guardian newspaper is reporting a boost for Brexit. The ECJ has ruled on trade deals, and they're saying that national parliaments have less power to veto than was first thought.
I'd post the link but I'm on the move with an old phone.
The Free Trade Agreement between the European Union and the Republic of Singapore falls within the exclusive competence of the European Union, with the exception of the following provisions, which fall within a competence shared between the European Union and the Member States:
– the provisions of Section A (Investment Protection) of Chapter 9 (Investment) of that agreement, in so far as they relate to non-direct investment between the European Union and the Republic of Singapore;
– the provisions of Section B (Investor-State Dispute Settlement) of Chapter 9; and
– the provisions of Chapters 1 (Objectives and General Definitions), 14 (Transparency), 15 (Dispute Settlement between the Parties), 16 (Mediation Mechanism) and 17 (Institutional, General and Final Provisions) of that agreement, in so far as those provisions relate to the provisions of Chapter 9 and to the extent that the latter fall within a competence shared between the European Union and the Member States.
I'm not sure it adds that much. All it states is the EU does not *need* to get ratification of EU deals from each member states *parliaments* as it is in the domain of the EU to implement. However conversely it still does have to be agreed by the EU (and effectively the leaders of those states). Although I am not fully aware of all EU parliaments there may be those prime ministers or presidents where there remit is only to vote on the deal once they have taken it to parliament (for example issuing A50, the PM can do it, but still needs approval). In these cases the deal will still have to go to the respective parliaments. It's also a double edged sword, yes you might get some that you are glad not to have to go to a parliament; however on the other hand you may want some to go if you have a particularly awkward leaders (e.g. Spain over Gibraltar) who could then continually block the motion regardless until they get what they want.
Really all the ruling states is that once the trade deal is agreed it does not need to go to European parliaments as that could lead to variances of implementation (or being active in one country and not another). Simply it counts as EU legislation (i.e. applies immediately to all in the same way) instead of an EU Directive (which tells what states are to do but how they implement it is up to them).
•The Conservative vote share is up, sometimes dramatically so, since the last general election in every region of the UK.
•Labour are down on their 2015 vote haul in every region of the UK except the South West and South East where they were already performing poorly.
•The Liberal Democrat vote share is up in most regions, but only by small margins.
•UKIP’s vote share is down seven to ten points in all regions except Scotland and London, where they were already performing poorly.
Big shift... no?
Is it because the folks really likes Mays? Or is this more of a back-end referendum of Brexit?
There's a number of factors. Corbyn has been made out as weak (and is in some ways) but is his far left approach is pretty much abhorred by the right wing press (like the Daily Fail and the Scum) and hence they just attack him regardless of whether policies are good or bad (whilst at the same time praising Tory promises despite being copies of Labour promises that they abhorred at the last election). Unsurprisingly these are also the paper owners that have a vested interest in leaving the EU. Problem is that rational investigative journalism for these papers is well the stuff of nightmares for these papers. However Labour do have problems - although they have a vocal proportion of the very left people he is finding difficult to persuade middle England to vote for him as his policies mean more of the hard earned cash will go to support public services that they generally don't use but are happy to complain about when they do use then and aren't in a very good shape.
However most of the Tories support has come from the collapse of UKIP that set themselves as the far right anti EU party and now has been overshadowed by Tories (who now have swung so far right they are effectively newUKIP). Of course this is all going to come to a head when the EU steams on and the UK gets weaker and weaker economically/industrially/politically because of the decision, Scotland leaves, NI rejoins with Ireland and so on. Lots of businesses, science industry are now looking or actively shifting work to the EU to keep access to the EU funds and support.
The EU aren't asking for 80bn as part of a trade deal; they are asking for it to settle our current obligations, and it will have no bearing on what deal we get later (though I'd be willing to put money on us getting a worse deal if we refuse to pay what we owe, and realistically 80bn is peanuts compared to what we make from the EU).
Who is 'we' arent you in Spain?
The bill for 'current obligations' includes arbitrary sums that the EU tried to levy against Cameron prior to Brexit. It is not unusual to get these demands, remember this bill
Thatcher negotiated a settlement for a refund of the UK because of our overcontribution. It happened because of thatcher, ot because the EU saw an accounting errors, there are no 'errors' the EU charges what it thinks it can, if you are France you pay less if you are Germany or the UK you pay more, and that is as a proportion of GDP, not absolute terms, with net returns from EU contributions.
Now as for our commitments, even if we were to agree to a bill in principle we would have to be very critical of its sum, as the sums are arbitrary, also our commitments are dependent on the UK having had full trade access and membership benefits, including a proportion of the funding back for Uk development as if we were in the EU. Anything less than that should come off ant bill. If we pay the full bill we get the full benefit of trade membership, with zero reductions. We would go with that that the UK has always wanted economic union, not political union. However this is not what the EU wants, they want us t pay a bill and then pay for trade.
It is this utter greed plus uncertainty which means that the UK is better off with a hard Brexit.
There's a number of factors. Corbyn has been made out as weak (and is in some ways) but is his far left approach is pretty much abhorred by the right wing press (like the Daily Fail and the Scum) and hence they just attack him regardless of whether policies are good or bad (whilst at the same time praising Tory promises despite being copies of Labour promises that they abhorred at the last election). .
However you spin it, the hard fact about comrade Corbyn is that he wants to bring back the old left with full Trades Union power.
We have two options available:
A. A functional economy
B. A strong TUC with political power.
The EU aren't asking for 80bn as part of a trade deal; they are asking for it to settle our current obligations, and it will have no bearing on what deal we get later (though I'd be willing to put money on us getting a worse deal if we refuse to pay what we owe, and realistically 80bn is peanuts compared to what we make from the EU).
Who is 'we' arent you in Spain?
The bill for 'current obligations' includes arbitrary sums that the EU tried to levy against Cameron prior to Brexit. It is not unusual to get these demands, remember this bill
Thatcher negotiated a settlement for a refund of the UK because of our overcontribution. It happened because of thatcher, ot because the EU saw an accounting errors, there are no 'errors' the EU charges what it thinks it can, if you are France you pay less if you are Germany or the UK you pay more, and that is as a proportion of GDP, not absolute terms, with net returns from EU contributions.
Now as for our commitments, even if we were to agree to a bill in principle we would have to be very critical of its sum, as the sums are arbitrary, also our commitments are dependent on the UK having had full trade access and membership benefits, including a proportion of the funding back for Uk development as if we were in the EU. Anything less than that should come off ant bill. If we pay the full bill we get the full benefit of trade membership, with zero reductions. We would go with that that the UK has always wanted economic union, not political union. However this is not what the EU wants, they want us t pay a bill and then pay for trade.
It is this utter greed plus uncertainty which means that the UK is better off with a hard Brexit.
There's a number of factors. Corbyn has been made out as weak (and is in some ways) but is his far left approach is pretty much abhorred by the right wing press (like the Daily Fail and the Scum) and hence they just attack him regardless of whether policies are good or bad (whilst at the same time praising Tory promises despite being copies of Labour promises that they abhorred at the last election). .
However you spin it, the hard fact about comrade Corbyn is that he wants to bring back the old left with full Trades Union power.
We have two options available:
A. A functional economy
B. A strong TUC with political power.
You can only pick one.
The unions with heavy power sure helped various industries back in the olden days...
Thr unins can be a force for good but also can be used to turn thr economy into a failing mess.
The EU aren't asking for 80bn as part of a trade deal; they are asking for it to settle our current obligations, and it will have no bearing on what deal we get later (though I'd be willing to put money on us getting a worse deal if we refuse to pay what we owe, and realistically 80bn is peanuts compared to what we make from the EU).
Who is 'we' arent you in Spain?
No I'm in Scotland, but if it goes to gak and we don't leave the UK, I'll probably relocate to Spain or Germany (we have offices).
No, I do get that that is the process that the EU wants. I'm just saying that is not how negotiations work.
I've been involved I numerous negotiations in my life, both with new customers and leaving customers and I have never in my year of negotiations gone into a negotiation saying 'the fee is £xxx and once you agree to pay that we'll talk about what you get for that money'
I'm just saying that isn't how negotiations work - they never have and I'm prepared to say right now that is bet everything I own that they never will be done this way. If you dont legally owe anything (which even the EU lawyers agree we dont) then you need to discuss what you are prepared to offer for the money you want, if your not going to do that then why would anyone I their right mind agree to that?
If you wanted to buy Apple's from me and I said if you pay me £1 I may discuss selling you an Apple would you agree to that?
Again, I do agree that if we do get a deal on things like the EU space program and such we should pay into the EU budget - but to pay without knowing what we are getting, and with no legal obligation to pay would just be insane.
Again: no. EU lawyers have said they don't have the means to enforce any payments. That's why there is a negotiation (or rather there will be, because the UK hasn't provided anything beyond "we don't want to pay")
But this isn't paying for anything. That's an exit bill, a form of severance pay for compromises acquired during EU membership. What the UK gets for that is, basically, getting out of the EU debt-free and with the blessing of the bloc. The UK can walk out, or apparently not even walk in in the first place, but then trade defaults to WTO rules, and likely not going any further for an extended period.
Once that's settled, the UK has to decide what's the kind of deal they want from the EU. If it's trade in goods only (like Canada or South Korea) no further payments should be needed other than whatever European institutions the UK wants to participate in (ESA, EURATOM, CERN, etc.)
If they want to look further (for example, include services) it starts to look more like a Norway or Switzerland deal... which in addition of paying into the EU budget require freedom of movement which apparently are off-limits, so realistically are not going to happen.
The fact they they have no means to enforce payment means there is no debt anywhere but it their own head.
I could say right now that you owe me £40000 as my 'fee' for having this discussion with you, it doesn't actually mean that you do and since I couldn't enforce it then the debt only exists in my mind.
It doesn't work like that. If I leave my country for, say, the Bahamas and leave owed taxes they won't have any means to enforce the debt.
I'm sure I'll have problems any time I need to renew my passport or need consular assistance, though.
No, I do get that that is the process that the EU wants. I'm just saying that is not how negotiations work.
I've been involved I numerous negotiations in my life, both with new customers and leaving customers and I have never in my year of negotiations gone into a negotiation saying 'the fee is £xxx and once you agree to pay that we'll talk about what you get for that money'
I'm just saying that isn't how negotiations work - they never have and I'm prepared to say right now that is bet everything I own that they never will be done this way. If you dont legally owe anything (which even the EU lawyers agree we dont) then you need to discuss what you are prepared to offer for the money you want, if your not going to do that then why would anyone I their right mind agree to that?
If you wanted to buy Apple's from me and I said if you pay me £1 I may discuss selling you an Apple would you agree to that?
Again, I do agree that if we do get a deal on things like the EU space program and such we should pay into the EU budget - but to pay without knowing what we are getting, and with no legal obligation to pay would just be insane.
Again: no. EU lawyers have said they don't have the means to enforce any payments. That's why there is a negotiation (or rather there will be, because the UK hasn't provided anything beyond "we don't want to pay")
But this isn't paying for anything. That's an exit bill, a form of severance pay for compromises acquired during EU membership. What the UK gets for that is, basically, getting out of the EU debt-free and with the blessing of the bloc. The UK can walk out, or apparently not even walk in in the first place, but then trade defaults to WTO rules, and likely not going any further for an extended period.
Once that's settled, the UK has to decide what's the kind of deal they want from the EU. If it's trade in goods only (like Canada or South Korea) no further payments should be needed other than whatever European institutions the UK wants to participate in (ESA, EURATOM, CERN, etc.)
If they want to look further (for example, include services) it starts to look more like a Norway or Switzerland deal... which in addition of paying into the EU budget require freedom of movement which apparently are off-limits, so realistically are not going to happen.
The fact they they have no means to enforce payment means there is no debt anywhere but it their own head.
I could say right now that you owe me £40000 as my 'fee' for having this discussion with you, it doesn't actually mean that you do and since I couldn't enforce it then the debt only exists in my mind.
It doesn't work like that. If I leave my country for, say, the Bahamas and leave owed taxes they won't have any means to enforce the debt.
I'm sure I'll have problems any time I need to renew my passport or need consular assistance, though.
Bit when the debt is on a country level you can't just go to the Bahamas - the international community will enforce it - the fact that this is unenforceable shows that there is no debt.
Also, Your tax example is wrong as the debt there is still enforceable, you might not be able to act on it whilst you are in the Bahamas but it still legally stands and if you ever come back they will enforce it.
Look into the EU accounts, they are freely available and I even posted a link to them on the last page. The UK debt to the EU from leaving is circa €2.58bn (accounts are only available from 2015 so it's probably a little higher than that). The rest of this 'debt' only exists in the EU head, and nobody anywhere (except maybe the EU) Is gonna give a damn if we don't pay it.
Bit when the debt is on a country level you can't just go to the Bahamas - the international community will enforce it - the fact that this is unenforceable shows that there is no debt.
Again, not true. A coworker of mine was born an American citizen but has since taken up Spanish citizenship. He renounced American citizenship precisely because of taxes owed (whether it's right or wrong to tax your citizens abroad it's another thing entirely).
He still has a pending debt with the IRS, but as long as he stays away from the US the debt is unenforceable as per the US tax law it is absolutely legitimate.
Even for countries. There are billions in outstanding country debt, and countries default on their obligations all the time.
Which is exactly what I said - the debt is enforceable, it just isn't actionable.
If it wasn't enforceable he could just return to the US and suffer no consequences, because it is enforceable he has the consequence of not being able to return to the US.
As our 'bill' with the EU is not enforceable (read only exists in the EU head) then we too can walk away and nobody anywhere in the world would judge us as we do not actually owe them that money.
If it wasn't enforceable he could just return to the US and suffer no consequences, because it is enforceable he has the consequence of not being able to return to the US.
As our 'bill' with the EU is not enforceable (read only exists in the EU head) then we too can walk away and nobody anywhere in the world would judge us as we do not actually owe them that money.
You said it: unless you want to do business with the EU, who happen to be your next-door neighbours where most of your trade comes and goes.
Good luck finding new markets for almost 50% of your trade.
What's this nonsense about "enforcing" payment of an international debt? What are the "International community" going to do - invade and repossess the television?
No. What happens is that the EU and UK work out what they feel would be a reasonable payment, in whichever direction. If the UK either doesn't negotiate it, or doesn't pay it, NO OTHER COUNTRY EVER TRUSTS US AGAIN.
Because we don't pay what the rest of the world and it's dog have looked at and decided is a reasonable amount. It's politics, not accountancy.
Enforceable - what would pass under international law as a debt and would be judged negatively by the international community if you didn't pay. Based on the EU own accounts this is in the region of 2.58bn (calculations for this are on this thread)
Unenforceable - a demand for payment that has no basis on actual facts or the assets/liabilities of the organisation and is not based on anything more tangible than what falls out of the EU head. No country would care if we walk away from this because not a single one of them would pay it either.
So I don't have to read a 143 page document on my phone?
Especially as it has tables talking about fundings for other stuff over a longer timeframe, that won't be included in a Nation has provided this much table.
I've been following the Labour party these past two weeks, and it feels weird to see them united and happy.
Corbyn and his supporters are happy, because Corbyn is right at home on the campaign trail.
The Blairites are happy, because they think Corbyn will be gone in a few weeks, so they've fallen into line, and are making a real go of going through the motions.
Stranger83 wrote: Which is exactly what I said - the debt is enforceable, it just isn't actionable.
If it wasn't enforceable he could just return to the US and suffer no consequences, because it is enforceable he has the consequence of not being able to return to the US.
As our 'bill' with the EU is not enforceable (read only exists in the EU head) then we too can walk away and nobody anywhere in the world would judge us as we do not actually owe them that money.
Well. Guess that depends do you want to do business in EU or not. Would UK survive with zero sales with EU?
Stranger83 wrote: Enforceable - what would pass under international law as a debt and would be judged negatively by the international community if you didn't pay. Based on the EU own accounts this is in the region of 2.58bn (calculations for this are on this thread)
Unenforceable - a demand for payment that has no basis on actual facts or the assets/liabilities of the organisation and is not based on anything more tangible than what falls out of the EU head. No country would care if we walk away from this because not a single one of them would pay it either.
It's hardly rocket science
It's not rocket science either that the EU wants to sit down and establish a methodogy to calculate that payment before firing up the excel spreahsheet.
Lib Dem manifesto out. I'm sure the people will be dancing in the streets in celebration
On the surface, it's the usual, wishy washy, pie in the sky stuff you'd expect from a party that will be miles from power on June 9th.
Another referendum on the EU? Not only has that shipped sailed, it's arrived at port, dropped of its cargo, sailed again for a few more years, and is now in a scrap yard waiting to be decommissioned.
I think on the matter of the Brexit 'bill', there's a certain degree of disingenuity going on from the EU. Not, I hasten to add, the EU as an entity, but from certain aspects within it. Namely those who are obsessed with trying to make talks either break down or 'punish' the UK, the sorts who Juncker and his cohorts represent. I don't believe that they represent the EU in its entirety, and I don't even think they necessarily control affairs. But they do have quite a strong voice out there, and it is I think, important that their voice is not permitted to be the dominant one. Their voice is one of the reasons Brexit is occuring, and if it is allowed to sabotage future relations between the UK and EU, it will be catastrophic for all involved.
Nobody over here, I think, objects to a fair costed analysis of British commitments to the EU budget to date, and even to an extent post its departure. It is a fair thing to agree upon, and should help grease the wheels of future relations. By the same measure however, the EU should refrain from tacking on everything from Juncker's martini supplies to the holiday expenses of EU bureaucrats ten years hence as some form of punitive 'punishment' or attempt to extract as much as they can regardless of what is appropriate. Such a course of action would quite possibly lead to the British Government quite rightfully refusing to parley on such terms, which would be disastrous for all economies involved.
If a hard brexit occurs, it will damage our economy for a good half a decade. But trade can and will be built up elsewhere over time, and the EU would take substantial harm of their own. The euro is fragile enough that trying to pretend they are in a position of total strength, where it doesn't matter if we come to an agreement or not, is quite obviously untrue.
Brexit can work out reasonably well for all involved, given sufficient goodwill and careful thought. I simply hope that the overtly nationalistic morons on our side, and undemocratic plotters over in the EU do not have the final say on things, or they'll bring ruination and hardship to the detriment of all and the benefit of none.
The TL/DR is that the better educated you are, the more liberal you seem to get. We don't know why.
The question is whether this could also be an age issue as well. The older you are the more likely the lower education level. It's going to be interesting in the next 20 or so years to see whether the educated group continue to be more socially and liberally aware as that would indicate the Tories becoming less relevant in future politics (hurrah!)
There are similar results for Brexit too. So it only further indicates that older, less educated people are more conservative, right wing and nationalistic.
If a hard brexit occurs, it will damage our economy for a good half a decade. But trade can and will be built up elsewhere over time, and the EU would take substantial harm of their own. The euro is fragile enough that trying to pretend they are in a position of total strength, where it doesn't matter if we come to an agreement or not, is quite obviously untrue.
It depends on what type of trade though. They might be happy to let us have our cakes and biscuits if all the high tech, high value trade favours the EU. There will be damage to the economy whatever happens with Brexit (there are more than enough articles now about companies preparing to at least partially relocate). If the high tech businesses start seeing a drop in the high quality recruits coming to the UK then they may move abroad if they move to country where the those in charge approach immigration with a non punitive attitude (just to favour part of the electorate that are bigoted). That slowly will result in a brain drain in the UK making it even less attractive and the cycle continues. Instead of a country of shop keepers we may just become a country of farmers and bakers instead.
The TL/DR is that the better educated you are, the more liberal you seem to get. We don't know why.
It could be something simple like professors at institutions of higher education are themselves disproportionately liberal and promote liberal agendas. That's certainly the case in the US, though I admit I don't know what its like in the UK.
jasper76 wrote: It could be something simple like professors at institutions of higher education are themselves disproportionately liberal and promote liberal agendas. That's certainly the case in the US, though I admit I don't know what its like in the UK.
That is true, and it's no different here in the UK. My brother has been turned into an insufferably liberal arsehole by his drama course. And when I was in university they tried it on me too, but I was able to resist it. I'm not saying that UK universities are 100% liberal propaganda centers...but they're close to it.
The TL/DR is that the better educated you are, the more liberal you seem to get. We don't know why.
It could be something simple like professors at institutions of higher education are themselves disproportionately liberal and promote liberal agendas. That's certainly the case in the US, though I admit I don't know what its like in the UK.
I assume that the better educated tend to have more exposure to other cultures. In most industries, any business above the coalface usually involves meetings with other people which quite often means other countries/cultures etc. I deal with foreign peers on a daily basis, but I didn't when I worked nightclubs.
There's probably some correlation between education level and curiosity / horizon expanding as well. Visiting different culture on holiday Vs just getting plastered in Costa Del Sol.
Well it appears Boris was wheeled out to today and like the sure footed, clever, foreign office diplomat he is (not), immediately managed to put his foot well and truly in it.
jasper76 wrote: It could be something simple like professors at institutions of higher education are themselves disproportionately liberal and promote liberal agendas. That's certainly the case in the US, though I admit I don't know what its like in the UK.
That is true, and it's no different here in the UK. My brother has been turned into an insufferably liberal arsehole by his drama course. And when I was in university they tried it on me too, but I was able to resist it. I'm not saying that UK universities are 100% liberal propaganda centers...but they're close to it.
Alternatively perhaps he has just changed his mind and his horizons have changed and are different to yours and see the merit in a global society (that in the end we are going to need to solve the human race's problems)?
I assume that the better educated tend to have more exposure to other cultures. In most industries, any business above the coalface usually involves meetings with other people which quite often means other countries/cultures etc. I deal with foreign peers on a daily basis, but I didn't when I worked nightclubs.
There's probably some correlation between education level and curiosity / horizon expanding as well. Visiting different culture on holiday Vs just getting plastered in Costa Del Sol.
There is probably something to this. There is evidence to show that people become less hostile to people we know from different cultures/world views and so on. We are by our basic nature suspicious of anyone outside the 'tribe' because of the evolved trait of fighting for resources. As such outsiders are shunned and thought poorly of. However once such people become more exposed the 'us and them' instinctive behaviour becomes more challenged and perceptions change (effectively people once thought to be outside the tribe become part of it).
The TL/DR is that the better educated you are, the more liberal you seem to get. We don't know why.
It could be something simple like professors at institutions of higher education are themselves disproportionately liberal and promote liberal agendas. That's certainly the case in the US, though I admit I don't know what its like in the UK.
jasper76 wrote: It could be something simple like professors at institutions of higher education are themselves disproportionately liberal and promote liberal agendas. That's certainly the case in the US, though I admit I don't know what its like in the UK.
That is true, and it's no different here in the UK. My brother has been turned into an insufferably liberal arsehole by his drama course. And when I was in university they tried it on me too, but I was able to resist it. I'm not saying that UK universities are 100% liberal propaganda centers...but they're close to it.
The TL/DR is that the better educated you are, the more liberal you seem to get. We don't know why.
It could be something simple like professors at institutions of higher education are themselves disproportionately liberal and promote liberal agendas. That's certainly the case in the US, though I admit I don't know what its like in the UK.
I assume that the better educated tend to have more exposure to other cultures. In most industries, any business above the coalface usually involves meetings with other people which quite often means other countries/cultures etc. I deal with foreign peers on a daily basis, but I didn't when I worked nightclubs.
There's probably some correlation between education level and curiosity / horizon expanding as well. Visiting different culture on holiday Vs just getting plastered in Costa Del Sol.
Other studies have shown that higher educational attainment correlates with higher intelligence, and with increased ethical development.
idiot Farage (I detest that man) or was taken in by that horsegak about 350 million a week, or straight bananas...
