• Due to ongoing issues caused by Search, it has been temporarily disabled
  • Please excuse the mess, we're moving the furniture and restructuring the forum categories
  • You may need to edit your signatures.

    When we moved to Xenfora some of the signature options didn't come over. In the old software signatures were limited by a character limit, on Xenfora there are more options and there is a character number and number of lines limit. I've set maximum number of lines to 4 and unlimited characters.

General UK politics

Status
Not open for further replies.
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
As it is, I've explained my position three times now, and you keep addressing something else, so I'm not really convinced that anything productive will come out of reiterating it a fourth time.
Click to expand...

Your position appears to be that, in a PR system, the largest single party must be allowed to form a government. If that were true, it would negate one of the most important features of PR, which is that a coalition can be formed with broad support from whichever parties are prepared to work together to form a majority, whether the single largest party agrees with them or not. What worries me is that Clegg's LDs may have understood the possibilities of PR no better than you do.

Dave
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
Right, which is why the examples you keep coming back to are different to the actual situation that existed at the time.

As it is, I've explained my position three times now, and you keep addressing something else, so I'm not really convinced that anything productive will come out of reiterating it a fourth time.
Click to expand...

You could well be right, certainly if you keep explaining it as you have done.
If your position is not what Dave Rogers, Catsmate and Archie Gemmell Goal have been arguing against, then I don't know what it is either.
 
Dave Rogers said:
Your position appears to be that, in a PR system, the largest single party must be allowed to form a government.
Click to expand...

Guybrush Threepwood said:
If your position is not what Dave Rogers, Catsmate and Archie Gemmell Goal have been arguing against, then I don't know what it is either.
Click to expand...

As I say, there doesn't seem to be much point. I have been clear, and I don't think there's much else I can do at this stage.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
As I say, there doesn't seem to be much point. I have been clear, and I don't think there's much else I can do at this stage.
Click to expand...

Whether you try again is entirely up to you, however as it seems that nobody participating in the thread except you understands what your point is, then I do not think the highlighted part is accurate.
 
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-54330880

"New" revolutionary adult training system to be created. So those aged say 70 can be retrained as brickies rather than getting a state pension.

Johnson wants us to get away with this idea of always valuing degrees above vocational qualifications. Presumably he is fed up with people who didn't go to the right public school and the right college acting as if they are qualified for Johnson's mates' jobs!
 
I thought that might help me for a second, as I'm in the process of signing up for a course, but then spotted that I'd not be eligible as I've got A level (and higher) qualifications already.
 
Darat said:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-54330880

"New" revolutionary adult training system to be created. So those aged say 70 can be retrained as brickies rather than getting a state pension.

Johnson wants us to get away with this idea of always valuing degrees above vocational qualifications. Presumably he is fed up with people who didn't go to the right public school and the right college acting as if they are qualified for Johnson's mates' jobs!
Click to expand...

Actually I've realised something this is because they are **** scared that they will have to start paying a true living wage for their housekeepers, gardeners, drivers and the like once they can't employ cheap eastern EU staff!
 
Dave Rogers said:
Your position appears to be that, in a PR system, the largest single party must be allowed to form a government. If that were true, it would negate one of the most important features of PR, which is that a coalition can be formed with broad support from whichever parties are prepared to work together to form a majority, whether the single largest party agrees with them or not. What worries me is that Clegg's LDs may have understood the possibilities of PR no better than you do.

Dave
Click to expand...
Indeed. Let us examine the 2020 General Election results in Ireland, based on PR/STV.

Sinn Féin displayed the same sense of entitlement and demanded to be part of any government, but made no real effort to form a coalition with the necessary majority of seats.
Hence the government is based on a Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael/Green Party coalition which have a majority of the seats, and also (but by no means necessarily) a majority of the first preference votes.
 
So, as far as I can see, the government are currently considering transportation and prison hulks for asylum seekers. I wonder whether they've considered debtors' prison or sending them up chimneys?

Dave
 
Dave Rogers said:
So, as far as I can see, the government are currently considering transportation and prison hulks for asylum seekers. I wonder whether they've considered debtors' prison or sending them up chimneys?

Dave
Click to expand...

Me, from 2017.....

The Don said:
The Conservatives want to keep wogs out and march boldly back to the 1950s when Britain still had an Empire and blacks, women, poofs and Irish knew their place.
Click to expand...

I think in retrospect, I was being overly optimistic :o
 
Darat said:
Actually I've realised something this is because they are **** scared that they will have to start paying a true living wage for their housekeepers, gardeners, drivers and the like once they can't employ cheap eastern EU staff!
Click to expand...


That’s why Brexit needs to be “no deal”. There’s nothing like a nice big pool of unemployed for keeping wages down. They actually admitted back in the 90s that mass unemployment was “a price worth paying”, remember.
 
Dave Rogers said:
So, as far as I can see, the government are currently considering transportation and prison hulks for asylum seekers. I wonder whether they've considered debtors' prison or sending them up chimneys?

Dave
Click to expand...

I've been expecting the opening of the first Rees-Mogg branded workhouse for some time.

But then my theory is that his shell is animated by the unquiet spirit of a Victorian workhouse master tied like Marley to this Earth by the chains of avarice he forged in life.
 
"Home Secretary Priti Patel has launched an attack on human rights “do-gooders” and “lefty lawyers” who she claimed were united with people-traffickers in wanting to prevent reform of the UK’s “broken” asylum system.

“And yet they seem to care little about the rights of the most vulnerable who are fleeing persecution, oppression and tyranny.

“What about their right to live their lives securely and free from fear? That is the most fundamental right.”

She said: “Under Conservative leadership, the United Kingdom has and always will provide sanctuary when the lights are being switched off on people's liberties.

“As for those defending the broken system – the traffickers, the do-gooders, the lefty lawyers, the Labour Party – they are defending the indefensible."

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/ukne...-asylum-reform-plan/ar-BB19H3nt?ocid=msedgdhp
 
The UK’s asylum system is “fundamentally broken” is it?

Ten years they’ve been in charge. Ten ******* years.
 
Comments I have seen would seem to suggests it's the fault of the EU that our system is 'broken' but now they can fix it.
 
Have they managed to actually, you know, say what is broken about it?
Rather than simply saying it's broken, of course.

You know, a bit like actually saying what EU laws are problematic rather than simply stating there are some problematic ones...
 
Tolls said:
Have they managed to actually, you know, say what is broken about it?
Rather than simply saying it's broken, of course.

You know, a bit like actually saying what EU laws are problematic rather than simply stating there are some problematic ones...
Click to expand...

It's broken because the wrong sort of people are allowed to claim asylum.

The wrong sort being any group other than a small, media friendly, group fleeing a high profile problem - Iraqi Christians spring to mind. It's also nice if they ****-off back at the first opportunity.

The Conservatives are unhappy with the concept of asylum because it allows brown people into the UK.
 
"Government dealt string of defeats on post-Brexit immigration bill in Lords

Peers have backed a call for unaccompanied child refugees to be reunited with close relatives in the UK as they inflicted a series of defeats on Boris Johnson's flagship post-Brexit immigration bill.

The Lords overwhelmingly supported an amendment by Lord Dubs, who himself fled the Nazis as a child, to restore potections after the EU transition period ends later this year.

Before the vote Lord Dubs had asked: “Surely it is right that when there are young people who have got relatives here that family reunion must be a basic, basic thing that we should support?"

The vote was one of a number of defeats home secretary Priti Patel suffered as peers considered the legislation in the Lords, just hours after she pledged to ‘fix’ what she said was a broken asylum system."

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/ukne...ation-bill-in-lords/ar-BB19IXYl?ocid=msedgdhp
 
Mojo said:
The first step seems obvious.
Click to expand...


So many parallels:
Churchill sought to use his wartime popularity as part of his campaign to keep the Conservatives in power after a wartime coalition had been spent since 1940 with the other political parties, but he faced questions from public opinion surrounding the Conservatives' actions in the 1930s and his ability to handle domestic issues unrelated to warfare. Clement Attlee, who led the Labour Party, was seen as a more competent leader by voters, particularly those who feared a return to the levels of unemployment in the 1930s and sought a strong figurehead in British politics to lead the postwar rebuilding of the country. Opinion polls when the election was called showed strong approval ratings for Churchill, but Labour had gradually gained support for months prior to the war's conclusion.
Click to expand...
 
Boris says it should be done by private enterprise and not state lead though. So no comparison with post ww2 at all.
 
It’ll be OK, we’ll all be able to retrain as cinema projectionists, lock-keepers, or boxers.

Boxer or lock-keeper? Government careers quiz scorned by users

A government jobs quiz aimed at identifying potential new areas of work provides a string of unhelpful career suggestions including lock-keeping and boxing as well as currently precarious posts including airline pilot and cinema projectionist, users have complained.
Click to expand...
 
Imagine how it would be now if Ed Milliband had won the election in 2015. A properly funded NHS with nurses and doctors who aren't demoralised, a public sector able to deal with the pandemic and stability instead of chaos and the disaster plus, no Brexit.
But there was a picture of him eating a bacon sandwich so obviously he wasn't fit to be Prime Minister.
 
It may be the usual nostalgia effect, but I do not recall the UK having such a corrupt and incompetent government in my lifetime as we have now. While I may have disagreed (violently in some cases) with the policies, at least the people in the Cabinet were generally able to do their jobs, and with at least some semblance of doing things for the public good rather than lining the pockets of their friends.
 
There's been the odd numpty or eejit in most cabinets during my life time (I'm in my early 60s), but this bunch aren't even sensible or competent enough to make it as numpties or eejits, well off into couldn't find the brewery for the drunken entertainment category.

Definitely NOT nostalgia.
 
No 10 press secretary Allegra Stratton is married to the Spectator political editor who works with the commissioning editor married to Dominic Cummings adviser to Boris Johnson. The Spectator is part of Press Holdings: chairman Andrew Neil & owned by Barclay Bros.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
No 10 press secretary Allegra Stratton is married to the Spectator political editor who works with the commissioning editor married to Dominic Cummings adviser to Boris Johnson. The Spectator is part of Press Holdings: chairman Andrew Neil & owned by Barclay Bros.
Click to expand...

Here in Whitehall we have a lucrative contract to hand out, so hold on to your sears as it's time to spin "The Wheel of Nepotisim"!
 
The difference today is that more people have access to the information and you have lots of people not from the establishment willing to "publish" this information. Go back to Thatcher's years and they were all in it for backhanders, non-exec directorships, jobs and lucrative contracts and the like. Go back to the 60s and 70s and it was even worse, up to their necks for access to the "glamour" of the gangsters, to sex workers and all the rest.

And never forget that Major's years were embroiled in constant sleaze of every kind not just "family values", the press had enough sex stories to get them sales they didn't have space for all the other sleaze!

So I would say that they were equally incompetent back then, in fact I'd say they were worse because there was zero expectation that ministers were meant to do anything and be competent, it is a sign of a (very slow) change in culture that we now expect ministers to be competent and do something!
 
Following on from Patels stance on immigration:

"A “violent, racist attack” in which a man entered a law firm in London armed with a knife was inspired by a speech given by Priti Patel, lawyers have claimed.

On 7 September, a 28-year-old man entered the office of a law firm whose identity has been withheld, armed with a knife. He was subsequently charged with assault, racially aggravated public disorder, possession of, and making threats with, a bladed article in a public place and making threats to kill.

Days earlier, the home secretary had complained about “activist lawyers” who were working to delay the removal of failed asylum seekers."

https://uk.yahoo.com/news/knife-attack-law-firm-inspired-154456285.html
 
Last edited:
RolandRat said:
Following on from Patels stance on immigration:

"A “violent, racist attack” in which a man entered a law firm in London armed with a knife was inspired by a speech given by Priti Patel, lawyers have claimed.

On 7 September, a 28-year-old man entered the office of a law firm whose identity has been withheld, armed with a knife. He was subsequently charged with assault, racially aggravated public disorder, possession of, and making threats with, a bladed article in a public place and making threats to kill.

Days earlier, the home secretary had complained about “activist lawyers” who were working to delay the removal of failed asylum seekers."

https://uk.yahoo.com/news/knife-attack-law-firm-inspired-154456285.html
Click to expand...

Next up is black sites and kidnappings leaving targeted people in overburdened rafts on sea, who then risk being capsized by the Coast Guard to make them drown.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
Imagine how it would be now if Ed Milliband had won the election in 2015. A properly funded NHS with nurses and doctors who aren't demoralised, a public sector able to deal with the pandemic and stability instead of chaos and the disaster plus, no Brexit.
But there was a picture of him eating a bacon sandwich so obviously he wasn't fit to be Prime Minister.
Click to expand...

Plus he got scared as the election drew in and dropped every single policy Labour had and began aping the tories.

zooterkin said:
It may be the usual nostalgia effect, but I do not recall the UK having such a corrupt and incompetent government in my lifetime as we have now. While I may have disagreed (violently in some cases) with the policies, at least the people in the Cabinet were generally able to do their jobs, and with at least some semblance of doing things for the public good rather than lining the pockets of their friends.
Click to expand...

The joke doing the rounds in diplomatic circles during the Thatcher years was how easily and cheaply UK ministers could be bought. I think the going rate was £10,000 for a Cabinet Secretary, and a bit of plamásing for the PM herself.
 
Last edited:
How come Cummings gets away with £50k unpaid council tax when people have been sent to jail for owing a tiny fraction of that?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom