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Yet if the EU stepped in* you'd be outraged at the EU interfering with a sovereign nation.
*The EU isn't doing nothing, it just works more slowly and diplomatically. The violence was clearly and swiftly condemned. With the EU as it is now, this incident will spend a lot of time being discussed on and off record, with diplomatic pressure. Before the EU we'd already be looking at a civil war.
What Spain is doing is reprehensible, but it's grossly unfair to treat it as another stick to try and further the anti-EU rhetoric.
DINLT; What exactly do you want the EU to be doing here? Sanctioning Spain? Sending in a combined task force to act as a peacekeeping** force / enforce martial rule?
I can't quite get my head around what the EU is doing wrong here.
This is probably in the wrong thread, but imagine a situation where a democratic vote was met with violence, the media was taken over by the state, politicians were being charged with sedition for holding a peaceful democratic vote, and the local police were purged of anti-government elements...
If that happened in any other part of the world, the EU would be the first to call for military intervention.
And yet, that is happening in Spain, and the EU are turning a blind eye to it. Kosovo was recognised by EU members, without so much as a vote cast!
Vote for the EU? Those two faced rats? Never! Not if you paid me a million pounds.
That's a mighty high horse you're on there, given that our own government have also explicitly stated that we will not support Catalonian independence, the vote was illegal and "Spanish unity must be preserved" (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-41783238).
Zed wrote: *All statements reflect my opinion at this moment. if some sort of pretty new model gets released (or if I change my mind at random) I reserve the right to jump on any bandwagon at will.
Herzlos wrote: Yet if the EU stepped in* you'd be outraged at the EU interfering with a sovereign nation.
*The EU isn't doing nothing, it just works more slowly and diplomatically. The violence was clearly and swiftly condemned. With the EU as it is now, this incident will spend a lot of time being discussed on and off record, with diplomatic pressure. Before the EU we'd already be looking at a civil war.
What Spain is doing is reprehensible, but it's grossly unfair to treat it as another stick to try and further the anti-EU rhetoric.
DINLT; What exactly do you want the EU to be doing here? Sanctioning Spain? Sending in a combined task force to act as a peacekeeping** force / enforce martial rule?
I can't quite get my head around what the EU is doing wrong here.
**That'd probably be the UN, though.
Showing how much contempt they have for European peoples democratic vote.
Glad we are leaving that club, they can keep there membership thanks, we will have our freedom back and be a sovereign nation not just with the EU jackboot firmly on the throat.
And Spain can have a traditional middle finger if they want Gibraltar. Ours now, Ours before, Ours in the future
Sgt. Vanden - OOC Hey, that was your doing. I didn't choose to fly in the "Dongerprise'.
"May the odds be ever in your favour"
Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
I have no clue how Dakka's moderation work. I expect it involves throwing a lot of d100 and looking at many random tables.
FudgeDumper - It could be that you are just so uncomfortable with the idea of your chapters primarch having his way with a docile tyranid spore cyst, that you must deny they have any feelings at all.
Showing how much contempt they have for European peoples democratic vote.
Glad we are leaving that club, they can keep there membership thanks, we will have our freedom back and be a sovereign nation not just with the EU jackboot firmly on the throat.
And Spain can have a traditional middle finger if they want Gibraltar. Ours now, Ours before, Ours in the future
I genuinely don't follow any of that. Where does it all fit in? Who's showing contempt? Who's throat is the jackboot on? Why are Spain getting a middle finget about Gibraltar?
Kilkrazy wrote: Gibraltar has little remaining strategic significance for the Royal Navy. (What's left of the RN, anyway.)
It's an exceptionally useful strategic spot for replenishment and light repair purposes. The RN does fair bit in that part of the world (picking up drowning immigrants, coasting for piracy, etc), and the port is of real use. It also provides a little bit of diplomatic quid pro quo with the US, in that they can use our facilities there in exchange for us using theirs elsewhere.
Unless you're hearkening back to the go0od old days of the Mediterranean fleet or somesuch, in which case, yes, we don't do that anymore.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2017/10/30 15:37:19
Kilkrazy wrote: Gibraltar has little remaining strategic significance for the Royal Navy. (What's left of the RN, anyway.)
It's an exceptionally useful strategic spot for replenishment and light repair purposes. The RN does fair bit in that part of the world (picking up drowning immigrants, coasting for piracy, etc), and the port is of real use. It also provides a little bit of diplomatic quid pro quo with the US, in that they can use our facilities there in exchange for us using theirs elsewhere
That's old news. The USN uses Rota (just across the corner, as Naval stuff goes) for the most part, except for nuclear subs, which only go to Rota occasionally because of an old row with environmentalists.
Nuclear surface ships are ok for some strange reason.
Kilkrazy wrote: Gibraltar has little remaining strategic significance for the Royal Navy. (What's left of the RN, anyway.)
It's an exceptionally useful strategic spot for replenishment and light repair purposes. The RN does fair bit in that part of the world (picking up drowning immigrants, coasting for piracy, etc), and the port is of real use. It also provides a little bit of diplomatic quid pro quo with the US, in that they can use our facilities there in exchange for us using theirs elsewhere.
Unless you're hearkening back to the go0od old days of the Mediterranean fleet or somesuch, in which case, yes, we don't do that anymore.
Yes, that's exactly what I was thinking. The UK is not a world imperial power and doesn't need all the bases we had in WW2. Plus, most of the countries we used to be fighting against are now firm allies.
It’s important not to romanticise the past, otherwise you end up like a cut-price, leftist Nigel Farage marching to a whinier, less exhilarating drumbeat. But I distinctly remember, this time 20 years ago, it being normal to object to Halloween: not because it was satanic, but because it was American. It was the festival of consumerism and excess, unmoored from any deeper significance, but most of all – being expressly conceived as fun for children, and entailing talking to strangers and asking for things – it was un-English.
Nationalism has taken a depressing turn, this past year and a half. The suspicion of foreigners and alienation of former allies are the greatest practical threats to the country’s wellbeing and prosperity. The let-Britain-roar, grow-wings-and-fly pap is the most unsettling departure from maturity and reason. But it’s the exceptionalism, freely vented for the world to hear, that is the most embarrassing: the idea that our success is assured, whatever decisions we make, because we’re the best at trading, with the best stuff, the finest minds, the most illustrious history. It’s the delusional boastfulness of sketch comedy, a parent standing in a playgroup yelling at everyone to agree that their child is the most advanced.
This is not, however, a story of a nation that was bumbling happily along when suddenly the patriotic beast within was awakened. There was no shortage of national identity before it mutated and was weaponised. There was a very clear sense of Englishness. It was just a different England.
Prior to this Tory rampage, we didn’t say “British”, because we all knew that was a euphemism for “English”, which itself was code for flag-toting, nostalgic monoculturalism. But we were pretty comfortable describing what was un-English: self-aggrandisement; vocal pride – especially for things you had no hand in, such as where you were born; and making large claims for superiority in abstract areas, like national character. These were un-English. The idea of “British values” was oxymoronic, since appropriating some value and claiming to have it in greater quantity than any other country would have been the least English thing.
Of course, you cannot claim for yourself the accolade “most modest”, unless you’re Donald Trump. So the foundation stone of this patriotism was pride in the thing you wouldn’t be seen dead taking pride in: or, to put it more briefly, all nationalism was ironic. We used the union flag ironically, as a backdrop for Patsy Kensit or to set off Liam Gallagher’s eyes. We mentioned national traits only to mock them – chiefly, a collective inability ever to say what we meant. Irony, at the turn of this century, became synonymous with insincerity: a thin gruel, no match for the hearty stew of passion.
But in fact the irony was anything but insincere. Rather, it was the navigational tool of acute self-awareness, an acknowledgment of a delicate tightrope between celebrating the achievements of your compatriots and lauding them as proof of your nation’s supremacy; between feeling loyalty to your fellow citizens, in recognition of the fact that you were all embarked on the creation of a shared future, and fostering an us-against-the-world interiority; between relishing cultural cross-pollination and importing any old nonsense, like Halloween.
A nationalism constantly asserted defines itself against the foreign; a nationalism that goes unstated defines itself from within – its tacit understandings are its connective tissue. It was no accident that we rarely talked about patriotism. But if meaningful patriotism is social – a nationhood based on building collectively within borders, not for geographical reasons but because those are the perimeters of your democratic agency – there was never any shortage of it.
Subtlety has its drawbacks. That brand of tacit solidarity has been under attack now since 2010, when it became routine to divide citizens by whether or not they claimed benefits, were hard-working, were economically active, were northern or southern, were net contributors or recipients. It would have been good to rebut these tropes and defend our sense of responsibility for one another a bit more vocally, rather than leaving it to Twitter and The News Quiz. But ironic distance, the instinctive distrust of grand passions hurled bombastically about, was also protective. It would have been impossible, when irony was the signature of national identity, to imagine a prime minister speechifying about “taking back control” when she didn’t have control even of her three nearest underlings. It would have been unthinkable for ministers to talk about importing chlorinated chicken or growing our own food as an alternative to being party to modern international trading agreements. Not because we would have laughed – we’re laughing now – but because they would have anticipated the ridicule and taken some rudimentary steps to avoid it.
A politics with no sense of the absurd starts to believe its own flourish. Without the deflation of humour, the government is locked into an ever-building climax of preposterous overstatement and bald assertion. Its decisions have never been more consequential, and their unfolding never more dramatic. Yet every week feels eerily similar, ominously stalled. Following Brexit is like trying to find your way out of the woods in twilight and seeing the same tree again and again. It’s gone from disaster movie to horror film: the May Witch Project.
I am reconciled to the import of Halloween. Tomorrow I will dress as a Person With Nits, exactly like a regular person, except with nits, and my trick will be to stand really close to people. I cannot, however, reconcile myself to this post-English politics, pumped-up, self-regarding and humourless. If our national identity meant anything, Brexit is its opposite.
That is an interesting read, however I would take issue with the proposal that the national character has changed since 2010 because of "the Tory Project". The Tories have been projecting since 1979, after all, and New Labour essentially turned out to be Tory lite.
I think the grinding misery of 10 years of austerity has a lot more to do with it (30+ years for a lot of the lower working class.) To be fair, the austere misery is the product of the Tory Project though most people don't see it that way.
Brexit (and Trump) and various political movements around the West, including the rise of right-wing nationalism and populism, are caused by a general worry that liberal democracy with regulated free markets has lost its way.
Kilkrazy wrote: Gibraltar has little remaining strategic significance for the Royal Navy. (What's left of the RN, anyway.)
It's an exceptionally useful strategic spot for replenishment and light repair purposes. The RN does fair bit in that part of the world (picking up drowning immigrants, coasting for piracy, etc), and the port is of real use. It also provides a little bit of diplomatic quid pro quo with the US, in that they can use our facilities there in exchange for us using theirs elsewhere.
Unless you're hearkening back to the go0od old days of the Mediterranean fleet or somesuch, in which case, yes, we don't do that anymore.
Yes, that's exactly what I was thinking. The UK is not a world imperial power and doesn't need all the bases we had in WW2. Plus, most of the countries we used to be fighting against are now firm allies.
Its handy to have locations you can stop safely, and know you can stop at to repair, refuel or such, While we have Nato agreements, those can and do change.
Where as a base you own, is always going to available.
Sgt. Vanden - OOC Hey, that was your doing. I didn't choose to fly in the "Dongerprise'.
"May the odds be ever in your favour"
Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
I have no clue how Dakka's moderation work. I expect it involves throwing a lot of d100 and looking at many random tables.
FudgeDumper - It could be that you are just so uncomfortable with the idea of your chapters primarch having his way with a docile tyranid spore cyst, that you must deny they have any feelings at all.
Kilkrazy wrote: I agree that far-flung bases are useful if you want to maintain a far-flung naval reach, but why does the UK want to do that nowadays?
The more I think about it, the more it seems like hanging on to a relic of Empire.
Ketara would be able to give us a well-informed opinion, as he is doing a masters in war studies if I remember correctly.
We do not know what conflicts are coming up though. the global dynamic may yet change and those bases that where a waste of money become very useful current assets.
Once we hand them over, we lose them forever, so Maintain the capability to operate globally is a key asset.
its a asset we cannot recover if lost.
we would be reliant good will of others, which is not always reliable.
(they also give us the ability of offer help to our allies,a nice political bonus. we can offer support to fellow Nato and other members, thus showing wwe can offer serious support to the organisation)
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Sgt. Vanden - OOC Hey, that was your doing. I didn't choose to fly in the "Dongerprise'.
"May the odds be ever in your favour"
Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
I have no clue how Dakka's moderation work. I expect it involves throwing a lot of d100 and looking at many random tables.
FudgeDumper - It could be that you are just so uncomfortable with the idea of your chapters primarch having his way with a docile tyranid spore cyst, that you must deny they have any feelings at all.
Kilkrazy wrote: I agree that far-flung bases are useful if you want to maintain a far-flung naval reach, but why does the UK want to do that nowadays?
The more I think about it, the more it seems like hanging on to a relic of Empire.
Ketara would be able to give us a well-informed opinion, as he is doing a masters in war studies if I remember correctly.
More years past my MA at Kent now then I care to remember.
The obvious answer would be that the world of tomorrow is not necessarily the world of today. You might find in a hypothetical future twenty years down the line that an allied Russia/Turkey need keeping an eye on or to be penned at the mouth of the Med, in which case a port in the Med is useful. You might have Libya collapse altogether and start regurgitating pirates all along the coastline Somalia style. You might find the Egyptian Government gets a new dictator who decides to invade Malta for fun.
The wonderful thing about world politics is that you always think that you've quantified the known risks, and then a Falklands or other equally unexpected scenario hits you out of the dark. You can be ambling along fussing about Brexit or Atos scandals, or whatever, and then you wake up one day and the Guatemalan Army has invaded Belize and we have a war on our hands.
Consequently, it is better to retain a functional military port with a friendly population than not. It's the old maxim of, 'Rather have but not need, than need and not have'.
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The principle of self-determination should ensure that Gibraltar remains British for the foreseeable future, though if the world changes so much that we need a naval base there and Spain has become an enemy, it probably wouldn't be much use to us.
I suspect we won't be strong enough in 20 years to make much of a difference to a possible Russian-Turkish hostile team-up.
Like the Falklands, the people in Gibraltar firmly wish to remain British despite all the hassle that Spain give them on the border to make it a massive inconvenience. Any ‘sharing’ deal would go down quite badly.
Herzlos wrote: They also wanted to remain in the EU. Which do they value most now?
Staying in the UK by several miles. Try asking anyone from there (I have a few friends there I discuss these things with), they're quite virulently anti-Spanish government . Given the choice between being just another province directly answerable to the corrupt/inefficient joke that is the Spanish Government, and the comfortable state of affairs they have right now, it would take far more than leaving the EU to change that. Right now, they effectively get to handle all domestic affairs themselves whilst outsourcing their national defence, constitutional affairs/tensions, and general legal framework. It's not a bad state of things.
Don't get me wrong, us leaving the EU is a massive PITA for them. Many of them own houses on the other side of the border, they have no railway link on their side, and a massive chunk of their workforce crosses the border every day. The flip side though, is that the Spanish government locking down the border is practically a weekly occurrence there depending on how badly the Spanish government wants to distract people. It's not like they aren't used to regular difficulties in that regard, and have learnt to get on with it as best as they can.
Ironically really, because if the Spanish Government weren't consistently making life awkward for them, they might be more inclined to consider a sharing deal of some kind. But so long as the Spanish Government treats them as a political tool, sabre rattles, and generally ignores all of their interests, they remain staunchly pro-British. Much like the Falklands really.
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Herzlos wrote: They also wanted to remain in the EU. Which do they value most now?
Staying in the UK by several miles. Try asking anyone from there (I have), they're quite virulently anti-Spanish government . Given the choice between being just another province directly answerable to the corrupt/inefficient joke that is the Spanish Government, and the comfortable state of affairs they have right now, it would take far more than leaving the EU to change that. Right now, they effectively get to handle all domestic affairs themselves whilst outsourcing their national defence, constitutional affairs/tensions, and general legal framework. It's not a bad state of things.
Don't get me wrong, us leaving the EU is a massive PITA for them. Many of them own houses on the other side of the border, they have no railway link on their side, and a massive chunk of their workforce crosses the border every day. The flip side though, is that the Spanish government locking down the border is practically a weekly occurrence there depending on how badly the Spanish government wants to distract people. It's not like they aren't used to regular difficulties in that regard, and have learnt to get on with it as best as they can.
Ironically really, because if the Spanish Government weren't consistently making life awkward for them, they might be more inclined to consider a sharing deal of some kind. But so long as the Spanish Government treats them as a political tool, sabre rattles, and generally ignores all of their interests, they remain staunchly pro-British. Much like the Falklands really.
Uk allows a high degree of self determination.
Its likely they retain more control over where they live then the Spanish system allows. a advantage for them, but with the added disadvantage that being a small enclave surrounded by another nation is.
However in the case of Spain they Maintain there own Enclaves of territory including in other nations.
Both nations though different still hold old colonial outposts and territory.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Howard A Treesong wrote: Like the Falklands, the people in Gibraltar firmly wish to remain British despite all the hassle that Spain give them on the border to make it a massive inconvenience. Any ‘sharing’ deal would go down quite badly.
Yes, Falklands definitely.
They last vote came up 99% UK.
THey are firmly resolved to be part of UK, and we must respect that choice and not sell them to Argentina. We would go against the very strong majority of the islanders.
Plus the state Argentina is in, i can see why they despite the issues would very much like to remain a UK outpost.
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Sgt. Vanden - OOC Hey, that was your doing. I didn't choose to fly in the "Dongerprise'.
"May the odds be ever in your favour"
Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
I have no clue how Dakka's moderation work. I expect it involves throwing a lot of d100 and looking at many random tables.
FudgeDumper - It could be that you are just so uncomfortable with the idea of your chapters primarch having his way with a docile tyranid spore cyst, that you must deny they have any feelings at all.
Herzlos wrote: I expect the next referendum will be equally close the other way. I'm looking forward to the response from the "will of the people" when that happens.
If there was ever going to be a second referendum, it should have been agreed upon from the very beginning.
It was also a non binding referendum and that was agreed at the beginning, but everyone treats it as if it were.
It was not, so trying to hold a 2nd one after the fact is moving the goal posts and dirty tricks. You don't get to hold referendum after referendum until you get the answer you wanted. Thats not how referenda work.
If you do that, I'm going to demand a THIRD referendum.
I disagree that there shouldn't be a second referendum, but do agree that there should hence be a third. The point about our politics is that we get a democratic choice and continue to do so. A one off referendum is not a democratic choice in that way. It is a one off sample of the populace on that day. Denying future generations or allowing people not to change their mind (either way) is not a democratic method. It is just a method to allow some people to get what they want and then stick there fingers in the ears and shout very loudly when people mention anything about another vote. It is closer to a dictatorial method of gaining power as it can be used incessantly to argue it's the 'will of the people' when it isn't because you don't know what that is today, tomorrow or in 5 years time.
If the government wants some aspects to become direct democracy (e.g. being in the EU) then a truly democratic system would be that we vote every 5 years on the issue and that is how it is taken forward. That is true democracy as it allows all people to continue to have a say on how the country is run.
I think it is quite evident that that EU has a track record of not accepting the result of referendums. But that's because they also have a track record of modifying and altering legislation after having lost the first time in order to try and make it pass the second; often there are specific concerns that people have, and if legislation can be altered just enough to tip 4-5% of the population into changing their mind, a bill will pass the second time.
Wouldn't it strictly be that the governments highlighted didn't like the result and asked people to vote again (with different arguments obviously!). The EU has never forced any country to retake a vote. On the other hand the consistent swing against the leaving in the second vote shows something and that in a second ballot people are more favourable to the EU. It's not like the EU is holding a gun to a persons head when they vote the second time. Perhaps those that thought it would be fine woke up to find it wasn't and were more determined to vote the second time?
This is probably in the wrong thread, but imagine a situation where a democratic vote was met with violence, the media was taken over by the state, politicians were being charged with sedition for holding a peaceful democratic vote, and the local police were purged of anti-government elements...
Imagine a situation where an event was illegal, it was actioned breaking both state and country laws and the organisers got away with it and the police force was used as a political tool to keep those breaking those laws from being arrested? It's not quite as simple as you are making out. The Catalan president never had the authority to carry out the vote and it was illegal. That the Spanish government went in heavy handed is not open to question, on the other hand there hasn't been a repeat so perhaps they did learn. It's not democracy when a vote is illegally held and without providing both sides to put forward an argument. They are entitled to vote for a referendum but they didn't even get that authorisation in their own parliament in Catalan. I understand the police if they were refusing to take action against those acting illegally, the press is more concerning but it wasn't the free press, more state media and it all depends on what they were saying (of course I'd be suspicious of any state run media). Can you imagine the Tories version of it...oh wait Sky....
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"Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. 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. " - V
I've just supported the Permanent European Union Citizenship initiative. Please do the same and spread the word!
"It's not a problem if you don't look up." - Dakka's approach to politics
However in the case of Spain they Maintain there own Enclaves of territory including in other nations.
Both nations though different still hold old colonial outposts and territory.
There's quite a difference though. Ceuta and Melilla (and the Canaries if you want to go there as well) are fully integral to Spain, under the same tax system (with very minor adjustments).
Gibraltar is basically a giant tax haven that feeds off the British (and to a lesser degree, EU) economy. They have a major stake in remaining part of the EU (workforce, housing, etc.) but at the same time past actions by different Spanish governments have ensured there's an underlying (at times overt) animosity.
Spain basically forced Gibraltarians to fend for themselves back in '69, and they have.
So, with 36 Tory MPs likely to be caught up in the harassment scandal, I wonder if it's time for Labour to try and pressure O'Mara to resign on the basis that the Tories do the same and we get a pile of by-elections all round.
The Tories wont want to because they'll lose their majority, but they'd find it immensely difficult to justify not doing so.
some we know or are obvious -- Bojo and a NDA... who'd ever have thought that eh ?
here's the version the Sun put out, which gave the names of a few people away.
Spoiler:
..
.. some... meh.. so what...
some of the rest... hmmmmm .
yeah.
The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all
We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us. We can analyze them out of existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we wish we could be.
"the play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king,
... I don't blame the BBC or indeed any similar media company for waiting a wee while before making anything of this.
This isn't convictions or the like and, presumably, much of it is little more than gossip.
...probably.
The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all
We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us. We can analyze them out of existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we wish we could be.
"the play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king,
Indeed, the "no suggestion of wrong doing" get out that covers all but one individual suggests that for the most part this is little more than muck raking. But that's not to say that nothing serious will come of this.
Yewtree started out as an investigation of one individual and exposed the qrotesque culture of perverted celebrities. The tapping of Milly Dowler's phone meant the corrupt police could no longer ignore unethical journalism and bought down the most successful newspaper in Britain. The Weinstein case is having immediate repercussions (or is Weinstein just a continuation of Cosby?). This one could end up anywhere - or nowhere.
A spreadsheet of alleged misconduct by Tory MPs, said to be compiled by Conservative researchers, has been leaked to journalists throughout Westminster and an unredacted copy has even been circulated online. Both the Sun and Guido Fawkes have published a partially redacted (in the case of the Sun) and a wholly redacted (in the case of Guido) copy online. Over at the Telegraph, they have also published the list with greater detail on who the subjects are, and they are also helpfully explaining which of the accusations are already known (for example, the affair that Robert Halfon admitted to in 2015).
So why don’t media organisations just publish the list? That’s the question that a lot of our readers are asking.
The first big problem is libel law. Proving the validity of the accusations in the document is hard and if we can’t do that, we can’t publish the document in full. As I wrote in my morning briefing today, practically every journalist has a story of sexual harassment they can’t write up because the survivor doesn’t want to go on the record and they can’t find a second source. (Even with a story as ephemeral as Jeremy Corbyn’s ill-judged choice of a Christmas quotation, I got it from multiple and unconnected sources before writing it up.)
There are, however, a couple of misconceptions about the “dossier” that I can clear up. The first is that it is not really a “dossier” in a professional sense, nor has it been collated by party whips. My understanding, from the two people who passed it to me, is that Conservative staffers have taken it upon themselves to collate the list in order to document worrying patterns and identify if there are any opportunities to corroborate the stories of others. (In the case of Bill Cosby, what doomed him was that it stopped being a “his word versus hers” situation and became a “his word versus hers and hers and hers and hers and hers” one.)
What is frustrating some of the people who helped contribute to the list is the range of accusations covered in it – which, because it is being distributed in partial form, are being lumped together. For example, that a cabinet minister is “handsy in taxis” sits alongside mentioning that Home Secretary Amber Rudd has had a relationship with fellow Tory MP Kwasi Kwarteng. It also notes that Jake Berry’s partner, with whom he lives and has a baby, happens to be Boris Johnson’s office manager. Office gossip, therefore, is being held up as on the same level as accusations of unprofessional and perhaps even criminal conduct
The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all
We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us. We can analyze them out of existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we wish we could be.
"the play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king,
Reading that list I just hear Paul Whitehouse saying "what me, with my reputation"
Men are perverts. In other news the sky is blue today. Are these the type of people we want in charge of the country, probably not. But when in modern times were politicians considered to be upstanding members of the community or role models?
it's the quiet ones you have to look out for. Their the ones that change the world, the loud ones just take the credit for it.
(for obvious reasons).
..
