"Parliament to pass an interpretation bill" . . . that's not ministers overruling judges, that's Parliament passing laws as its sovereign to do.
That is entirely reasonable. If the courts pass anything that Parliament doesn't like then Parliament must be allowed to correct the course by passing a new bill to override it.
Depends what they mean, which is far from clear to my non-expert eyes. If they mean legislating forwards then yeah, ok, but I don't feel comfortable about converyor-belt legislation. If it's striking down judges' decisions, then it resembles (is?) retroactive legislation. That cannot be tolerated, even by you.
I mean the former.
If a Judge interprets a law badly, and Parliament clarifies the law for next time, then that is Parliament doing its own job.
It is for Parliament to determine what the law is, not Judges.
Please don't embarrass yourself talking nonsense about the law again. I have fee-paying work to do this week and won't have the time to correct the many mistakes you will undoubtedly make. Thank you.
There's always the Northern Irish protocol. We haven't heard about that for a while. 🤔
I didn't say anything about the law, I was referring to Parliament's ability to change the law. That's different.
Do you deny that if Parliament is unhappy with how the law is applied that they can change the law for going forwards?
I specifically agreed that Parliament should NOT pass retrospective changes. Though it does have the ability to do so too, I find it extremely unethical to do it.
Seems pretty clear thats the plan though. The rules do not apply to them. If a court makes a judgement they don't like, just strike it down.
I agree that parliament is free to pass any law that it sees fit, including laws that reverse court rulings. But you and I both know that this lot have zero interest in the rule of law so won't bother to wait for the new law to pass before ignoring the existing law.
The police never investigate the past apparently. So why would they investigate ministers in flagrant breach of a law they are about to change?
What Johnson is proposing would allow the government to extend its life indefinitely. Should it become law it would end our democracy. Johnson is often described as an instinctive libertarian. That. of course, is nonsense. From making it harder to vote and removing the right to public protest to making UK citizens less able as individuals to live, work and study where they choose, he has presided over the removal of more personal freedoms than any other peacetime Prime Minister in modern British history. He has no attachment to democracy. The only liberty he has any interest in is his own.
As I understand it, this isn't quite as bad as ending democracy, though it's bad enough. If correctly reported, it's a second U-turn on the right to judicial review. Originally the Government proposed to restrict the grounds on which you could ask courts to review whether the Government was obeying the law. That was largely dropped in the current Justice Bill after an outcry. They are now proposing to reintroduce leglislation on the subject, not aimed at review directly but giving them the power to overrule a judicial review decision that they don't like. Arguably that's worse than restricting access to review, since it does gives ministers power to ignore a verdict on how the existing law should be applied.
Judicial review is difficult and expensive in any case (I've conducted one for Compassion in World Farming which achieved its objective without having to get to the final stage). You're right that in theory any Government decision that was successfully challenged could under this proposal be maintained anyway. That said, abolishing elections would in fact certainly require new legislation. A more insidious example would be if the Government applied existing legislation unfairly, e.g. refusing to give reasonable compensation for something they'd done wrong.
You don't abolish elections, you just decide not to hold them.
The monarch would dissolve parliament after 5 years and order a general election to be held if the government of the day refused to do so.
That is one of the benefits of having a constitutional monarch
(Trivia: the finale of the latest Bond movie, where Bond ****, was rather improbably supposed to be located in the disputed southern Kurile islands. If there’s one part of the world Mickey Mouse RN warships won’t be f’ing about it’s the Kurile islands.)
I had to sit through it last week as Mrs DA wanted to see it (she is a cultural anglophile). The only thing of any note I took from it was that the DB5 was obviously a fake with a modern DOHC inline 6 (maybe a 2JZ) and they hadn't bothered to overdub it with the correct engine sound.
My wife got huge credit in her Ferrari: Race to Immortality* documentary for getting the sound spot on for all the gear changes in the two 1950's Ferraris as they whizzed around Brands Hatch. The petrol heads were wondering how the hell she'd found period interior cockpit footage.... She just spent a hell of a long time in the edit suite getting it right.
The bigger thing to mull over about James Bond is how the greatest globe-spanning criminal conspiracies all manage to buy their henchman from the same "can't shoot for shit" suppliers. He must have had 10,000 bullets fired in his general direction over the franchise. About the only one that hit him was from a colleague in Skyfall....
*regularly shown on SKY
It’s a great untapped potential business - set up a school where baddies can learn to shoot. The standard of shooting by henchmen is appalling.
Also someone at the MOD should find out where you can buy the specially modified guns they use where normally they would only hold say 12 or 30 rounds but these seem to hold thousands!
If your henchmen become too competent then you run the risk of them wanting to run the show.
So there's a certain logic in having incompetent henchmen for bluffing purposes, and dealing with the downtrodden masses.
"Parliament to pass an interpretation bill" . . . that's not ministers overruling judges, that's Parliament passing laws as its sovereign to do.
That is entirely reasonable. If the courts pass anything that Parliament doesn't like then Parliament must be allowed to correct the course by passing a new bill to override it.
Yes, but that is not this proposal. Proposed is that ministers, not parliament, would strike down judgements, thus conflating the legislature with the executive in an unhealthy way. It goes much further than that as government has no right to direct judgements. An independent judiciary does that.
Anyone who is a democrat, respects the rule of law, and cherishes an independent judiciary will be outraged by this proposal.
Where does it say that Ministers would strike down judgements?
It says that Parliament would, that's a completely different thing.
FWIW I think Whinger Spice made a huge mistake post race and said Michael Masi is shit (I paraphrase, he said something along the lines of saying we missed Charlie Whiting today.)
(Trivia: the finale of the latest Bond movie, where Bond ****, was rather improbably supposed to be located in the disputed southern Kurile islands. If there’s one part of the world Mickey Mouse RN warships won’t be f’ing about it’s the Kurile islands.)
I had to sit through it last week as Mrs DA wanted to see it (she is a cultural anglophile). The only thing of any note I took from it was that the DB5 was obviously a fake with a modern DOHC inline 6 (maybe a 2JZ) and they hadn't bothered to overdub it with the correct engine sound.
My wife got huge credit in her Ferrari: Race to Immortality* documentary for getting the sound spot on for all the gear changes in the two 1950's Ferraris as they whizzed around Brands Hatch. The petrol heads were wondering how the hell she'd found period interior cockpit footage.... She just spent a hell of a long time in the edit suite getting it right.
The bigger thing to mull over about James Bond is how the greatest globe-spanning criminal conspiracies all manage to buy their henchman from the same "can't shoot for shit" suppliers. He must have had 10,000 bullets fired in his general direction over the franchise. About the only one that hit him was from a colleague in Skyfall....
*regularly shown on SKY
It’s a great untapped potential business - set up a school where baddies can learn to shoot. The standard of shooting by henchmen is appalling.
Also someone at the MOD should find out where you can buy the specially modified guns they use where normally they would only hold say 12 or 30 rounds but these seem to hold thousands!
If your henchmen become too competent then you run the risk of them wanting to run the show.
So there's a certain logic in having incompetent henchmen for bluffing purposes, and dealing with the downtrodden masses.
"Parliament to pass an interpretation bill" . . . that's not ministers overruling judges, that's Parliament passing laws as its sovereign to do.
That is entirely reasonable. If the courts pass anything that Parliament doesn't like then Parliament must be allowed to correct the course by passing a new bill to override it.
Depends what they mean, which is far from clear to my non-expert eyes. If they mean legislating forwards then yeah, ok, but I don't feel comfortable about converyor-belt legislation. If it's striking down judges' decisions, then it resembles (is?) retroactive legislation. That cannot be tolerated, even by you.
I mean the former.
If a Judge interprets a law badly, and Parliament clarifies the law for next time, then that is Parliament doing its own job.
It is for Parliament to determine what the law is, not Judges.
Please don't embarrass yourself talking nonsense about the law again. I have fee-paying work to do this week and won't have the time to correct the many mistakes you will undoubtedly make. Thank you.
There's always the Northern Irish protocol. We haven't heard about that for a while. 🤔
I didn't say anything about the law, I was referring to Parliament's ability to change the law. That's different.
Do you deny that if Parliament is unhappy with how the law is applied that they can change the law for going forwards?
I specifically agreed that Parliament should NOT pass retrospective changes. Though it does have the ability to do so too, I find it extremely unethical to do it.
Seems pretty clear thats the plan though. The rules do not apply to them. If a court makes a judgement they don't like, just strike it down.
I agree that parliament is free to pass any law that it sees fit, including laws that reverse court rulings. But you and I both know that this lot have zero interest in the rule of law so won't bother to wait for the new law to pass before ignoring the existing law.
The police never investigate the past apparently. So why would they investigate ministers in flagrant breach of a law they are about to change?
What Johnson is proposing would allow the government to extend its life indefinitely. Should it become law it would end our democracy. Johnson is often described as an instinctive libertarian. That. of course, is nonsense. From making it harder to vote and removing the right to public protest to making UK citizens less able as individuals to live, work and study where they choose, he has presided over the removal of more personal freedoms than any other peacetime Prime Minister in modern British history. He has no attachment to democracy. The only liberty he has any interest in is his own.
As I understand it, this isn't quite as bad as ending democracy, though it's bad enough. If correctly reported, it's a second U-turn on the right to judicial review. Originally the Government proposed to restrict the grounds on which you could ask courts to review whether the Government was obeying the law. That was largely dropped in the current Justice Bill after an outcry. They are now proposing to reintroduce leglislation on the subject, not aimed at review directly but giving them the power to overrule a judicial review decision that they don't like. Arguably that's worse than restricting access to review, since it does gives ministers power to ignore a verdict on how the existing law should be applied.
Judicial review is difficult and expensive in any case (I've conducted one for Compassion in World Farming which achieved its objective without having to get to the final stage). You're right that in theory any Government decision that was successfully challenged could under this proposal be maintained anyway. That said, abolishing elections would in fact certainly require new legislation. A more insidious example would be if the Government applied existing legislation unfairly, e.g. refusing to give reasonable compensation for something they'd done wrong.
You don't abolish elections, you just decide not to hold them.
The monarch would dissolve parliament after 5 years and order a general election to be held if the government of the day refused to do so.
That is one of the benefits of having a constitutional monarch
"Parliament to pass an interpretation bill" . . . that's not ministers overruling judges, that's Parliament passing laws as its sovereign to do.
That is entirely reasonable. If the courts pass anything that Parliament doesn't like then Parliament must be allowed to correct the course by passing a new bill to override it.
Yes, but that is not this proposal. Proposed is that ministers, not parliament, would strike down judgements, thus conflating the legislature with the executive in an unhealthy way. It goes much further than that as government has no right to direct judgements. An independent judiciary does that.
Anyone who is a democrat, respects the rule of law, and cherishes an independent judiciary will be outraged by this proposal.
Where does it say that Ministers would strike down judgements?
It says that Parliament would, that's a completely different thing.
When you say “strike down judgments” it should actually say “pass new laws”. I don’t have a problem with that so long as the new laws go through the full legislative process and not simply a singular whipped vote of the commons.
"Sarah Gilbert: Next pandemic could be more lethal than Covid"
I can't work out why this is the headline to the story. It might just as well say "Sarah Gilbert: doesn't moronically believe that we've had the worst pandemic possible" https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-59542211
It looks like irresponsible alarmism and fear mongering. The BBC should desist.
A good example of this government interfering with judicial independence is Harper's Law, trailed a couple of weeks ago, making the killing of emergency workers carry a mandatory life sentence regardless of whether intent to kill can be proven. It's a wholly unnecessary move to remove judges' sentencing discretion in a very small number of cases. It's not as if Henry Long got off lightly (19 years). So why are they doing it? Pure populism, probably following a Mail or Sun campaign. It's worth reading the press release - it's not something that needed fixing, but Raab and Patel think there may be some votes in it:
SKS just got his booster. Might be feeling ropey for PMQs on Wednesday.
His problem is that this is meant to be the opportunity he was born for. Oooh, he's a forensic prosecutor, his supporters said, and some of us thought that isn't a great skill set for a LOTO. Except now it is: serious top level criminality breaking out all over. If he can't KO Johnson now what on earth is he for?
"Parliament to pass an interpretation bill" . . . that's not ministers overruling judges, that's Parliament passing laws as its sovereign to do.
That is entirely reasonable. If the courts pass anything that Parliament doesn't like then Parliament must be allowed to correct the course by passing a new bill to override it.
Yes, but that is not this proposal. Proposed is that ministers, not parliament, would strike down judgements, thus conflating the legislature with the executive in an unhealthy way. It goes much further than that as government has no right to direct judgements. An independent judiciary does that.
Anyone who is a democrat, respects the rule of law, and cherishes an independent judiciary will be outraged by this proposal.
Where does it say that Ministers would strike down judgements?
It says that Parliament would, that's a completely different thing.
When you say “strike down judgments” it should actually say “pass new laws”. I don’t have a problem with that so long as the new laws go through the full legislative process and not simply a singular whipped vote of the commons.
Then we're on the same page and not disagreeing with each other.
Wow so no 10 wants to just ignore judges rulings. You’d expect to see this in a banana Republic not the UK , very sad and disturbing . Good luck trying to lecture other countries on democracy.
The government can pass whatever laws they want anyway, as long as they persuade enough MPs to support whatever it is.
Really I never knew ! You’re missing the point entirely , enacting legislation that just overrides a judges ruling is quite different to enacting legislation that addresses any judgement and seeks to alter the original law.
The fact that this story isn’t the main headline across all outlets is deeply troubling .
It's the sort of arrogant, "the Law is only for the little people" approach that you would expect to be cooked up by a bunch of cokeheads.
Make you wonder if this government isn’t the ultimate Oxford Bullingdon club escapade planned long, long ago. Perhaps after smashing up the country and doing what the hell they like, Boris and co will pay for the damage.
It really is quite hard to understand what is conservative about the current "Conservative Party".
Nothing.
The modern iteration of the Tory party:
- English Nationalist, not One Nation - Revolutionary, not Conservative - High tax/high debt, not Friedman - State control, not free market - Social engineering, not conservatism - Nasty, not paternal - Reactive, not confident - Populist, not principled - Clown, not competence - Degenerate, not moral - Cash for pals, not good governance - Fiscal spaffing, not fiscal moderation - Fuck business, not pro business - Proroguing parliament, not the rule of law - Lying to the monarch, not respecting institutions - Authoritarian, not liberal - Corruption, not ethics - Second jobs, not public service - Serving clients, not constituents - Peppa Pig, not promoting productivity - Cokeheads, not sober - Law-breakers, not law enforcers
The only constant is the blue rosettes, greed and jingoism.
"Parliament to pass an interpretation bill" . . . that's not ministers overruling judges, that's Parliament passing laws as its sovereign to do.
That is entirely reasonable. If the courts pass anything that Parliament doesn't like then Parliament must be allowed to correct the course by passing a new bill to override it.
Depends what they mean, which is far from clear to my non-expert eyes. If they mean legislating forwards then yeah, ok, but I don't feel comfortable about converyor-belt legislation. If it's striking down judges' decisions, then it resembles (is?) retroactive legislation. That cannot be tolerated, even by you.
I mean the former.
If a Judge interprets a law badly, and Parliament clarifies the law for next time, then that is Parliament doing its own job.
It is for Parliament to determine what the law is, not Judges.
Please don't embarrass yourself talking nonsense about the law again. I have fee-paying work to do this week and won't have the time to correct the many mistakes you will undoubtedly make. Thank you.
There's always the Northern Irish protocol. We haven't heard about that for a while. 🤔
I didn't say anything about the law, I was referring to Parliament's ability to change the law. That's different.
Do you deny that if Parliament is unhappy with how the law is applied that they can change the law for going forwards?
I specifically agreed that Parliament should NOT pass retrospective changes. Though it does have the ability to do so too, I find it extremely unethical to do it.
Seems pretty clear thats the plan though. The rules do not apply to them. If a court makes a judgement they don't like, just strike it down.
I agree that parliament is free to pass any law that it sees fit, including laws that reverse court rulings. But you and I both know that this lot have zero interest in the rule of law so won't bother to wait for the new law to pass before ignoring the existing law.
The police never investigate the past apparently. So why would they investigate ministers in flagrant breach of a law they are about to change?
What Johnson is proposing would allow the government to extend its life indefinitely. Should it become law it would end our democracy. Johnson is often described as an instinctive libertarian. That. of course, is nonsense. From making it harder to vote and removing the right to public protest to making UK citizens less able as individuals to live, work and study where they choose, he has presided over the removal of more personal freedoms than any other peacetime Prime Minister in modern British history. He has no attachment to democracy. The only liberty he has any interest in is his own.
As I understand it, this isn't quite as bad as ending democracy, though it's bad enough. If correctly reported, it's a second U-turn on the right to judicial review. Originally the Government proposed to restrict the grounds on which you could ask courts to review whether the Government was obeying the law. That was largely dropped in the current Justice Bill after an outcry. They are now proposing to reintroduce leglislation on the subject, not aimed at review directly but giving them the power to overrule a judicial review decision that they don't like. Arguably that's worse than restricting access to review, since it does gives ministers power to ignore a verdict on how the existing law should be applied.
Judicial review is difficult and expensive in any case (I've conducted one for Compassion in World Farming which achieved its objective without having to get to the final stage). You're right that in theory any Government decision that was successfully challenged could under this proposal be maintained anyway. That said, abolishing elections would in fact certainly require new legislation. A more insidious example would be if the Government applied existing legislation unfairly, e.g. refusing to give reasonable compensation for something they'd done wrong.
You don't abolish elections, you just decide not to hold them.
The monarch would dissolve parliament after 5 years and order a general election to be held if the government of the day refused to do so.
That is one of the benefits of having a constitutional monarch
I thought this was so, but the position of the Monarch is so weak that it is not the case. HMQ will act on the advice of her Ministers. No more and no less. She may as well be a hand puppet.
We saw this with the prorogation in 2019. There is no circumstance in which the Monarch would set themselves against the incumbent Executive. They will do as they are told. Anything else is too risky.
A good example of this government interfering with judicial independence is Harper's Law, trailed a couple of weeks ago, making the killing of emergency workers carry a mandatory life sentence regardless of whether intent to kill can be proven. It's a wholly unnecessary move to remove judges' sentencing discretion in a very small number of cases. It's not as if Henry Long got off lightly (19 years). So why are they doing it? Pure populism, probably following a Mail or Sun campaign. It's worth reading the press release - it's not something that needed fixing, but Raab and Patel think there may be some votes in it:
It also shows what a crap lawyer Suella Braverman is.
Thanks - that's an excellent summary of the issues.
Starmer should oppose Harper's Law - that would be the brave and principled thing to do. He will know it's wrong. But then, of course, he will be labelled as soft on crime and a menace to emergency workers; you can just see the tabloid headlines. Tricky. Maybe some Tory MPs will stand up for what is right? I doubt it, somehow.
"Parliament to pass an interpretation bill" . . . that's not ministers overruling judges, that's Parliament passing laws as its sovereign to do.
That is entirely reasonable. If the courts pass anything that Parliament doesn't like then Parliament must be allowed to correct the course by passing a new bill to override it.
Depends what they mean, which is far from clear to my non-expert eyes. If they mean legislating forwards then yeah, ok, but I don't feel comfortable about converyor-belt legislation. If it's striking down judges' decisions, then it resembles (is?) retroactive legislation. That cannot be tolerated, even by you.
I mean the former.
If a Judge interprets a law badly, and Parliament clarifies the law for next time, then that is Parliament doing its own job.
It is for Parliament to determine what the law is, not Judges.
Please don't embarrass yourself talking nonsense about the law again. I have fee-paying work to do this week and won't have the time to correct the many mistakes you will undoubtedly make. Thank you.
There's always the Northern Irish protocol. We haven't heard about that for a while. 🤔
I didn't say anything about the law, I was referring to Parliament's ability to change the law. That's different.
Do you deny that if Parliament is unhappy with how the law is applied that they can change the law for going forwards?
I specifically agreed that Parliament should NOT pass retrospective changes. Though it does have the ability to do so too, I find it extremely unethical to do it.
Seems pretty clear thats the plan though. The rules do not apply to them. If a court makes a judgement they don't like, just strike it down.
I agree that parliament is free to pass any law that it sees fit, including laws that reverse court rulings. But you and I both know that this lot have zero interest in the rule of law so won't bother to wait for the new law to pass before ignoring the existing law.
The police never investigate the past apparently. So why would they investigate ministers in flagrant breach of a law they are about to change?
What Johnson is proposing would allow the government to extend its life indefinitely. Should it become law it would end our democracy. Johnson is often described as an instinctive libertarian. That. of course, is nonsense. From making it harder to vote and removing the right to public protest to making UK citizens less able as individuals to live, work and study where they choose, he has presided over the removal of more personal freedoms than any other peacetime Prime Minister in modern British history. He has no attachment to democracy. The only liberty he has any interest in is his own.
As I understand it, this isn't quite as bad as ending democracy, though it's bad enough. If correctly reported, it's a second U-turn on the right to judicial review. Originally the Government proposed to restrict the grounds on which you could ask courts to review whether the Government was obeying the law. That was largely dropped in the current Justice Bill after an outcry. They are now proposing to reintroduce leglislation on the subject, not aimed at review directly but giving them the power to overrule a judicial review decision that they don't like. Arguably that's worse than restricting access to review, since it does gives ministers power to ignore a verdict on how the existing law should be applied.
Judicial review is difficult and expensive in any case (I've conducted one for Compassion in World Farming which achieved its objective without having to get to the final stage). You're right that in theory any Government decision that was successfully challenged could under this proposal be maintained anyway. That said, abolishing elections would in fact certainly require new legislation. A more insidious example would be if the Government applied existing legislation unfairly, e.g. refusing to give reasonable compensation for something they'd done wrong.
You don't abolish elections, you just decide not to hold them.
The monarch would dissolve parliament after 5 years and order a general election to be held if the government of the day refused to do so.
That is one of the benefits of having a constitutional monarch
I thought this was so, but the position of the Monarch is so weak that it is not the case. HMQ will act on the advice of her Ministers. No more and no less. She may as well be a hand puppet.
We saw this with the prorogation in 2019. There is no circumstance in which the Monarch would set themselves against the incumbent Executive. They will do as they are told. Anything else is too risky.
FWIW I think Whinger Spice made a huge mistake post race and said Michael Masi is shit (I paraphrase, he said something along the lines of saying we missed Charlie Whiting today.)
The same Michael Masi, who’s given Spice an inch and let him take a mile, for pretty much the whole season?
I genuinely fear that the last race is going to end in a deliberate crash, Max was at best ambivalent yesterday on several occasions, as to whether an accident happened.
You know that grandstand at the chicane, where the runoff area goes under it? Well that’s where I’ll be sitting next Sunday, genuinely scared for most of the race.
"Sarah Gilbert: Next pandemic could be more lethal than Covid"
I can't work out why this is the headline to the story. It might just as well say "Sarah Gilbert: doesn't moronically believe that we've had the worst pandemic possible" https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-59542211
It looks like irresponsible alarmism and fear mongering. The BBC should desist.
That's unfair on the BBC. The BBC is directly quoting what she said in the Dimbleby Lecture. Are you trying to censor the BBC? It's reported similarly in all the press as well.
Wow so no 10 wants to just ignore judges rulings. You’d expect to see this in a banana Republic not the UK , very sad and disturbing . Good luck trying to lecture other countries on democracy.
The government can pass whatever laws they want anyway, as long as they persuade enough MPs to support whatever it is.
Really I never knew ! You’re missing the point entirely , enacting legislation that just overrides a judges ruling is quite different to enacting legislation that addresses any judgement and seeks to alter the original law.
The fact that this story isn’t the main headline across all outlets is deeply troubling .
It's the sort of arrogant, "the Law is only for the little people" approach that you would expect to be cooked up by a bunch of cokeheads.
“Bunch of cokeheads” being the correct medical term for a group of Conservative cabinet ministers.
Very amusingly, the story about "Priti Patel's crackdown on middle-class drug users with curfews" today includes a picture of Lindsey Hoyle with a dog sitting in the Speakers' chair, and mention of "sniffer dogs in the Commons" as if it was always part of the original initiative, with a not word breathed on the cocaine in Boris Johnson's office toilets.
FWIW I think Whinger Spice made a huge mistake post race and said Michael Masi is shit (I paraphrase, he said something along the lines of saying we missed Charlie Whiting today.)
The same Michael Masi, who’s given Spice an inch and let him take a mile, for pretty much the whole season?
I genuinely fear that the last race is going to end in a deliberate crash, Max was at best ambivalent yesterday on several occasions, as to whether an accident happened.
You know that grandstand at the chicane, where the runoff area goes under it? Well that’s where I’ll be sitting next Sunday, genuinely scared for most of the race.
I do remember Schumacher of course. But if someone clearly causes a deliberate crash in that way, should that not result in a points deduction rather than just a time penalty? When do you get into Duncan Ferguson territory where behaviour in a pro sport slips into criminality?
Good morning everyone. Colder again, and rain is forecast. Rain can, if course, be expected in a British winter. Crackdown..... there's an appropriate word in the circumstances .... after crackdown has been tried in the 'War on Drugs' and doesn't seem to work. What would work is legalising one or two 'softer drugs', unless of course cocaine use, prevalent, certainly at one time, AIUI, among the nobility and gentry, is now so widespread that it's the drug of choice.
And if it is, then the war has been well and truly lost, and we'll have to think of a completely new strategy.
Several decades of Western drugs policy have been a total failure.
You either need to go down the full Bangkok / Dubai route, and throw users in prison for personal amounts - or you legalise them and sell drugs in pharmacies, rather than on the street.
When I were a lad the only places one could buy alcohol other than pubs were off-licences, possibly attached to grocers, but by no means all grocers. In some place pharmacies had them too. Now one can buy take-away alcohol very easily and we have more a problem with street drinking. I wonder if there's a connection.
Good morning everyone. Colder again, and rain is forecast. Rain can, if course, be expected in a British winter. Crackdown..... there's an appropriate word in the circumstances .... after crackdown has been tried in the 'War on Drugs' and doesn't seem to work. What would work is legalising one or two 'softer drugs', unless of course cocaine use, prevalent, certainly at one time, AIUI, among the nobility and gentry, is now so widespread that it's the drug of choice.
And if it is, then the war has been well and truly lost, and we'll have to think of a completely new strategy.
Several decades of Western drugs policy have been a total failure.
You either need to go down the full Bangkok / Dubai route, and throw users in prison for personal amounts - or you legalise them and sell drugs in pharmacies, rather than on the street.
When I were a lad the only places one could buy alcohol other than pubs were off-licences, possibly attached to grocers, but by no means all grocers. In some place pharmacies had them too. Now one can buy take-away alcohol very easily and we have more a problem with street drinking. I wonder if there's a connection.
That is the demand side. Drug usage might indeed go up.
But this is to ignore the criminal structure of the supply side. There weren't fast boats coming into the Dover coast loaded with contraband cases of Latour '61. More's the pity.
"Parliament to pass an interpretation bill" . . . that's not ministers overruling judges, that's Parliament passing laws as its sovereign to do.
That is entirely reasonable. If the courts pass anything that Parliament doesn't like then Parliament must be allowed to correct the course by passing a new bill to override it.
Depends what they mean, which is far from clear to my non-expert eyes. If they mean legislating forwards then yeah, ok, but I don't feel comfortable about converyor-belt legislation. If it's striking down judges' decisions, then it resembles (is?) retroactive legislation. That cannot be tolerated, even by you.
I mean the former.
If a Judge interprets a law badly, and Parliament clarifies the law for next time, then that is Parliament doing its own job.
It is for Parliament to determine what the law is, not Judges.
Please don't embarrass yourself talking nonsense about the law again. I have fee-paying work to do this week and won't have the time to correct the many mistakes you will undoubtedly make. Thank you.
There's always the Northern Irish protocol. We haven't heard about that for a while. 🤔
I didn't say anything about the law, I was referring to Parliament's ability to change the law. That's different.
Do you deny that if Parliament is unhappy with how the law is applied that they can change the law for going forwards?
I specifically agreed that Parliament should NOT pass retrospective changes. Though it does have the ability to do so too, I find it extremely unethical to do it.
Seems pretty clear thats the plan though. The rules do not apply to them. If a court makes a judgement they don't like, just strike it down.
I agree that parliament is free to pass any law that it sees fit, including laws that reverse court rulings. But you and I both know that this lot have zero interest in the rule of law so won't bother to wait for the new law to pass before ignoring the existing law.
The police never investigate the past apparently. So why would they investigate ministers in flagrant breach of a law they are about to change?
What Johnson is proposing would allow the government to extend its life indefinitely. Should it become law it would end our democracy. Johnson is often described as an instinctive libertarian. That. of course, is nonsense. From making it harder to vote and removing the right to public protest to making UK citizens less able as individuals to live, work and study where they choose, he has presided over the removal of more personal freedoms than any other peacetime Prime Minister in modern British history. He has no attachment to democracy. The only liberty he has any interest in is his own.
As I understand it, this isn't quite as bad as ending democracy, though it's bad enough. If correctly reported, it's a second U-turn on the right to judicial review. Originally the Government proposed to restrict the grounds on which you could ask courts to review whether the Government was obeying the law. That was largely dropped in the current Justice Bill after an outcry. They are now proposing to reintroduce leglislation on the subject, not aimed at review directly but giving them the power to overrule a judicial review decision that they don't like. Arguably that's worse than restricting access to review, since it does gives ministers power to ignore a verdict on how the existing law should be applied.
Judicial review is difficult and expensive in any case (I've conducted one for Compassion in World Farming which achieved its objective without having to get to the final stage). You're right that in theory any Government decision that was successfully challenged could under this proposal be maintained anyway. That said, abolishing elections would in fact certainly require new legislation. A more insidious example would be if the Government applied existing legislation unfairly, e.g. refusing to give reasonable compensation for something they'd done wrong.
You don't abolish elections, you just decide not to hold them.
The monarch would dissolve parliament after 5 years and order a general election to be held if the government of the day refused to do so.
That is one of the benefits of having a constitutional monarch
I thought this was so, but the position of the Monarch is so weak that it is not the case. HMQ will act on the advice of her Ministers. No more and no less. She may as well be a hand puppet.
We saw this with the prorogation in 2019. There is no circumstance in which the Monarch would set themselves against the incumbent Executive. They will do as they are told. Anything else is too risky.
I don’t think that’s right.
What leads you to believe that the Monarch would act differently?
"Sarah Gilbert: Next pandemic could be more lethal than Covid"
I can't work out why this is the headline to the story. It might just as well say "Sarah Gilbert: doesn't moronically believe that we've had the worst pandemic possible" https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-59542211
It looks like irresponsible alarmism and fear mongering. The BBC should desist.
That's unfair on the BBC. The BBC is directly quoting what she said in the Dimbleby Lecture. Are you trying to censor the BBC? It's reported similarly in all the press as well.
It's a statement of the bleeding obvious, and it's a long way from being the most important thing that she said.
The press have to make money. The BBC avoids that requirement and doesn't need to stoop to their level.
On drugs: legalise, license (to start at least), educate.
Educate? You proposing a continental cafe-style approach to cocaine where a family lingers for a whole afternoon over a shared line? Blind sniffings where the terroir of the Amazon basin is discussed? Doesn't work. Cocaine is the stuff which makes you think stuffing bangers up your arse is a good idea. that's what it's for.
"Parliament to pass an interpretation bill" . . . that's not ministers overruling judges, that's Parliament passing laws as its sovereign to do.
That is entirely reasonable. If the courts pass anything that Parliament doesn't like then Parliament must be allowed to correct the course by passing a new bill to override it.
Depends what they mean, which is far from clear to my non-expert eyes. If they mean legislating forwards then yeah, ok, but I don't feel comfortable about converyor-belt legislation. If it's striking down judges' decisions, then it resembles (is?) retroactive legislation. That cannot be tolerated, even by you.
I mean the former.
If a Judge interprets a law badly, and Parliament clarifies the law for next time, then that is Parliament doing its own job.
It is for Parliament to determine what the law is, not Judges.
Please don't embarrass yourself talking nonsense about the law again. I have fee-paying work to do this week and won't have the time to correct the many mistakes you will undoubtedly make. Thank you.
There's always the Northern Irish protocol. We haven't heard about that for a while. 🤔
I didn't say anything about the law, I was referring to Parliament's ability to change the law. That's different.
Do you deny that if Parliament is unhappy with how the law is applied that they can change the law for going forwards?
I specifically agreed that Parliament should NOT pass retrospective changes. Though it does have the ability to do so too, I find it extremely unethical to do it.
Seems pretty clear thats the plan though. The rules do not apply to them. If a court makes a judgement they don't like, just strike it down.
I agree that parliament is free to pass any law that it sees fit, including laws that reverse court rulings. But you and I both know that this lot have zero interest in the rule of law so won't bother to wait for the new law to pass before ignoring the existing law.
The police never investigate the past apparently. So why would they investigate ministers in flagrant breach of a law they are about to change?
What Johnson is proposing would allow the government to extend its life indefinitely. Should it become law it would end our democracy. Johnson is often described as an instinctive libertarian. That. of course, is nonsense. From making it harder to vote and removing the right to public protest to making UK citizens less able as individuals to live, work and study where they choose, he has presided over the removal of more personal freedoms than any other peacetime Prime Minister in modern British history. He has no attachment to democracy. The only liberty he has any interest in is his own.
As I understand it, this isn't quite as bad as ending democracy, though it's bad enough. If correctly reported, it's a second U-turn on the right to judicial review. Originally the Government proposed to restrict the grounds on which you could ask courts to review whether the Government was obeying the law. That was largely dropped in the current Justice Bill after an outcry. They are now proposing to reintroduce leglislation on the subject, not aimed at review directly but giving them the power to overrule a judicial review decision that they don't like. Arguably that's worse than restricting access to review, since it does gives ministers power to ignore a verdict on how the existing law should be applied.
Judicial review is difficult and expensive in any case (I've conducted one for Compassion in World Farming which achieved its objective without having to get to the final stage). You're right that in theory any Government decision that was successfully challenged could under this proposal be maintained anyway. That said, abolishing elections would in fact certainly require new legislation. A more insidious example would be if the Government applied existing legislation unfairly, e.g. refusing to give reasonable compensation for something they'd done wrong.
You don't abolish elections, you just decide not to hold them.
The monarch would dissolve parliament after 5 years and order a general election to be held if the government of the day refused to do so.
That is one of the benefits of having a constitutional monarch
I thought this was so, but the position of the Monarch is so weak that it is not the case. HMQ will act on the advice of her Ministers. No more and no less. She may as well be a hand puppet.
We saw this with the prorogation in 2019. There is no circumstance in which the Monarch would set themselves against the incumbent Executive. They will do as they are told. Anything else is too risky.
Rubbish. The monarch suspended Parliament for a few weeks in 2019 until the courts ruled on the constitutional nature of it because diehard Remainers like you refused to respect the EU referendum result. She also signed the Benn Act, an Act passed by diehard Remainers like you to try and block Brexit.
There is a difference between those incidents and the monarch allowing their government to never call a general election and stay in power forever. In those circumstances the monarch would indeed dissolve parliament and force a general election after 5 years and as the armed forces ultimately are headed by the monarch not the PM there is nothing the government could do about it
FWIW I think Whinger Spice made a huge mistake post race and said Michael Masi is shit (I paraphrase, he said something along the lines of saying we missed Charlie Whiting today.)
The same Michael Masi, who’s given Spice an inch and let him take a mile, for pretty much the whole season?
I genuinely fear that the last race is going to end in a deliberate crash, Max was at best ambivalent yesterday on several occasions, as to whether an accident happened.
You know that grandstand at the chicane, where the runoff area goes under it? Well that’s where I’ll be sitting next Sunday, genuinely scared for most of the race.
I do remember Schumacher of course. But if someone clearly causes a deliberate crash in that way, should that not result in a points deduction rather than just a time penalty? When do you get into Duncan Ferguson territory where behaviour in a pro sport slips into criminality?
A good example of this government interfering with judicial independence is Harper's Law, trailed a couple of weeks ago, making the killing of emergency workers carry a mandatory life sentence regardless of whether intent to kill can be proven. It's a wholly unnecessary move to remove judges' sentencing discretion in a very small number of cases. It's not as if Henry Long got off lightly (19 years). So why are they doing it? Pure populism, probably following a Mail or Sun campaign. It's worth reading the press release - it's not something that needed fixing, but Raab and Patel think there may be some votes in it:
It also shows what a crap lawyer Suella Braverman is.
Thanks - that's an excellent summary of the issues.
Starmer should oppose Harper's Law - that would be the brave and principled thing to do. He will know it's wrong. But then, of course, he will be labelled as soft on crime and a menace to emergency workers; you can just see the tabloid headlines. Tricky. Maybe some Tory MPs will stand up for what is right? I doubt it, somehow.
Starmer is weak.
There are problems on law and order: the police, for one thing. The under-funding of the justice system, for another. Starmer had an a opportunity to put the boot into Cressida Dick but didn't. His Justice spokesman has been invisible.
The only MP who regularly speaks up on these issues is Bob O'Neill, a Tory MP but one who understands why the rule of law matters.
Good morning everyone. Colder again, and rain is forecast. Rain can, if course, be expected in a British winter. Crackdown..... there's an appropriate word in the circumstances .... after crackdown has been tried in the 'War on Drugs' and doesn't seem to work. What would work is legalising one or two 'softer drugs', unless of course cocaine use, prevalent, certainly at one time, AIUI, among the nobility and gentry, is now so widespread that it's the drug of choice.
And if it is, then the war has been well and truly lost, and we'll have to think of a completely new strategy.
Several decades of Western drugs policy have been a total failure.
You either need to go down the full Bangkok / Dubai route, and throw users in prison for personal amounts - or you legalise them and sell drugs in pharmacies, rather than on the street.
When I were a lad the only places one could buy alcohol other than pubs were off-licences, possibly attached to grocers, but by no means all grocers. In some place pharmacies had them too. Now one can buy take-away alcohol very easily and we have more a problem with street drinking. I wonder if there's a connection.
That is the demand side. Drug usage might indeed go up.
But this is to ignore the criminal structure of the supply side. There weren't fast boats coming into the Dover coast loaded with contraband cases of Latour '61. More's the pity.
White vans on the ferries rather than fast boats to Hasting beach, IIRC!
However, the point that I didn't press is that we have a wide range of places where alcohol can be purchased legally. If we had places where 'drugs' could be purchased legally the criminal element would be largely cut out. Quality and price would be affected too.
As a resident of Witham constituency I can think of a few places where a crackdown on middle class users might actually lose her support!
"Parliament to pass an interpretation bill" . . . that's not ministers overruling judges, that's Parliament passing laws as its sovereign to do.
That is entirely reasonable. If the courts pass anything that Parliament doesn't like then Parliament must be allowed to correct the course by passing a new bill to override it.
Depends what they mean, which is far from clear to my non-expert eyes. If they mean legislating forwards then yeah, ok, but I don't feel comfortable about converyor-belt legislation. If it's striking down judges' decisions, then it resembles (is?) retroactive legislation. That cannot be tolerated, even by you.
I mean the former.
If a Judge interprets a law badly, and Parliament clarifies the law for next time, then that is Parliament doing its own job.
It is for Parliament to determine what the law is, not Judges.
Please don't embarrass yourself talking nonsense about the law again. I have fee-paying work to do this week and won't have the time to correct the many mistakes you will undoubtedly make. Thank you.
There's always the Northern Irish protocol. We haven't heard about that for a while. 🤔
I didn't say anything about the law, I was referring to Parliament's ability to change the law. That's different.
Do you deny that if Parliament is unhappy with how the law is applied that they can change the law for going forwards?
I specifically agreed that Parliament should NOT pass retrospective changes. Though it does have the ability to do so too, I find it extremely unethical to do it.
Seems pretty clear thats the plan though. The rules do not apply to them. If a court makes a judgement they don't like, just strike it down.
I agree that parliament is free to pass any law that it sees fit, including laws that reverse court rulings. But you and I both know that this lot have zero interest in the rule of law so won't bother to wait for the new law to pass before ignoring the existing law.
The police never investigate the past apparently. So why would they investigate ministers in flagrant breach of a law they are about to change?
What Johnson is proposing would allow the government to extend its life indefinitely. Should it become law it would end our democracy. Johnson is often described as an instinctive libertarian. That. of course, is nonsense. From making it harder to vote and removing the right to public protest to making UK citizens less able as individuals to live, work and study where they choose, he has presided over the removal of more personal freedoms than any other peacetime Prime Minister in modern British history. He has no attachment to democracy. The only liberty he has any interest in is his own.
As I understand it, this isn't quite as bad as ending democracy, though it's bad enough. If correctly reported, it's a second U-turn on the right to judicial review. Originally the Government proposed to restrict the grounds on which you could ask courts to review whether the Government was obeying the law. That was largely dropped in the current Justice Bill after an outcry. They are now proposing to reintroduce leglislation on the subject, not aimed at review directly but giving them the power to overrule a judicial review decision that they don't like. Arguably that's worse than restricting access to review, since it does gives ministers power to ignore a verdict on how the existing law should be applied.
Judicial review is difficult and expensive in any case (I've conducted one for Compassion in World Farming which achieved its objective without having to get to the final stage). You're right that in theory any Government decision that was successfully challenged could under this proposal be maintained anyway. That said, abolishing elections would in fact certainly require new legislation. A more insidious example would be if the Government applied existing legislation unfairly, e.g. refusing to give reasonable compensation for something they'd done wrong.
You don't abolish elections, you just decide not to hold them.
The monarch would dissolve parliament after 5 years and order a general election to be held if the government of the day refused to do so.
That is one of the benefits of having a constitutional monarch
I thought this was so, but the position of the Monarch is so weak that it is not the case. HMQ will act on the advice of her Ministers. No more and no less. She may as well be a hand puppet.
We saw this with the prorogation in 2019. There is no circumstance in which the Monarch would set themselves against the incumbent Executive. They will do as they are told. Anything else is too risky.
I don’t think that’s right.
What leads you to believe that the Monarch would act differently?
Because what you’re talking about is essentially a coup. I have no doubt whatsoever the crown would step in to prevent that, indirectly and discreetly most likely but if that wasn’t possible then with both barrels. We’re also not unlikely to have a new monarch before the next scheduled general election date. And he’s likely to be a more interventionist monarch than ERII.
On drugs: legalise, license (to start at least), educate.
Educate? You proposing a continental cafe-style approach to cocaine where a family lingers for a whole afternoon over a shared line? Blind sniffings where the terroir of the Amazon basin is discussed? Doesn't work. Cocaine is the stuff which makes you think stuffing bangers up your arse is a good idea. that's what it's for.
Talking of terroir it would make sense to me that penalties for drug dealing take into account the provenance of the drugs and whether further illegality and violence is likely to have been involved upstream. Heroin and (particularly) Cocaine are the end point of a supply chain that funds some pretty unsavoury characters and props up extremist governments and factions. Whereas most cannabis and synthetic drugs are produced here and whilst probably funding a bunch of local crime are not quite so tied up with global human rights abuses and environmental degradation.
On drugs: legalise, license (to start at least), educate.
Legalise, retail in state monopoly shops (ditto booze+fags), tax-to-fuck, use tax collected (and expenditure saved from lower law enforcement/incarceration costs) to educate and treat.
On drugs: legalise, license (to start at least), educate.
Educate? You proposing a continental cafe-style approach to cocaine where a family lingers for a whole afternoon over a shared line? Blind sniffings where the terroir of the Amazon basin is discussed? Doesn't work. Cocaine is the stuff which makes you think stuffing bangers up your arse is a good idea. that's what it's for.
That sounds a bit like some of the government's current policy approach.
Good morning everyone. Colder again, and rain is forecast. Rain can, if course, be expected in a British winter. Crackdown..... there's an appropriate word in the circumstances .... after crackdown has been tried in the 'War on Drugs' and doesn't seem to work. What would work is legalising one or two 'softer drugs', unless of course cocaine use, prevalent, certainly at one time, AIUI, among the nobility and gentry, is now so widespread that it's the drug of choice.
And if it is, then the war has been well and truly lost, and we'll have to think of a completely new strategy.
Several decades of Western drugs policy have been a total failure.
You either need to go down the full Bangkok / Dubai route, and throw users in prison for personal amounts - or you legalise them and sell drugs in pharmacies, rather than on the street.
When I were a lad the only places one could buy alcohol other than pubs were off-licences, possibly attached to grocers, but by no means all grocers. In some place pharmacies had them too. Now one can buy take-away alcohol very easily and we have more a problem with street drinking. I wonder if there's a connection.
That is the demand side. Drug usage might indeed go up.
But this is to ignore the criminal structure of the supply side. There weren't fast boats coming into the Dover coast loaded with contraband cases of Latour '61. More's the pity.
Perhaps we could ask those asylum seekers to pack a few cases in their dinghies?
Whether they are yuppies or football hooligans should make no difference. Cocaine users should face stiff penalties. Their demand is responsible for the supply chain, and all that involves. The blood is on their hands.
And that should include those in public office or are 'celebrities' who have confessed to their crimes.
"Parliament to pass an interpretation bill" . . . that's not ministers overruling judges, that's Parliament passing laws as its sovereign to do.
That is entirely reasonable. If the courts pass anything that Parliament doesn't like then Parliament must be allowed to correct the course by passing a new bill to override it.
Depends what they mean, which is far from clear to my non-expert eyes. If they mean legislating forwards then yeah, ok, but I don't feel comfortable about converyor-belt legislation. If it's striking down judges' decisions, then it resembles (is?) retroactive legislation. That cannot be tolerated, even by you.
I mean the former.
If a Judge interprets a law badly, and Parliament clarifies the law for next time, then that is Parliament doing its own job.
It is for Parliament to determine what the law is, not Judges.
Please don't embarrass yourself talking nonsense about the law again. I have fee-paying work to do this week and won't have the time to correct the many mistakes you will undoubtedly make. Thank you.
There's always the Northern Irish protocol. We haven't heard about that for a while. 🤔
I didn't say anything about the law, I was referring to Parliament's ability to change the law. That's different.
Do you deny that if Parliament is unhappy with how the law is applied that they can change the law for going forwards?
I specifically agreed that Parliament should NOT pass retrospective changes. Though it does have the ability to do so too, I find it extremely unethical to do it.
Seems pretty clear thats the plan though. The rules do not apply to them. If a court makes a judgement they don't like, just strike it down.
I agree that parliament is free to pass any law that it sees fit, including laws that reverse court rulings. But you and I both know that this lot have zero interest in the rule of law so won't bother to wait for the new law to pass before ignoring the existing law.
The police never investigate the past apparently. So why would they investigate ministers in flagrant breach of a law they are about to change?
What Johnson is proposing would allow the government to extend its life indefinitely. Should it become law it would end our democracy. Johnson is often described as an instinctive libertarian. That. of course, is nonsense. From making it harder to vote and removing the right to public protest to making UK citizens less able as individuals to live, work and study where they choose, he has presided over the removal of more personal freedoms than any other peacetime Prime Minister in modern British history. He has no attachment to democracy. The only liberty he has any interest in is his own.
As I understand it, this isn't quite as bad as ending democracy, though it's bad enough. If correctly reported, it's a second U-turn on the right to judicial review. Originally the Government proposed to restrict the grounds on which you could ask courts to review whether the Government was obeying the law. That was largely dropped in the current Justice Bill after an outcry. They are now proposing to reintroduce leglislation on the subject, not aimed at review directly but giving them the power to overrule a judicial review decision that they don't like. Arguably that's worse than restricting access to review, since it does gives ministers power to ignore a verdict on how the existing law should be applied.
Judicial review is difficult and expensive in any case (I've conducted one for Compassion in World Farming which achieved its objective without having to get to the final stage). You're right that in theory any Government decision that was successfully challenged could under this proposal be maintained anyway. That said, abolishing elections would in fact certainly require new legislation. A more insidious example would be if the Government applied existing legislation unfairly, e.g. refusing to give reasonable compensation for something they'd done wrong.
You don't abolish elections, you just decide not to hold them.
The monarch would dissolve parliament after 5 years and order a general election to be held if the government of the day refused to do so.
That is one of the benefits of having a constitutional monarch
I thought this was so, but the position of the Monarch is so weak that it is not the case. HMQ will act on the advice of her Ministers. No more and no less. She may as well be a hand puppet.
We saw this with the prorogation in 2019. There is no circumstance in which the Monarch would set themselves against the incumbent Executive. They will do as they are told. Anything else is too risky.
Rubbish. The monarch suspended Parliament for a few weeks in 2019 until the courts ruled on the constitutional nature of it because diehard Remainers like you refused to respect the EU referendum result. She also signed the Benn Act, an Act passed by diehard Remariners like you to try and block Brexit.
There is a difference between those incidents and the monarch allowing their government to never call a general election and stay in power forever. In those circumstances the monarch would indeed dissolve parliament and force a general election after 5 years and as the armed forces ultimately are headed by the monarch not the PM there is nothing the government could do about it _________________________________________________________________________
Because a PM who calls himself a Conservative did it, it must have right. Is that your case?
Wow so no 10 wants to just ignore judges rulings. You’d expect to see this in a banana Republic not the UK , very sad and disturbing . Good luck trying to lecture other countries on democracy.
The government can pass whatever laws they want anyway, as long as they persuade enough MPs to support whatever it is.
Really I never knew ! You’re missing the point entirely , enacting legislation that just overrides a judges ruling is quite different to enacting legislation that addresses any judgement and seeks to alter the original law.
The fact that this story isn’t the main headline across all outlets is deeply troubling .
Sorry, that was a silly comment by me.
No worries . This latest attack on the judiciary is very worrying . This would mean that citizens seeking judicial review could win their case and the government could just ignore this , it would by effect put people off seeking judicial review . It’s an attack on the rights of citizens .
Yes - if they don't like judicial decisions then they need to change the law it is based on; not just nullify the decisions themselves. Otherwise they are circumventing due process.
The government decides not to call an election after five years in office. It is taken to court in an effort to force it to do so. The courts rule against the government. The government overrides the courts. That is what this legislation would allow. As I say, you can either be a democrat or a supporter of this government. You cannot be both.
Not picking on you for any particular reason, because you're just one of several people to do this... but how on earth, based solely on one newspaper story and a headline which contradicts the text of the story, is anyone able to definitively say what "this legislation would allow"?
I am confused about Braverman and Raab. They appear to have both been competent and respected lawyers in their past lives. It is hard to understand how, after a few years in politics, they can fall to the point where they can be used in such a humiliating way. Both come across as complete clowns. The contrast with Geoffrey Cox and Robert Buckland is very noticeable.
You are hugely overstating how competent and respected both Raab and Braverman are. Raab was not taken on as a lawyer by Linklaters at the end of his articles. Braverman was an average barrister who was somewhat economical with the actualite of her CV as a barrister and whose attempt at arguing the criminal law in the case of the Harper case (the policeman killed by being dragged behind a car) was dismissed as utterly hopeless and misguided by the court in terms of politely withering contempt.
Buckland is no great shakes. He hardly set the Welsh circuit on his fire with his oratory.
Cox for all his faults actually knows that a lawyer must give his honest legal advice and not just what his client wants to hear. He, more than anyone, ironically enough, is responsible for Johnson being PM. It was his legal advice on May's deal which scuppered her final chance to get it through and set the stage for Johnson to grab the crown. He would not trim his legal advice to suit her political needs.
Something mesmerisingly beautiful witnessing a crafted demolition.
The problem with cocaine use is it is now endemic. Sure. You could lock all users up. But the country would be covered in jails and sectors of the economy would grind to a halt.
Whether they are yuppies or football hooligans should make no difference. Cocaine users should face stiff penalties. Their demand is responsible for the supply chain, and all that involves. The blood is on their hands.
And that should include those in public office or are 'celebrities' who have confessed to their crimes.
Part of the problem is that we're also classing a whole range of substances bluntly together. According to the article I posted yesterday from Harvard's medical school, for instance, the US DEA is about to get caught out in its class A classification of hallucinogens, because there are now so many therapeutic trials underway for use of them in carefully controlled circumstances, that the science classificatory body is about to come into conflict with the DEA and cancel out their classification.
Good morning. Still 3 000+ homes without power up here. And Storm Barra due tomorrow. Scotland all back on I believe.
The compare and contrast between England and Scotland has been stark. In Scotland the network provider has been providing very regular updates to people, has paid for hot food every day and provided feeding stations in the centre of affected towns / villages. In England I know several people who have had nothing and were told by the network operator to stop asking them for the updates they weren't getting.
FIA give Verstappen a 10 second time penalty for causing a collision
Still leaves him p2.
A fair penalty would have been a 20 place grid penalty for the next race.
I just watched the race again, with a clear head and a coffee - and the more you see it, the worse it gets.
The governance is a total shambles, and it looks like they want to turn it into wrestling rather than a fair competition. For how long will serious companies such as Mercedes want to be involved in such a farce?
This piece nails it.
Max Verstappen looks ready to crash for the title - his driving has become more reckless than audacious.
Dutchman is facing a rival who makes precious few mistakes leaving a repeat of 1990 in their Abu Dhabi showdown on the cards
It's interesting to note the European press have turned against Verstappen.
This from El Pais is typical.
Verstappen performed a “strange manoeuvre” causing the touch with Hamilton....and that he turned the struggle for the championship into a dirty fight.”
We all need to be very clear that all the protagonists were pulling every trick they could this weekend. That includes Hamilton and Arse on the illegal go slow...
The monarch would dissolve parliament after 5 years and order a general election to be held if the government of the day refused to do so.
That is one of the benefits of having a constitutional monarch
I thought this was so, but the position of the Monarch is so weak that it is not the case. HMQ will act on the advice of her Ministers. No more and no less. She may as well be a hand puppet.
We saw this with the prorogation in 2019. There is no circumstance in which the Monarch would set themselves against the incumbent Executive. They will do as they are told. Anything else is too risky.
Rubbish. The monarch suspended Parliament for a few weeks in 2019 until the courts ruled on the constitutional nature of it because diehard Remainers like you refused to respect the EU referendum result. She also signed the Benn Act, an Act passed by diehard Remariners like you to try and block Brexit.
There is a difference between those incidents and the monarch allowing their government to never call a general election and stay in power forever. In those circumstances the monarch would indeed dissolve parliament and force a general election after 5 years and as the armed forces ultimately are headed by the monarch not the PM there is nothing the government could do about it
Sigh. Do not speak falsehoods about me. I accepted the referendum result.
The prorogation was ruled to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and the Monarch meekly did as she was told by her Ministers in bringing it about. This is very strong evidence that she is too weak to play any role in safeguarding our democracy.
Republicans have had this all wrong. They still concentrate their criticism of the monarchy on them having too much power, but the truth of the matter is that their lack of democratic legitimacy means they are unable to play the crucial role of an independent bulwark against authoritarianism. They're too weak, not too strong, and it's why we need an elected head of state.
Edit: fixing broken quotes. And spelling. I'll go back to bed now.
"Parliament to pass an interpretation bill" . . . that's not ministers overruling judges, that's Parliament passing laws as its sovereign to do.
That is entirely reasonable. If the courts pass anything that Parliament doesn't like then Parliament must be allowed to correct the course by passing a new bill to override it.
Depends what they mean, which is far from clear to my non-expert eyes. If they mean legislating forwards then yeah, ok, but I don't feel comfortable about converyor-belt legislation. If it's striking down judges' decisions, then it resembles (is?) retroactive legislation. That cannot be tolerated, even by you.
I mean the former.
If a Judge interprets a law badly, and Parliament clarifies the law for next time, then that is Parliament doing its own job.
It is for Parliament to determine what the law is, not Judges.
Please don't embarrass yourself talking nonsense about the law again. I have fee-paying work to do this week and won't have the time to correct the many mistakes you will undoubtedly make. Thank you.
There's always the Northern Irish protocol. We haven't heard about that for a while. 🤔
What’s the odds that Philip ignores your legal advice?
I suspect the GP practices simply don't have time to do it - many GPs have multiple patients with 12-18 months of long term illnesses that haven't been properly treated to deal with.
"Parliament to pass an interpretation bill" . . . that's not ministers overruling judges, that's Parliament passing laws as its sovereign to do.
That is entirely reasonable. If the courts pass anything that Parliament doesn't like then Parliament must be allowed to correct the course by passing a new bill to override it.
Depends what they mean, which is far from clear to my non-expert eyes. If they mean legislating forwards then yeah, ok, but I don't feel comfortable about converyor-belt legislation. If it's striking down judges' decisions, then it resembles (is?) retroactive legislation. That cannot be tolerated, even by you.
I mean the former.
If a Judge interprets a law badly, and Parliament clarifies the law for next time, then that is Parliament doing its own job.
It is for Parliament to determine what the law is, not Judges.
Please don't embarrass yourself talking nonsense about the law again. I have fee-paying work to do this week and won't have the time to correct the many mistakes you will undoubtedly make. Thank you.
There's always the Northern Irish protocol. We haven't heard about that for a while. 🤔
I didn't say anything about the law, I was referring to Parliament's ability to change the law. That's different.
Do you deny that if Parliament is unhappy with how the law is applied that they can change the law for going forwards?
I specifically agreed that Parliament should NOT pass retrospective changes. Though it does have the ability to do so too, I find it extremely unethical to do it.
Seems pretty clear thats the plan though. The rules do not apply to them. If a court makes a judgement they don't like, just strike it down.
I agree that parliament is free to pass any law that it sees fit, including laws that reverse court rulings. But you and I both know that this lot have zero interest in the rule of law so won't bother to wait for the new law to pass before ignoring the existing law.
The police never investigate the past apparently. So why would they investigate ministers in flagrant breach of a law they are about to change?
What Johnson is proposing would allow the government to extend its life indefinitely. Should it become law it would end our democracy. Johnson is often described as an instinctive libertarian. That. of course, is nonsense. From making it harder to vote and removing the right to public protest to making UK citizens less able as individuals to live, work and study where they choose, he has presided over the removal of more freedoms than any other peacetime Prime Minister in modern British history. He has no attachment to democracy. The only liberty he has any interest in is his own.
By ‘making it harder to vote’ you presumably refer to voter ID? I find it astonishing that people object to proving who you are when you vote. I have to use a fecking password to post on an anonymous chat room like PB FFS.
That doesn't prove who you are, though, does it ? And I'm reasonably sure you're not really called turbotubbs.
Fair point, although I did run the London marathon with 'Tubbs' on the shirt, and have been known as 'Turbo' at one cricket club...
Whether they are yuppies or football hooligans should make no difference. Cocaine users should face stiff penalties. Their demand is responsible for the supply chain, and all that involves. The blood is on their hands.
And that should include those in public office or are 'celebrities' who have confessed to their crimes.
About 15 million of us have taken drugs at some point. Lock us all up if you like but your taxes will be lively!
Or just randomly select those of us on the fringes of society or those in public office to set an example, but that is not really fair is it?
FIA give Verstappen a 10 second time penalty for causing a collision
Still leaves him p2.
A fair penalty would have been a 20 place grid penalty for the next race.
I just watched the race again, with a clear head and a coffee - and the more you see it, the worse it gets.
The governance is a total shambles, and it looks like they want to turn it into wrestling rather than a fair competition. For how long will serious companies such as Mercedes want to be involved in such a farce?
This piece nails it.
Max Verstappen looks ready to crash for the title - his driving has become more reckless than audacious.
Dutchman is facing a rival who makes precious few mistakes leaving a repeat of 1990 in their Abu Dhabi showdown on the cards
It's interesting to note the European press have turned against Verstappen.
This from El Pais is typical.
Verstappen performed a “strange manoeuvre” causing the touch with Hamilton....and that he turned the struggle for the championship into a dirty fight.”
We all need to be very clear that all the protagonists were pulling every trick they could this weekend. That includes Hamilton and Arse on the illegal go slow...
It wasn't illegal.
The car lengths rule is clear. Don't worry about the ambiguity on the restart and look at the actual formation lap and the safety car. Its a minor infringement but it is breaking the rules.
"Parliament to pass an interpretation bill" . . . that's not ministers overruling judges, that's Parliament passing laws as its sovereign to do.
That is entirely reasonable. If the courts pass anything that Parliament doesn't like then Parliament must be allowed to correct the course by passing a new bill to override it.
Depends what they mean, which is far from clear to my non-expert eyes. If they mean legislating forwards then yeah, ok, but I don't feel comfortable about converyor-belt legislation. If it's striking down judges' decisions, then it resembles (is?) retroactive legislation. That cannot be tolerated, even by you.
I mean the former.
If a Judge interprets a law badly, and Parliament clarifies the law for next time, then that is Parliament doing its own job.
It is for Parliament to determine what the law is, not Judges.
Please don't embarrass yourself talking nonsense about the law again. I have fee-paying work to do this week and won't have the time to correct the many mistakes you will undoubtedly make. Thank you.
There's always the Northern Irish protocol. We haven't heard about that for a while. 🤔
I didn't say anything about the law, I was referring to Parliament's ability to change the law. That's different.
Do you deny that if Parliament is unhappy with how the law is applied that they can change the law for going forwards?
I specifically agreed that Parliament should NOT pass retrospective changes. Though it does have the ability to do so too, I find it extremely unethical to do it.
Seems pretty clear thats the plan though. The rules do not apply to them. If a court makes a judgement they don't like, just strike it down.
I agree that parliament is free to pass any law that it sees fit, including laws that reverse court rulings. But you and I both know that this lot have zero interest in the rule of law so won't bother to wait for the new law to pass before ignoring the existing law.
The police never investigate the past apparently. So why would they investigate ministers in flagrant breach of a law they are about to change?
What Johnson is proposing would allow the government to extend its life indefinitely. Should it become law it would end our democracy. Johnson is often described as an instinctive libertarian. That. of course, is nonsense. From making it harder to vote and removing the right to public protest to making UK citizens less able as individuals to live, work and study where they choose, he has presided over the removal of more personal freedoms than any other peacetime Prime Minister in modern British history. He has no attachment to democracy. The only liberty he has any interest in is his own.
As I understand it, this isn't quite as bad as ending democracy, though it's bad enough. If correctly reported, it's a second U-turn on the right to judicial review. Originally the Government proposed to restrict the grounds on which you could ask courts to review whether the Government was obeying the law. That was largely dropped in the current Justice Bill after an outcry. They are now proposing to reintroduce leglislation on the subject, not aimed at review directly but giving them the power to overrule a judicial review decision that they don't like. Arguably that's worse than restricting access to review, since it does gives ministers power to ignore a verdict on how the existing law should be applied.
Judicial review is difficult and expensive in any case (I've conducted one for Compassion in World Farming which achieved its objective without having to get to the final stage). You're right that in theory any Government decision that was successfully challenged could under this proposal be maintained anyway. That said, abolishing elections would in fact certainly require new legislation. A more insidious example would be if the Government applied existing legislation unfairly, e.g. refusing to give reasonable compensation for something they'd done wrong.
You don't abolish elections, you just decide not to hold them.
The monarch would dissolve parliament after 5 years and order a general election to be held if the government of the day refused to do so.
That is one of the benefits of having a constitutional monarch
I thought this was so, but the position of the Monarch is so weak that it is not the case. HMQ will act on the advice of her Ministers. No more and no less. She may as well be a hand puppet.
We saw this with the prorogation in 2019. There is no circumstance in which the Monarch would set themselves against the incumbent Executive. They will do as they are told. Anything else is too risky.
I don’t think that’s right.
What leads you to believe that the Monarch would act differently?
Because what you’re talking about is essentially a coup. I have no doubt whatsoever the crown would step in to prevent that, indirectly and discreetly most likely but if that wasn’t possible then with both barrels. We’re also not unlikely to have a new monarch before the next scheduled general election date. And he’s likely to be a more interventionist monarch than ERII.
"Parliament to pass an interpretation bill" . . . that's not ministers overruling judges, that's Parliament passing laws as its sovereign to do.
That is entirely reasonable. If the courts pass anything that Parliament doesn't like then Parliament must be allowed to correct the course by passing a new bill to override it.
Depends what they mean, which is far from clear to my non-expert eyes. If they mean legislating forwards then yeah, ok, but I don't feel comfortable about converyor-belt legislation. If it's striking down judges' decisions, then it resembles (is?) retroactive legislation. That cannot be tolerated, even by you.
I mean the former.
If a Judge interprets a law badly, and Parliament clarifies the law for next time, then that is Parliament doing its own job.
It is for Parliament to determine what the law is, not Judges.
Please don't embarrass yourself talking nonsense about the law again. I have fee-paying work to do this week and won't have the time to correct the many mistakes you will undoubtedly make. Thank you.
There's always the Northern Irish protocol. We haven't heard about that for a while. 🤔
I didn't say anything about the law, I was referring to Parliament's ability to change the law. That's different.
Do you deny that if Parliament is unhappy with how the law is applied that they can change the law for going forwards?
I specifically agreed that Parliament should NOT pass retrospective changes. Though it does have the ability to do so too, I find it extremely unethical to do it.
Seems pretty clear thats the plan though. The rules do not apply to them. If a court makes a judgement they don't like, just strike it down.
I agree that parliament is free to pass any law that it sees fit, including laws that reverse court rulings. But you and I both know that this lot have zero interest in the rule of law so won't bother to wait for the new law to pass before ignoring the existing law.
The police never investigate the past apparently. So why would they investigate ministers in flagrant breach of a law they are about to change?
What Johnson is proposing would allow the government to extend its life indefinitely. Should it become law it would end our democracy. Johnson is often described as an instinctive libertarian. That. of course, is nonsense. From making it harder to vote and removing the right to public protest to making UK citizens less able as individuals to live, work and study where they choose, he has presided over the removal of more personal freedoms than any other peacetime Prime Minister in modern British history. He has no attachment to democracy. The only liberty he has any interest in is his own.
As I understand it, this isn't quite as bad as ending democracy, though it's bad enough. If correctly reported, it's a second U-turn on the right to judicial review. Originally the Government proposed to restrict the grounds on which you could ask courts to review whether the Government was obeying the law. That was largely dropped in the current Justice Bill after an outcry. They are now proposing to reintroduce leglislation on the subject, not aimed at review directly but giving them the power to overrule a judicial review decision that they don't like. Arguably that's worse than restricting access to review, since it does gives ministers power to ignore a verdict on how the existing law should be applied.
Judicial review is difficult and expensive in any case (I've conducted one for Compassion in World Farming which achieved its objective without having to get to the final stage). You're right that in theory any Government decision that was successfully challenged could under this proposal be maintained anyway. That said, abolishing elections would in fact certainly require new legislation. A more insidious example would be if the Government applied existing legislation unfairly, e.g. refusing to give reasonable compensation for something they'd done wrong.
You don't abolish elections, you just decide not to hold them.
The monarch would dissolve parliament after 5 years and order a general election to be held if the government of the day refused to do so.
That is one of the benefits of having a constitutional monarch
I thought this was so, but the position of the Monarch is so weak that it is not the case. HMQ will act on the advice of her Ministers. No more and no less. She may as well be a hand puppet.
We saw this with the prorogation in 2019. There is no circumstance in which the Monarch would set themselves against the incumbent Executive. They will do as they are told. Anything else is too risky.
I don’t think that’s right.
What leads you to believe that the Monarch would act differently?
Because what you’re talking about is essentially a coup. I have no doubt whatsoever the crown would step in to prevent that, indirectly and discreetly most likely but if that wasn’t possible then with both barrels. We’re also not unlikely to have a new monarch before the next scheduled general election date. And he’s likely to be a more interventionist monarch than ERII.
"Parliament to pass an interpretation bill" . . . that's not ministers overruling judges, that's Parliament passing laws as its sovereign to do.
That is entirely reasonable. If the courts pass anything that Parliament doesn't like then Parliament must be allowed to correct the course by passing a new bill to override it.
Depends what they mean, which is far from clear to my non-expert eyes. If they mean legislating forwards then yeah, ok, but I don't feel comfortable about converyor-belt legislation. If it's striking down judges' decisions, then it resembles (is?) retroactive legislation. That cannot be tolerated, even by you.
I mean the former.
If a Judge interprets a law badly, and Parliament clarifies the law for next time, then that is Parliament doing its own job.
It is for Parliament to determine what the law is, not Judges.
Please don't embarrass yourself talking nonsense about the law again. I have fee-paying work to do this week and won't have the time to correct the many mistakes you will undoubtedly make. Thank you.
There's always the Northern Irish protocol. We haven't heard about that for a while. 🤔
I didn't say anything about the law, I was referring to Parliament's ability to change the law. That's different.
Do you deny that if Parliament is unhappy with how the law is applied that they can change the law for going forwards?
I specifically agreed that Parliament should NOT pass retrospective changes. Though it does have the ability to do so too, I find it extremely unethical to do it.
Seems pretty clear thats the plan though. The rules do not apply to them. If a court makes a judgement they don't like, just strike it down.
I agree that parliament is free to pass any law that it sees fit, including laws that reverse court rulings. But you and I both know that this lot have zero interest in the rule of law so won't bother to wait for the new law to pass before ignoring the existing law.
The police never investigate the past apparently. So why would they investigate ministers in flagrant breach of a law they are about to change?
What Johnson is proposing would allow the government to extend its life indefinitely. Should it become law it would end our democracy. Johnson is often described as an instinctive libertarian. That. of course, is nonsense. From making it harder to vote and removing the right to public protest to making UK citizens less able as individuals to live, work and study where they choose, he has presided over the removal of more personal freedoms than any other peacetime Prime Minister in modern British history. He has no attachment to democracy. The only liberty he has any interest in is his own.
As I understand it, this isn't quite as bad as ending democracy, though it's bad enough. If correctly reported, it's a second U-turn on the right to judicial review. Originally the Government proposed to restrict the grounds on which you could ask courts to review whether the Government was obeying the law. That was largely dropped in the current Justice Bill after an outcry. They are now proposing to reintroduce leglislation on the subject, not aimed at review directly but giving them the power to overrule a judicial review decision that they don't like. Arguably that's worse than restricting access to review, since it does gives ministers power to ignore a verdict on how the existing law should be applied.
Judicial review is difficult and expensive in any case (I've conducted one for Compassion in World Farming which achieved its objective without having to get to the final stage). You're right that in theory any Government decision that was successfully challenged could under this proposal be maintained anyway. That said, abolishing elections would in fact certainly require new legislation. A more insidious example would be if the Government applied existing legislation unfairly, e.g. refusing to give reasonable compensation for something they'd done wrong.
You don't abolish elections, you just decide not to hold them.
The monarch would dissolve parliament after 5 years and order a general election to be held if the government of the day refused to do so.
That is one of the benefits of having a constitutional monarch
I thought this was so, but the position of the Monarch is so weak that it is not the case. HMQ will act on the advice of her Ministers. No more and no less. She may as well be a hand puppet.
We saw this with the prorogation in 2019. There is no circumstance in which the Monarch would set themselves against the incumbent Executive. They will do as they are told. Anything else is too risky.
I don’t think that’s right.
What leads you to believe that the Monarch would act differently?
Because what you’re talking about is essentially a coup. I have no doubt whatsoever the crown would step in to prevent that, indirectly and discreetly most likely but if that wasn’t possible then with both barrels. We’re also not unlikely to have a new monarch before the next scheduled general election date. And he’s likely to be a more interventionist monarch than ERII.
l am sure the Queen would likely do so too. However you are correct, Prince Charles is a historian and more of an intellectual than his mother and King Charles IIIrd will also be fully aware of his powers as monarch and prepared to use them if needed, King Charles would certainly dissolve parliament and force a general election after 5 years if his PM refused to do so in the full knowledge he as King also heads the armed forces and could therefore force that election to be held whatever the government thought
Good morning. Still 3 000+ homes without power up here. And Storm Barra due tomorrow. Scotland all back on I believe.
The compare and contrast between England and Scotland has been stark. In Scotland the network provider has been providing very regular updates to people, has paid for hot food every day and provided feeding stations in the centre of affected towns / villages. In England I know several people who have had nothing and were told by the network operator to stop asking them for the updates they weren't getting.
Yep. Had a friend off 5 days. In a town of more than 13k population. No mobile signal. No information whatsoever. Luckily he had an open fire. It's not been much above freezing and is now nine days in. Scandalous really.
FIA give Verstappen a 10 second time penalty for causing a collision
Still leaves him p2.
A fair penalty would have been a 20 place grid penalty for the next race.
I just watched the race again, with a clear head and a coffee - and the more you see it, the worse it gets.
The governance is a total shambles, and it looks like they want to turn it into wrestling rather than a fair competition. For how long will serious companies such as Mercedes want to be involved in such a farce?
This piece nails it.
Max Verstappen looks ready to crash for the title - his driving has become more reckless than audacious.
Dutchman is facing a rival who makes precious few mistakes leaving a repeat of 1990 in their Abu Dhabi showdown on the cards
It's interesting to note the European press have turned against Verstappen.
This from El Pais is typical.
Verstappen performed a “strange manoeuvre” causing the touch with Hamilton....and that he turned the struggle for the championship into a dirty fight.”
We all need to be very clear that all the protagonists were pulling every trick they could this weekend. That includes Hamilton and Arse on the illegal go slow...
It wasn't illegal.
The car lengths rule is clear. Don't worry about the ambiguity on the restart and look at the actual formation lap and the safety car. Its a minor infringement but it is breaking the rules.
Michael Masi said on the radio that it is not a formation lap after the race as begun.
The monarch would dissolve parliament after 5 years and order a general election to be held if the government of the day refused to do so.
That is one of the benefits of having a constitutional monarch
I thought this was so, but the position of the Monarch is so weak that it is not the case. HMQ will act on the advice of her Ministers. No more and no less. She may as well be a hand puppet.
We saw this with the prorogation in 2019. There is no circumstance in which the Monarch would set themselves against the incumbent Executive. They will do as they are told. Anything else is too risky.
Rubbish. The monarch suspended Parliament for a few weeks in 2019 until the courts ruled on the constitutional nature of it because diehard Remainers like you refused to respect the EU referendum result. She also signed the Benn Act, an Act passed by diehard Remariners like you to try and block Brexit.
There is a difference between those incidents and the monarch allowing their government to never call a general election and stay in power forever. In those circumstances the monarch would indeed dissolve parliament and force a general election after 5 years and as the armed forces ultimately are headed by the monarch not the PM there is nothing the government could do about it
Sigh. Do not speak falsehoods about me. I accepted the referendum result.
The prorogation was ruled to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and the Monarch meekly did as she was told by her Ministers in bringing it about. This is very strong evidence that she is too weak to play any role in safeguarding our democracy.
Republicans have had this all wrong. They still concentrate their criticism of the monarchy on them having too much power, but the truth of the matter is that their lack of democratic legitimacy means they are unable to play the crucial role of an independent bulwark against authoritarianism. They're too weak, not too strong, and it's why we need an elected head of state.
Edit: fixing broken quotes. And spelling. I'll go back to bed now.
Because Russia, Brazil, the US etc work so well with elected heads of state. In the US in January Trump almost stayed in power via coup and constitutions like the US can in theory be changed if the president's party wins Congress and state legislatures by a big enough margin to ensure the President stays in power indefinitely without facing re election
The problem with cocaine use is it is now endemic. Sure. You could lock all users up. But the country would be covered in jails and sectors of the economy would grind to a halt.
Good morning. Still 3 000+ homes without power up here. And Storm Barra due tomorrow. Scotland all back on I believe.
The compare and contrast between England and Scotland has been stark. In Scotland the network provider has been providing very regular updates to people, has paid for hot food every day and provided feeding stations in the centre of affected towns / villages. In England I know several people who have had nothing and were told by the network operator to stop asking them for the updates they weren't getting.
Yep. Had a friend off 5 days. In a town of more than 13k population. No mobile signal. No information whatsoever. Luckily he had an open fire. It's not been much above freezing and is now nine days in. Scandalous really.
It would be much more efficient if it were in private hands........ Oh, wait.
People act like prorogation was some constitutional outrage or that the monarch should have intervened. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Until the Supreme Court invented the grounds for overturning the prorogation it was entirely legal.
The standard due process for having one was followed in full. It is worth remembering that England's prior court before the Supreme Court had ruled that the prorogation was legal. If that ruling had been upheld by the Supreme Court instead of being overturned, then on what grounds should the Queen have pre-empted it by denying the prorogation?
The Supreme Court issued its ruling, which was then implemented, but prior courts had disagreed, so its not like the issue was always obvious which way it would go.
The problem with cocaine use is it is now endemic. Sure. You could lock all users up. But the country would be covered in jails and sectors of the economy would grind to a halt.
Just heard a short clip of BJ trying to do serious politician over new drugs policy. While his comic turns are of course apex arsehole, BJ being prime ministerial really turns the stomach. At least unserious Boris is the authentic Boris.
The problem with cocaine use is it is now endemic. Sure. You could lock all users up. But the country would be covered in jails and sectors of the economy would grind to a halt.
"sectors of the economy"
Financial services, law and the media?
Do you really believe it is only the middle classes? You are believing the government spin. They are trying to tee this up as ordinary folk vs the Elite. And you are lapping it up.
FWIW I think Whinger Spice made a huge mistake post race and said Michael Masi is shit (I paraphrase, he said something along the lines of saying we missed Charlie Whiting today.)
The same Michael Masi, who’s given Spice an inch and let him take a mile, for pretty much the whole season?
I genuinely fear that the last race is going to end in a deliberate crash, Max was at best ambivalent yesterday on several occasions, as to whether an accident happened.
You know that grandstand at the chicane, where the runoff area goes under it? Well that’s where I’ll be sitting next Sunday, genuinely scared for most of the race.
I do remember Schumacher of course. But if someone clearly causes a deliberate crash in that way, should that not result in a points deduction rather than just a time penalty? When do you get into Duncan Ferguson territory where behaviour in a pro sport slips into criminality?
If someone gets seriously injured, or worse, there can be one hell of a fallout.
When Senna died in an accident in Italy, there followed several years of investigations, enquiries and criminal proceedings that kept key members of the Williams team and race organisers away from the country, for fear they could be arrested for manslaughter or endangerment.
"Parliament to pass an interpretation bill" . . . that's not ministers overruling judges, that's Parliament passing laws as its sovereign to do.
That is entirely reasonable. If the courts pass anything that Parliament doesn't like then Parliament must be allowed to correct the course by passing a new bill to override it.
Depends what they mean, which is far from clear to my non-expert eyes. If they mean legislating forwards then yeah, ok, but I don't feel comfortable about converyor-belt legislation. If it's striking down judges' decisions, then it resembles (is?) retroactive legislation. That cannot be tolerated, even by you.
I mean the former.
If a Judge interprets a law badly, and Parliament clarifies the law for next time, then that is Parliament doing its own job.
It is for Parliament to determine what the law is, not Judges.
Please don't embarrass yourself talking nonsense about the law again. I have fee-paying work to do this week and won't have the time to correct the many mistakes you will undoubtedly make. Thank you.
There's always the Northern Irish protocol. We haven't heard about that for a while. 🤔
What’s the odds that Philip ignores your legal advice?
1/100
I'm a backer at that price.
Indeed. Not often you get a 1% return on a five minute investment.
Fortunately, I don’t pay the bills by bookmaking. The family aren’t keen on starvation.
Good morning. Still 3 000+ homes without power up here. And Storm Barra due tomorrow. Scotland all back on I believe.
The compare and contrast between England and Scotland has been stark. In Scotland the network provider has been providing very regular updates to people, has paid for hot food every day and provided feeding stations in the centre of affected towns / villages. In England I know several people who have had nothing and were told by the network operator to stop asking them for the updates they weren't getting.
Yep. Had a friend off 5 days. In a town of more than 13k population. No mobile signal. No information whatsoever. Luckily he had an open fire. It's not been much above freezing and is now nine days in. Scandalous really.
Yes it is. 92 year olds left without power and heating for 10 days.
Good morning. Still 3 000+ homes without power up here. And Storm Barra due tomorrow. Scotland all back on I believe.
The compare and contrast between England and Scotland has been stark. In Scotland the network provider has been providing very regular updates to people, has paid for hot food every day and provided feeding stations in the centre of affected towns / villages. In England I know several people who have had nothing and were told by the network operator to stop asking them for the updates they weren't getting.
Yep. Had a friend off 5 days. In a town of more than 13k population. No mobile signal. No information whatsoever. Luckily he had an open fire. It's not been much above freezing and is now nine days in. Scandalous really.
Only thing that has so far been offered seems to be that the limit of compensation is no longer limited to 5 days at £140 a day.
It's not good enough but equally I'm concerned that things are so bad that after 9 days it still isn't 100% fixed outside of isolated farms.
The monarch would dissolve parliament after 5 years and order a general election to be held if the government of the day refused to do so.
That is one of the benefits of having a constitutional monarch
I thought this was so, but the position of the Monarch is so weak that it is not the case. HMQ will act on the advice of her Ministers. No more and no less. She may as well be a hand puppet.
We saw this with the prorogation in 2019. There is no circumstance in which the Monarch would set themselves against the incumbent Executive. They will do as they are told. Anything else is too risky.
Rubbish. The monarch suspended Parliament for a few weeks in 2019 until the courts ruled on the constitutional nature of it because diehard Remainers like you refused to respect the EU referendum result. She also signed the Benn Act, an Act passed by diehard Remariners like you to try and block Brexit.
There is a difference between those incidents and the monarch allowing their government to never call a general election and stay in power forever. In those circumstances the monarch would indeed dissolve parliament and force a general election after 5 years and as the armed forces ultimately are headed by the monarch not the PM there is nothing the government could do about it
Sigh. Do not speak falsehoods about me. I accepted the referendum result.
The prorogation was ruled to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and the Monarch meekly did as she was told by her Ministers in bringing it about. This is very strong evidence that she is too weak to play any role in safeguarding our democracy.
Republicans have had this all wrong. They still concentrate their criticism of the monarchy on them having too much power, but the truth of the matter is that their lack of democratic legitimacy means they are unable to play the crucial role of an independent bulwark against authoritarianism. They're too weak, not too strong, and it's why we need an elected head of state.
Edit: fixing broken quotes. And spelling. I'll go back to bed now.
Because Russia, Brazil, the US etc work so well with elected heads of state, ev
The monarch would dissolve parliament after 5 years and order a general election to be held if the government of the day refused to do so.
That is one of the benefits of having a constitutional monarch
I thought this was so, but the position of the Monarch is so weak that it is not the case. HMQ will act on the advice of her Ministers. No more and no less. She may as well be a hand puppet.
We saw this with the prorogation in 2019. There is no circumstance in which the Monarch would set themselves against the incumbent Executive. They will do as they are told. Anything else is too risky.
Rubbish. The monarch suspended Parliament for a few weeks in 2019 until the courts ruled on the constitutional nature of it because diehard Remainers like you refused to respect the EU referendum result. She also signed the Benn Act, an Act passed by diehard Remariners like you to try and block Brexit.
There is a difference between those incidents and the monarch allowing their government to never call a general election and stay in power forever. In those circumstances the monarch would indeed dissolve parliament and force a general election after 5 years and as the armed forces ultimately are headed by the monarch not the PM there is nothing the government could do about it
Sigh. Do not speak falsehoods about me. I accepted the referendum result.
The prorogation was ruled to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and the Monarch meekly did as she was told by her Ministers in bringing it about. This is very strong evidence that she is too weak to play any role in safeguarding our democracy.
Republicans have had this all wrong. They still concentrate their criticism of the monarchy on them having too much power, but the truth of the matter is that their lack of democratic legitimacy means they are unable to play the crucial role of an independent bulwark against authoritarianism. They're too weak, not too strong, and it's why we need an elected head of state.
Edit: fixing broken quotes. And spelling. I'll go back to bed now.
Because Russia, Brazil, the US etc work so well with elected heads of state. In the US in January Trump almost stayed in power via coup and constitutions like the US can in theory be changed if the president's party wins Congress and state legislatures by a big enough margin to ensure the President stays in power indefinitely without facing re election
Actually, it's another example of the disastrous effects of the Norman Conquest. If William the Bastard had been driven off, then England would have been much closer, intellectually, to Scandinavia and Holland, with their much more easy going monarchies and far better democratic structures..
The problem with cocaine use is it is now endemic. Sure. You could lock all users up. But the country would be covered in jails and sectors of the economy would grind to a halt.
"sectors of the economy"
Financial services, law and the media?
Do you really believe it is only the middle classes? You are believing the government spin. They are trying to tee this up as ordinary folk vs the Elite. And you are lapping it up.
That's true. Cocaine use, for instance, crossed the class lines from City to council estate long ago, to become endemic. In fact, in the case of that drug, it's arguably also contributed to the increasing selfishness of our entire society over the last few decades.
More from the school of journalistic bollx concerning the virus.
Allison Pearson @AllisonPearson · 33m In the over 70s, 44% of those in ICU are unvaccinated compared to 55% who had two doses. In younger age groups, the no of unvaxxed in ICU is higher. By far the biggest factor for ICU COVID admission is not vaccination status but obesity.
That's mega vaccine efficacy when one considers that ~97% of over 70s are double jabbed.
Yup! Ms Pearson firmly in the “Most people injured in car accidents were wearing seatbelts” category of misleading statistics.
Too many people in the media are paid well to have a controversial opinion, and not enough are paid to be objective in their reporting.
She really shouldn't have her job, and she joins a very long line of journalists who have ended up looking like absolute fools during this pandemic.
People act like prorogation was some constitutional outrage or that the monarch should have intervened. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Until the Supreme Court invented the grounds for overturning the prorogation it was entirely legal.
The standard due process for having one was followed in full. It is worth remembering that England's prior court before the Supreme Court had ruled that the prorogation was legal. If that ruling had been upheld by the Supreme Court instead of being overturned, then on what grounds should the Queen have pre-empted it by denying the prorogation?
The Supreme Court issued its ruling, which was then implemented, but prior courts had disagreed, so its not like the issue was always obvious which way it would go.
Because this country used to be built on basic principles of right and wrong.
Good morning. Still 3 000+ homes without power up here. And Storm Barra due tomorrow. Scotland all back on I believe.
The compare and contrast between England and Scotland has been stark. In Scotland the network provider has been providing very regular updates to people, has paid for hot food every day and provided feeding stations in the centre of affected towns / villages. In England I know several people who have had nothing and were told by the network operator to stop asking them for the updates they weren't getting.
Yep. Had a friend off 5 days. In a town of more than 13k population. No mobile signal. No information whatsoever. Luckily he had an open fire. It's not been much above freezing and is now nine days in. Scandalous really.
Yes it is. 92 year olds left without power and heating for 10 days.
People act like prorogation was some constitutional outrage or that the monarch should have intervened. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Until the Supreme Court invented the grounds for overturning the prorogation it was entirely legal.
The standard due process for having one was followed in full. It is worth remembering that England's prior court before the Supreme Court had ruled that the prorogation was legal. If that ruling had been upheld by the Supreme Court instead of being overturned, then on what grounds should the Queen have pre-empted it by denying the prorogation?
The Supreme Court issued its ruling, which was then implemented, but prior courts had disagreed, so its not like the issue was always obvious which way it would go.
Because this country used to be built on basic principles of right and wrong.
And since when has the Monarch been the judge of what is right and what is wrong?
The monarch would dissolve parliament after 5 years and order a general election to be held if the government of the day refused to do so.
That is one of the benefits of having a constitutional monarch
I thought this was so, but the position of the Monarch is so weak that it is not the case. HMQ will act on the advice of her Ministers. No more and no less. She may as well be a hand puppet.
We saw this with the prorogation in 2019. There is no circumstance in which the Monarch would set themselves against the incumbent Executive. They will do as they are told. Anything else is too risky.
Rubbish. The monarch suspended Parliament for a few weeks in 2019 until the courts ruled on the constitutional nature of it because diehard Remainers like you refused to respect the EU referendum result. She also signed the Benn Act, an Act passed by diehard Remariners like you to try and block Brexit.
There is a difference between those incidents and the monarch allowing their government to never call a general election and stay in power forever. In those circumstances the monarch would indeed dissolve parliament and force a general election after 5 years and as the armed forces ultimately are headed by the monarch not the PM there is nothing the government could do about it
Sigh. Do not speak falsehoods about me. I accepted the referendum result.
Don't worry about @HYUFD making such claims. Remember, proper Tories believe in Brexit and he doesn't so he is pretty conflicted at the moment and therefore given to lashing out. A bit like those American fundamentalist preachers who rail against homosexuality only for it to turn out...
Good morning. Still 3 000+ homes without power up here. And Storm Barra due tomorrow. Scotland all back on I believe.
The compare and contrast between England and Scotland has been stark. In Scotland the network provider has been providing very regular updates to people, has paid for hot food every day and provided feeding stations in the centre of affected towns / villages. In England I know several people who have had nothing and were told by the network operator to stop asking them for the updates they weren't getting.
Yep. Had a friend off 5 days. In a town of more than 13k population. No mobile signal. No information whatsoever. Luckily he had an open fire. It's not been much above freezing and is now nine days in. Scandalous really.
Yes it is. 92 year olds left without power and heating for 10 days.
The problem with cocaine use is it is now endemic. Sure. You could lock all users up. But the country would be covered in jails and sectors of the economy would grind to a halt.
"sectors of the economy"
Financial services, law and the media?
That's a lazy cliche. Its use is far more widespread than that, and in fact while I have come across it many times in my life, during over a decade working in financial services I've never seen it being used by anyone I've worked with. Whereas I have for instance seen a load of salt of the earth white working class blokes (OK, Millwall fans) doing it in a pub toilet on New Cross Road. I don't necessarily approve of it (it makes people a bit obnoxious) but it's not particularly addictive and usually has a smaller effect on users than alcohol does so I don't really get the big hoo-ha about it.
People act like prorogation was some constitutional outrage or that the monarch should have intervened. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Until the Supreme Court invented the grounds for overturning the prorogation it was entirely legal.
The standard due process for having one was followed in full. It is worth remembering that England's prior court before the Supreme Court had ruled that the prorogation was legal. If that ruling had been upheld by the Supreme Court instead of being overturned, then on what grounds should the Queen have pre-empted it by denying the prorogation?
The Supreme Court issued its ruling, which was then implemented, but prior courts had disagreed, so its not like the issue was always obvious which way it would go.
Because this country used to be built on basic principles of right and wrong.
And since when has the Monarch been the judge of what is right and what is wrong?
Ever since she started letting Australian PMs get dismissed in her name.
The problem with cocaine use is it is now endemic. Sure. You could lock all users up. But the country would be covered in jails and sectors of the economy would grind to a halt.
"sectors of the economy"
Financial services, law and the media?
Do you really believe it is only the middle classes? You are believing the government spin. They are trying to tee this up as ordinary folk vs the Elite. And you are lapping it up.
Certainly Once Upon a Time, at least, cocaine was the preferred drug (after alcohol) of the Upper Classes. First user I met was a beautifully spoken and dressed young woman who 'worked' for a swish advertising firm.
Good morning. Still 3 000+ homes without power up here. And Storm Barra due tomorrow. Scotland all back on I believe.
The compare and contrast between England and Scotland has been stark. In Scotland the network provider has been providing very regular updates to people, has paid for hot food every day and provided feeding stations in the centre of affected towns / villages. In England I know several people who have had nothing and were told by the network operator to stop asking them for the updates they weren't getting.
Yep. Had a friend off 5 days. In a town of more than 13k population. No mobile signal. No information whatsoever. Luckily he had an open fire. It's not been much above freezing and is now nine days in. Scandalous really.
Only thing that has so far been offered seems to be that the limit of compensation is no longer limited to 5 days at £140 a day.
It's not good enough but equally I'm concerned that things are so bad that after 9 days it still isn't 100% fixed outside of isolated farms.
It’s also forecast to get colder up here as the week goes on too.
FIA give Verstappen a 10 second time penalty for causing a collision
Still leaves him p2.
A fair penalty would have been a 20 place grid penalty for the next race.
I just watched the race again, with a clear head and a coffee - and the more you see it, the worse it gets.
The governance is a total shambles, and it looks like they want to turn it into wrestling rather than a fair competition. For how long will serious companies such as Mercedes want to be involved in such a farce?
This piece nails it.
Max Verstappen looks ready to crash for the title - his driving has become more reckless than audacious.
Dutchman is facing a rival who makes precious few mistakes leaving a repeat of 1990 in their Abu Dhabi showdown on the cards
It's interesting to note the European press have turned against Verstappen.
This from El Pais is typical.
Verstappen performed a “strange manoeuvre” causing the touch with Hamilton....and that he turned the struggle for the championship into a dirty fight.”
We all need to be very clear that all the protagonists were pulling every trick they could this weekend. That includes Hamilton and Arse on the illegal go slow...
It wasn't illegal.
The car lengths rule is clear. Don't worry about the ambiguity on the restart and look at the actual formation lap and the safety car. Its a minor infringement but it is breaking the rules.
Michael Masi said on the radio that it is not a formation lap after the race as begun.
Correct, it’s a race lap behind the safety car, that finishes with a standing start. Article 43.1 of the Sporting Regulations applies.
Bottas driving a little slowly as they formed up behind the SC was not against the rules, which only specify a minimum time between marshal posts, not a maximum. Article 48.7. If he’d been “unnecessarily” slow in the pit lane itself, that would have been a penalty.
"Parliament to pass an interpretation bill" . . . that's not ministers overruling judges, that's Parliament passing laws as its sovereign to do.
That is entirely reasonable. If the courts pass anything that Parliament doesn't like then Parliament must be allowed to correct the course by passing a new bill to override it.
Depends what they mean, which is far from clear to my non-expert eyes. If they mean legislating forwards then yeah, ok, but I don't feel comfortable about converyor-belt legislation. If it's striking down judges' decisions, then it resembles (is?) retroactive legislation. That cannot be tolerated, even by you.
I mean the former.
If a Judge interprets a law badly, and Parliament clarifies the law for next time, then that is Parliament doing its own job.
It is for Parliament to determine what the law is, not Judges.
Please don't embarrass yourself talking nonsense about the law again. I have fee-paying work to do this week and won't have the time to correct the many mistakes you will undoubtedly make. Thank you.
There's always the Northern Irish protocol. We haven't heard about that for a while. 🤔
I didn't say anything about the law, I was referring to Parliament's ability to change the law. That's different.
Do you deny that if Parliament is unhappy with how the law is applied that they can change the law for going forwards?
I specifically agreed that Parliament should NOT pass retrospective changes. Though it does have the ability to do so too, I find it extremely unethical to do it.
Seems pretty clear thats the plan though. The rules do not apply to them. If a court makes a judgement they don't like, just strike it down.
I agree that parliament is free to pass any law that it sees fit, including laws that reverse court rulings. But you and I both know that this lot have zero interest in the rule of law so won't bother to wait for the new law to pass before ignoring the existing law.
The police never investigate the past apparently. So why would they investigate ministers in flagrant breach of a law they are about to change?
What Johnson is proposing would allow the government to extend its life indefinitely. Should it become law it would end our democracy. Johnson is often described as an instinctive libertarian. That. of course, is nonsense. From making it harder to vote and removing the right to public protest to making UK citizens less able as individuals to live, work and study where they choose, he has presided over the removal of more personal freedoms than any other peacetime Prime Minister in modern British history. He has no attachment to democracy. The only liberty he has any interest in is his own.
It really is extraordinarily. The government is simultaneously working with its favoured press to drip-feed exactly the opposite story, to its voters. According to the Daily Mail today here, Raab is seeking to "protect British freedom of speech from the drift towards Continental-style privacy laws".
This is designed to please liberarians on the right, like anti-mask wearers. What its actually about is a compact with the favourable press, to allow them to continue raising revenue, while favourably supporting the government through all its extremely concerning changes on governmental accountability and freedom. The term "Orwellian" has become a vastly over-used cliche, but it really is appropriate now.
Ian Hislop recently said he thought a modern day Maxwell could hide behind 'privacy' laws to stop the press revealing what he did wrong.
The balance between a free press and 'privacy' has gone far too far the illiberal direction in recent years. If the press print something that is false, then that can be libel but if they print something that is true then truth should be an absolute defence.
We need the equivalent of the US First Amendment.
Hislop's point would have more force if the press had in fact exposed Maxwell. But they didn't. It was legal and financial investigations after his death which did that.
I don't believe for a moment that the government is concerned about privacy laws by stealth. Such laws would suit those in power very well indeed. On the contrary they are simply using this to attack judges making decisions - completely ignoring the fact that in a common law system case law ie decisions by judges is how the law develops.
On the Xmas party issue last year, I only say this. I have sympathy on a personal level with people who have been working hard together wanting to celebrate at the end of the working day. Lots of us feel like that and felt in need of some human contact at the end of last year after what was a shit year.
But for the first time ever in my life, we had Xmas with my family all separated. I had not seen my two sons for months. Nor had my Daughter. We were apart from my husband. The result of that was that he and one of my sons caught Covid. I did not see my brother either, who lives alone. Daughter lost business because of the rules which were in place. It was a tough time.
I am utterly fucked off with having people in power who cannot be arsed to even try to follow the rules they impose on the rest of us, who can't be bothered to admit it when they get it wrong, who lie to us openly and brazenly and who talk nonsense at us because they have utter contempt for us.
Now we have this crackdown on drug misuse. Yeah - whatever. MPs are doubtless flouting the rules and will suffer no consequences for doing so. But if Daughter were to break any of the rules she is under the police and licensing authorities would be on to her like a ton of bricks.
I am sick of this, sick of being taken granted, sick of a ruling class which treats those of us who try to do the right thing as mugs. I am weary and cynical at it all. But I am also absolutely furious at how this shower of lying, corrupt, incompetent, arrogant and amoral twats are destroying a political culture which, for all its faults, used to try and stand for something worthwhile.
The problem with cocaine use is it is now endemic. Sure. You could lock all users up. But the country would be covered in jails and sectors of the economy would grind to a halt.
"sectors of the economy"
Financial services, law and the media?
That's a lazy cliche. Its use is far more widespread than that, and in fact while I have come across it many times in my life, during over a decade working in financial services I've never seen it being used by anyone I've worked with. Whereas I have for instance seen a load of salt of the earth white working class blokes (OK, Millwall fans) doing it in a pub toilet on New Cross Road. I don't necessarily approve of it (it makes people a bit obnoxious) but it's not particularly addictive and usually has a smaller effect on users than alcohol does so I don't really get the big hoo-ha about it.
It tends to encourage feelings of infallibility, self-obsession and megalomania, as well as the more immediate speeding up and empowering effects that people take it for, and in politicians, and powerful sectors of society more generally, that's not a good thing at all. I'm not a fan of it as a social force at all.
I don't see how you hold back the current tide, though. It's incredibly widespread, now.
The monarch would dissolve parliament after 5 years and order a general election to be held if the government of the day refused to do so.
That is one of the benefits of having a constitutional monarch
I thought this was so, but the position of the Monarch is so weak that it is not the case. HMQ will act on the advice of her Ministers. No more and no less. She may as well be a hand puppet.
We saw this with the prorogation in 2019. There is no circumstance in which the Monarch would set themselves against the incumbent Executive. They will do as they are told. Anything else is too risky.
Rubbish. The monarch suspended Parliament for a few weeks in 2019 until the courts ruled on the constitutional nature of it because diehard Remainers like you refused to respect the EU referendum result. She also signed the Benn Act, an Act passed by diehard Remariners like you to try and block Brexit.
There is a difference between those incidents and the monarch allowing their government to never call a general election and stay in power forever. In those circumstances the monarch would indeed dissolve parliament and force a general election after 5 years and as the armed forces ultimately are headed by the monarch not the PM there is nothing the government could do about it
Sigh. Do not speak falsehoods about me. I accepted the referendum result.
The prorogation was ruled to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court
And that travesty of a judgement, where Remainer judges started with their conclusion and worked backwards, has led directly to this...!
Good morning. Still 3 000+ homes without power up here. And Storm Barra due tomorrow. Scotland all back on I believe.
The compare and contrast between England and Scotland has been stark. In Scotland the network provider has been providing very regular updates to people, has paid for hot food every day and provided feeding stations in the centre of affected towns / villages. In England I know several people who have had nothing and were told by the network operator to stop asking them for the updates they weren't getting.
Yep. Had a friend off 5 days. In a town of more than 13k population. No mobile signal. No information whatsoever. Luckily he had an open fire. It's not been much above freezing and is now nine days in. Scandalous really.
Yes it is. 92 year olds left without power and heating for 10 days.
The sentiment that if this was the Home Counties it would be sorted by now I absolutely get. Certainly it would be getting far more prominence.
Pelton Fell is still without power, some of the kit taken there by northern power to get them back up and running got nicked which didn’t help.
Seems mad they’ve not been able to go in with generators and mobile batteries to give some intermittent power and thrown the army at repairing the infrastructure.
The monarch would dissolve parliament after 5 years and order a general election to be held if the government of the day refused to do so.
That is one of the benefits of having a constitutional monarch
I thought this was so, but the position of the Monarch is so weak that it is not the case. HMQ will act on the advice of her Ministers. No more and no less. She may as well be a hand puppet.
We saw this with the prorogation in 2019. There is no circumstance in which the Monarch would set themselves against the incumbent Executive. They will do as they are told. Anything else is too risky.
Rubbish. The monarch suspended Parliament for a few weeks in 2019 until the courts ruled on the constitutional nature of it because diehard Remainers like you refused to respect the EU referendum result. She also signed the Benn Act, an Act passed by diehard Remariners like you to try and block Brexit.
There is a difference between those incidents and the monarch allowing their government to never call a general election and stay in power forever. In those circumstances the monarch would indeed dissolve parliament and force a general election after 5 years and as the armed forces ultimately are headed by the monarch not the PM there is nothing the government could do about it
Sigh. Do not speak falsehoods about me. I accepted the referendum result.
The prorogation was ruled to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and the Monarch meekly did as she was told by her Ministers in bringing it about. This is very strong evidence that she is too weak to play any role in safeguarding our democracy.
Republicans have had this all wrong. They still concentrate their criticism of the monarchy on them having too much power, but the truth of the matter is that their lack of democratic legitimacy means they are unable to play the crucial role of an independent bulwark against authoritarianism. They're too weak, not too strong, and it's why we need an elected head of state.
Edit: fixing broken quotes. And spelling. I'll go back to bed now.
Because Russia, Brazil, the US etc work so well with elected heads of state, ev
The monarch would dissolve parliament after 5 years and order a general election to be held if the government of the day refused to do so.
That is one of the benefits of having a constitutional monarch
I thought this was so, but the position of the Monarch is so weak that it is not the case. HMQ will act on the advice of her Ministers. No more and no less. She may as well be a hand puppet.
We saw this with the prorogation in 2019. There is no circumstance in which the Monarch would set themselves against the incumbent Executive. They will do as they are told. Anything else is too risky.
Rubbish. The monarch suspended Parliament for a few weeks in 2019 until the courts ruled on the constitutional nature of it because diehard Remainers like you refused to respect the EU referendum result. She also signed the Benn Act, an Act passed by diehard Remariners like you to try and block Brexit.
There is a difference between those incidents and the monarch allowing their government to never call a general election and stay in power forever. In those circumstances the monarch would indeed dissolve parliament and force a general election after 5 years and as the armed forces ultimately are headed by the monarch not the PM there is nothing the government could do about it
Sigh. Do not speak falsehoods about me. I accepted the referendum result.
The prorogation was ruled to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and the Monarch meekly did as she was told by her Ministers in bringing it about. This is very strong evidence that she is too weak to play any role in safeguarding our democracy.
Republicans have had this all wrong. They still concentrate their criticism of the monarchy on them having too much power, but the truth of the matter is that their lack of democratic legitimacy means they are unable to play the crucial role of an independent bulwark against authoritarianism. They're too weak, not too strong, and it's why we need an elected head of state.
Edit: fixing broken quotes. And spelling. I'll go back to bed now.
Because Russia, Brazil, the US etc work so well with elected heads of state. In the US in January Trump almost stayed in power via coup and constitutions like the US can in theory be changed if the president's party wins Congress and state legislatures by a big enough margin to ensure the President stays in power indefinitely without facing re election
Actually, it's another example of the disastrous effects of the Norman Conquest. If William the Bastard had been driven off, then England would have been much closer, intellectually, to Scandinavia and Holland, with their much more easy going monarchies and far better democratic structures..
Sweden is actually worse than us or say Spain or the Commonwealth realms on this. In Sweden the monarch no longer has the power to call elections, the PM has that power alone and the monarch also has no power to remove the PM, the speaker alone has the power to do so.
So if the PM and speaker of the Swedish parliament are of the same party in theory they could agree to postpone elections indefinitely.
FIA give Verstappen a 10 second time penalty for causing a collision
Still leaves him p2.
A fair penalty would have been a 20 place grid penalty for the next race.
I just watched the race again, with a clear head and a coffee - and the more you see it, the worse it gets.
The governance is a total shambles, and it looks like they want to turn it into wrestling rather than a fair competition. For how long will serious companies such as Mercedes want to be involved in such a farce?
This piece nails it.
Max Verstappen looks ready to crash for the title - his driving has become more reckless than audacious.
Dutchman is facing a rival who makes precious few mistakes leaving a repeat of 1990 in their Abu Dhabi showdown on the cards
It's interesting to note the European press have turned against Verstappen.
This from El Pais is typical.
Verstappen performed a “strange manoeuvre” causing the touch with Hamilton....and that he turned the struggle for the championship into a dirty fight.”
We all need to be very clear that all the protagonists were pulling every trick they could this weekend. That includes Hamilton and Arse on the illegal go slow...
It wasn't illegal.
The car lengths rule is clear. Don't worry about the ambiguity on the restart and look at the actual formation lap and the safety car. Its a minor infringement but it is breaking the rules.
The monarch would dissolve parliament after 5 years and order a general election to be held if the government of the day refused to do so.
That is one of the benefits of having a constitutional monarch
I thought this was so, but the position of the Monarch is so weak that it is not the case. HMQ will act on the advice of her Ministers. No more and no less. She may as well be a hand puppet.
We saw this with the prorogation in 2019. There is no circumstance in which the Monarch would set themselves against the incumbent Executive. They will do as they are told. Anything else is too risky.
Rubbish. The monarch suspended Parliament for a few weeks in 2019 until the courts ruled on the constitutional nature of it because diehard Remainers like you refused to respect the EU referendum result. She also signed the Benn Act, an Act passed by diehard Remariners like you to try and block Brexit.
There is a difference between those incidents and the monarch allowing their government to never call a general election and stay in power forever. In those circumstances the monarch would indeed dissolve parliament and force a general election after 5 years and as the armed forces ultimately are headed by the monarch not the PM there is nothing the government could do about it
Sigh. Do not speak falsehoods about me. I accepted the referendum result.
The prorogation was ruled to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court
And that travesty of a judgement, where Remainer judges started with their conclusion and worked backwards, has led directly to this...!
The problem with cocaine use is it is now endemic. Sure. You could lock all users up. But the country would be covered in jails and sectors of the economy would grind to a halt.
"sectors of the economy"
Financial services, law and the media?
Do you really believe it is only the middle classes? You are believing the government spin. They are trying to tee this up as ordinary folk vs the Elite. And you are lapping it up.
That's true. Cocaine use, for instance, crossed the class lines from City to council estate long ago, to become endemic. In fact, in the case of that drug, it's arguably also contributed to the increasing selfishness of our entire society over the last few decades.
You make a good point. I'm not a raving anti drugs person, far from it, but cocaine really brings out the worst in people. They behave like arseholes. While giving you an incessant monologue of their tedious opinions and ideas. And feel super confidently ecstatic while so doing.
People act like prorogation was some constitutional outrage or that the monarch should have intervened. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Until the Supreme Court invented the grounds for overturning the prorogation it was entirely legal.
The standard due process for having one was followed in full. It is worth remembering that England's prior court before the Supreme Court had ruled that the prorogation was legal. If that ruling had been upheld by the Supreme Court instead of being overturned, then on what grounds should the Queen have pre-empted it by denying the prorogation?
The Supreme Court issued its ruling, which was then implemented, but prior courts had disagreed, so its not like the issue was always obvious which way it would go.
Because this country used to be built on basic principles of right and wrong.
And since when has the Monarch been the judge of what is right and what is wrong?
Ever since she started letting Australian PMs get dismissed in her name.
Well no, that was the Governor General exercising his powers.
Everything gets done in her name, but that doesn't make her the decision maker. Had she overruled the Governor General then that would have been her getting involved.
The monarch would dissolve parliament after 5 years and order a general election to be held if the government of the day refused to do so.
That is one of the benefits of having a constitutional monarch
I thought this was so, but the position of the Monarch is so weak that it is not the case. HMQ will act on the advice of her Ministers. No more and no less. She may as well be a hand puppet.
We saw this with the prorogation in 2019. There is no circumstance in which the Monarch would set themselves against the incumbent Executive. They will do as they are told. Anything else is too risky.
Rubbish. The monarch suspended Parliament for a few weeks in 2019 until the courts ruled on the constitutional nature of it because diehard Remainers like you refused to respect the EU referendum result. She also signed the Benn Act, an Act passed by diehard Remariners like you to try and block Brexit.
There is a difference between those incidents and the monarch allowing their government to never call a general election and stay in power forever. In those circumstances the monarch would indeed dissolve parliament and force a general election after 5 years and as the armed forces ultimately are headed by the monarch not the PM there is nothing the government could do about it
Sigh. Do not speak falsehoods about me. I accepted the referendum result.
The prorogation was ruled to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and the Monarch meekly did as she was told by her Ministers in bringing it about. This is very strong evidence that she is too weak to play any role in safeguarding our democracy.
Republicans have had this all wrong. They still concentrate their criticism of the monarchy on them having too much power, but the truth of the matter is that their lack of democratic legitimacy means they are unable to play the crucial role of an independent bulwark against authoritarianism. They're too weak, not too strong, and it's why we need an elected head of state.
Edit: fixing broken quotes. And spelling. I'll go back to bed now.
Because Russia, Brazil, the US etc work so well with elected heads of state, ev
The monarch would dissolve parliament after 5 years and order a general election to be held if the government of the day refused to do so.
That is one of the benefits of having a constitutional monarch
I thought this was so, but the position of the Monarch is so weak that it is not the case. HMQ will act on the advice of her Ministers. No more and no less. She may as well be a hand puppet.
We saw this with the prorogation in 2019. There is no circumstance in which the Monarch would set themselves against the incumbent Executive. They will do as they are told. Anything else is too risky.
Rubbish. The monarch suspended Parliament for a few weeks in 2019 until the courts ruled on the constitutional nature of it because diehard Remainers like you refused to respect the EU referendum result. She also signed the Benn Act, an Act passed by diehard Remariners like you to try and block Brexit.
There is a difference between those incidents and the monarch allowing their government to never call a general election and stay in power forever. In those circumstances the monarch would indeed dissolve parliament and force a general election after 5 years and as the armed forces ultimately are headed by the monarch not the PM there is nothing the government could do about it
Sigh. Do not speak falsehoods about me. I accepted the referendum result.
The prorogation was ruled to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and the Monarch meekly did as she was told by her Ministers in bringing it about. This is very strong evidence that she is too weak to play any role in safeguarding our democracy.
Republicans have had this all wrong. They still concentrate their criticism of the monarchy on them having too much power, but the truth of the matter is that their lack of democratic legitimacy means they are unable to play the crucial role of an independent bulwark against authoritarianism. They're too weak, not too strong, and it's why we need an elected head of state.
Edit: fixing broken quotes. And spelling. I'll go back to bed now.
Because Russia, Brazil, the US etc work so well with elected heads of state. In the US in January Trump almost stayed in power via coup and constitutions like the US can in theory be changed if the president's party wins Congress and state legislatures by a big enough margin to ensure the President stays in power indefinitely without facing re election
Actually, it's another example of the disastrous effects of the Norman Conquest. If William the Bastard had been driven off, then England would have been much closer, intellectually, to Scandinavia and Holland, with their much more easy going monarchies and far better democratic structures..
Sweden is actually worse than us or say Spain or the Commonwealth realms on this. In Sweden the monarch no longer has the power to call elections, the PM has that power alone and the monarch also has no power to remove the PM, the speaker alone has the power to do so.
So if the PM and speaker of the Swedish parliament are of the same party in theory they could agree to postpone elections indefinitely.
The monarch would dissolve parliament after 5 years and order a general election to be held if the government of the day refused to do so.
That is one of the benefits of having a constitutional monarch
I thought this was so, but the position of the Monarch is so weak that it is not the case. HMQ will act on the advice of her Ministers. No more and no less. She may as well be a hand puppet.
We saw this with the prorogation in 2019. There is no circumstance in which the Monarch would set themselves against the incumbent Executive. They will do as they are told. Anything else is too risky.
Rubbish. The monarch suspended Parliament for a few weeks in 2019 until the courts ruled on the constitutional nature of it because diehard Remainers like you refused to respect the EU referendum result. She also signed the Benn Act, an Act passed by diehard Remariners like you to try and block Brexit.
There is a difference between those incidents and the monarch allowing their government to never call a general election and stay in power forever. In those circumstances the monarch would indeed dissolve parliament and force a general election after 5 years and as the armed forces ultimately are headed by the monarch not the PM there is nothing the government could do about it
Sigh. Do not speak falsehoods about me. I accepted the referendum result.
The prorogation was ruled to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and the Monarch meekly did as she was told by her Ministers in bringing it about. This is very strong evidence that she is too weak to play any role in safeguarding our democracy.
Republicans have had this all wrong. They still concentrate their criticism of the monarchy on them having too much power, but the truth of the matter is that their lack of democratic legitimacy means they are unable to play the crucial role of an independent bulwark against authoritarianism. They're too weak, not too strong, and it's why we need an elected head of state.
Edit: fixing broken quotes. And spelling. I'll go back to bed now.
Because Russia, Brazil, the US etc work so well with elected heads of state, ev
The monarch would dissolve parliament after 5 years and order a general election to be held if the government of the day refused to do so.
That is one of the benefits of having a constitutional monarch
I thought this was so, but the position of the Monarch is so weak that it is not the case. HMQ will act on the advice of her Ministers. No more and no less. She may as well be a hand puppet.
We saw this with the prorogation in 2019. There is no circumstance in which the Monarch would set themselves against the incumbent Executive. They will do as they are told. Anything else is too risky.
Rubbish. The monarch suspended Parliament for a few weeks in 2019 until the courts ruled on the constitutional nature of it because diehard Remainers like you refused to respect the EU referendum result. She also signed the Benn Act, an Act passed by diehard Remariners like you to try and block Brexit.
There is a difference between those incidents and the monarch allowing their government to never call a general election and stay in power forever. In those circumstances the monarch would indeed dissolve parliament and force a general election after 5 years and as the armed forces ultimately are headed by the monarch not the PM there is nothing the government could do about it
Sigh. Do not speak falsehoods about me. I accepted the referendum result.
The prorogation was ruled to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and the Monarch meekly did as she was told by her Ministers in bringing it about. This is very strong evidence that she is too weak to play any role in safeguarding our democracy.
Republicans have had this all wrong. They still concentrate their criticism of the monarchy on them having too much power, but the truth of the matter is that their lack of democratic legitimacy means they are unable to play the crucial role of an independent bulwark against authoritarianism. They're too weak, not too strong, and it's why we need an elected head of state.
Edit: fixing broken quotes. And spelling. I'll go back to bed now.
Because Russia, Brazil, the US etc work so well with elected heads of state. In the US in January Trump almost stayed in power via coup and constitutions like the US can in theory be changed if the president's party wins Congress and state legislatures by a big enough margin to ensure the President stays in power indefinitely without facing re election
Actually, it's another example of the disastrous effects of the Norman Conquest. If William the Bastard had been driven off, then England would have been much closer, intellectually, to Scandinavia and Holland, with their much more easy going monarchies and far better democratic structures..
Crumbs. And folk get criticism for blaming it all on Thatcher or Blair.
The monarch would dissolve parliament after 5 years and order a general election to be held if the government of the day refused to do so.
That is one of the benefits of having a constitutional monarch
I thought this was so, but the position of the Monarch is so weak that it is not the case. HMQ will act on the advice of her Ministers. No more and no less. She may as well be a hand puppet.
We saw this with the prorogation in 2019. There is no circumstance in which the Monarch would set themselves against the incumbent Executive. They will do as they are told. Anything else is too risky.
Rubbish. The monarch suspended Parliament for a few weeks in 2019 until the courts ruled on the constitutional nature of it because diehard Remainers like you refused to respect the EU referendum result. She also signed the Benn Act, an Act passed by diehard Remariners like you to try and block Brexit.
There is a difference between those incidents and the monarch allowing their government to never call a general election and stay in power forever. In those circumstances the monarch would indeed dissolve parliament and force a general election after 5 years and as the armed forces ultimately are headed by the monarch not the PM there is nothing the government could do about it
Sigh. Do not speak falsehoods about me. I accepted the referendum result.
The prorogation was ruled to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and the Monarch meekly did as she was told by her Ministers in bringing it about. This is very strong evidence that she is too weak to play any role in safeguarding our democracy.
Republicans have had this all wrong. They still concentrate their criticism of the monarchy on them having too much power, but the truth of the matter is that their lack of democratic legitimacy means they are unable to play the crucial role of an independent bulwark against authoritarianism. They're too weak, not too strong, and it's why we need an elected head of state.
Edit: fixing broken quotes. And spelling. I'll go back to bed now.
Because Russia, Brazil, the US etc work so well with elected heads of state. In the US in January Trump almost stayed in power via coup and constitutions like the US can in theory be changed if the president's party wins Congress and state legislatures by a big enough margin to ensure the President stays in power indefinitely without facing re election
Of the 15 countries judged to be more democratic than the UK (Economist Democracy Index 2020), 8 of them are constitutional monarchies, 7 of them are republics.
Both systems work. Don't cherry pick basket cases like USA just to suit your argument.
Most countries in the world are now republics, so percentage wise then constitutional monarchies are far more democratic than republics on those figures. Thanks for proving my point.
As long as a monarchy is a constitutional monarchy like ours not an absolute monarchy like Saudi Arabia's it preserves democracy the best of any system
FWIW I think Whinger Spice made a huge mistake post race and said Michael Masi is shit (I paraphrase, he said something along the lines of saying we missed Charlie Whiting today.)
The same Michael Masi, who’s given Spice an inch and let him take a mile, for pretty much the whole season?
I genuinely fear that the last race is going to end in a deliberate crash, Max was at best ambivalent yesterday on several occasions, as to whether an accident happened.
You know that grandstand at the chicane, where the runoff area goes under it? Well that’s where I’ll be sitting next Sunday, genuinely scared for most of the race.
I do remember Schumacher of course. But if someone clearly causes a deliberate crash in that way, should that not result in a points deduction rather than just a time penalty? When do you get into Duncan Ferguson territory where behaviour in a pro sport slips into criminality?
If someone gets seriously injured, or worse, there can be one hell of a fallout.
Yes, it should. Proving intent is, of course, difficult. This looked pretty clear to me - you simply don't apply the brakes immediately after weaving around like that - but the stewards clearly didn't want to give any penalty which would affect the championship battle, so they called it "erratic".
The monarch would dissolve parliament after 5 years and order a general election to be held if the government of the day refused to do so.
That is one of the benefits of having a constitutional monarch
I thought this was so, but the position of the Monarch is so weak that it is not the case. HMQ will act on the advice of her Ministers. No more and no less. She may as well be a hand puppet.
We saw this with the prorogation in 2019. There is no circumstance in which the Monarch would set themselves against the incumbent Executive. They will do as they are told. Anything else is too risky.
Rubbish. The monarch suspended Parliament for a few weeks in 2019 until the courts ruled on the constitutional nature of it because diehard Remainers like you refused to respect the EU referendum result. She also signed the Benn Act, an Act passed by diehard Remariners like you to try and block Brexit.
There is a difference between those incidents and the monarch allowing their government to never call a general election and stay in power forever. In those circumstances the monarch would indeed dissolve parliament and force a general election after 5 years and as the armed forces ultimately are headed by the monarch not the PM there is nothing the government could do about it
Sigh. Do not speak falsehoods about me. I accepted the referendum result.
The prorogation was ruled to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and the Monarch meekly did as she was told by her Ministers in bringing it about. This is very strong evidence that she is too weak to play any role in safeguarding our democracy.
Republicans have had this all wrong. They still concentrate their criticism of the monarchy on them having too much power, but the truth of the matter is that their lack of democratic legitimacy means they are unable to play the crucial role of an independent bulwark against authoritarianism. They're too weak, not too strong, and it's why we need an elected head of state.
Edit: fixing broken quotes. And spelling. I'll go back to bed now.
Because Russia, Brazil, the US etc work so well with elected heads of state, ev
The monarch would dissolve parliament after 5 years and order a general election to be held if the government of the day refused to do so.
That is one of the benefits of having a constitutional monarch
I thought this was so, but the position of the Monarch is so weak that it is not the case. HMQ will act on the advice of her Ministers. No more and no less. She may as well be a hand puppet.
We saw this with the prorogation in 2019. There is no circumstance in which the Monarch would set themselves against the incumbent Executive. They will do as they are told. Anything else is too risky.
Rubbish. The monarch suspended Parliament for a few weeks in 2019 until the courts ruled on the constitutional nature of it because diehard Remainers like you refused to respect the EU referendum result. She also signed the Benn Act, an Act passed by diehard Remariners like you to try and block Brexit.
There is a difference between those incidents and the monarch allowing their government to never call a general election and stay in power forever. In those circumstances the monarch would indeed dissolve parliament and force a general election after 5 years and as the armed forces ultimately are headed by the monarch not the PM there is nothing the government could do about it
Sigh. Do not speak falsehoods about me. I accepted the referendum result.
The prorogation was ruled to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and the Monarch meekly did as she was told by her Ministers in bringing it about. This is very strong evidence that she is too weak to play any role in safeguarding our democracy.
Republicans have had this all wrong. They still concentrate their criticism of the monarchy on them having too much power, but the truth of the matter is that their lack of democratic legitimacy means they are unable to play the crucial role of an independent bulwark against authoritarianism. They're too weak, not too strong, and it's why we need an elected head of state.
Edit: fixing broken quotes. And spelling. I'll go back to bed now.
Because Russia, Brazil, the US etc work so well with elected heads of state. In the US in January Trump almost stayed in power via coup and constitutions like the US can in theory be changed if the president's party wins Congress and state legislatures by a big enough margin to ensure the President stays in power indefinitely without facing re election
Actually, it's another example of the disastrous effects of the Norman Conquest. If William the Bastard had been driven off, then England would have been much closer, intellectually, to Scandinavia and Holland, with their much more easy going monarchies and far better democratic structures..
First I liked this post, then I got to thinking.
If the Normans hadn't won and stayed there would no SeanT, with his much vaunted Norman ancestry. At least not on this side of the channel.
Not so bad you say but... my (real) surname also comes from a Norman warlord according to the Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland, so that's me gone too.
Then, according to Adam Rutherford, all Europeans are descendents of William the Conqueror. So without his victory at Hastings, not only would England be much more like Scandanavia... but we'd all be French. Or something.
According the the Guardian, today "10.30am: The high court gives its ruling in a case brought by the FDA, the senior civil servants’ union, challenging Boris Johnson’s decision to ignore the ruling that Priti Patel, the home secretary, broke the ministerial code by bullying civil servants."
"Parliament to pass an interpretation bill" . . . that's not ministers overruling judges, that's Parliament passing laws as its sovereign to do.
That is entirely reasonable. If the courts pass anything that Parliament doesn't like then Parliament must be allowed to correct the course by passing a new bill to override it.
Depends what they mean, which is far from clear to my non-expert eyes. If they mean legislating forwards then yeah, ok, but I don't feel comfortable about converyor-belt legislation. If it's striking down judges' decisions, then it resembles (is?) retroactive legislation. That cannot be tolerated, even by you.
I mean the former.
If a Judge interprets a law badly, and Parliament clarifies the law for next time, then that is Parliament doing its own job.
It is for Parliament to determine what the law is, not Judges.
Please don't embarrass yourself talking nonsense about the law again. I have fee-paying work to do this week and won't have the time to correct the many mistakes you will undoubtedly make. Thank you.
There's always the Northern Irish protocol. We haven't heard about that for a while. 🤔
I didn't say anything about the law, I was referring to Parliament's ability to change the law. That's different.
Do you deny that if Parliament is unhappy with how the law is applied that they can change the law for going forwards?
I specifically agreed that Parliament should NOT pass retrospective changes. Though it does have the ability to do so too, I find it extremely unethical to do it.
Seems pretty clear thats the plan though. The rules do not apply to them. If a court makes a judgement they don't like, just strike it down.
I agree that parliament is free to pass any law that it sees fit, including laws that reverse court rulings. But you and I both know that this lot have zero interest in the rule of law so won't bother to wait for the new law to pass before ignoring the existing law.
The police never investigate the past apparently. So why would they investigate ministers in flagrant breach of a law they are about to change?
What Johnson is proposing would allow the government to extend its life indefinitely. Should it become law it would end our democracy. Johnson is often described as an instinctive libertarian. That. of course, is nonsense. From making it harder to vote and removing the right to public protest to making UK citizens less able as individuals to live, work and study where they choose, he has presided over the removal of more personal freedoms than any other peacetime Prime Minister in modern British history. He has no attachment to democracy. The only liberty he has any interest in is his own.
As I understand it, this isn't quite as bad as ending democracy, though it's bad enough. If correctly reported, it's a second U-turn on the right to judicial review. Originally the Government proposed to restrict the grounds on which you could ask courts to review whether the Government was obeying the law. That was largely dropped in the current Justice Bill after an outcry. They are now proposing to reintroduce leglislation on the subject, not aimed at review directly but giving them the power to overrule a judicial review decision that they don't like. Arguably that's worse than restricting access to review, since it does gives ministers power to ignore a verdict on how the existing law should be applied.
Judicial review is difficult and expensive in any case (I've conducted one for Compassion in World Farming which achieved its objective without having to get to the final stage). You're right that in theory any Government decision that was successfully challenged could under this proposal be maintained anyway. That said, abolishing elections would in fact certainly require new legislation. A more insidious example would be if the Government applied existing legislation unfairly, e.g. refusing to give reasonable compensation for something they'd done wrong.
You don't abolish elections, you just decide not to hold them.
The monarch would dissolve parliament after 5 years and order a general election to be held if the government of the day refused to do so.
That is one of the benefits of having a constitutional monarch
Good one
I don't understand why it has to be the descendants of assorted land thieves who have to do that when other countries get by just fine with Presidents (e.g. Ireland).
The problem with cocaine use is it is now endemic. Sure. You could lock all users up. But the country would be covered in jails and sectors of the economy would grind to a halt.
"sectors of the economy"
Financial services, law and the media?
That's a lazy cliche. Its use is far more widespread than that, and in fact while I have come across it many times in my life, during over a decade working in financial services I've never seen it being used by anyone I've worked with. Whereas I have for instance seen a load of salt of the earth white working class blokes (OK, Millwall fans) doing it in a pub toilet on New Cross Road. I don't necessarily approve of it (it makes people a bit obnoxious) but it's not particularly addictive and usually has a smaller effect on users than alcohol does so I don't really get the big hoo-ha about it.
I know more teachers than bankers that are habitual cocaine users.
The problem with cocaine use is it is now endemic. Sure. You could lock all users up. But the country would be covered in jails and sectors of the economy would grind to a halt.
"sectors of the economy"
Financial services, law and the media?
Do you really believe it is only the middle classes? You are believing the government spin. They are trying to tee this up as ordinary folk vs the Elite. And you are lapping it up.
That's true. Cocaine use, for instance, crossed the class lines from City to council estate long ago, to become endemic. In fact, in the case of that drug, it's arguably also contributed to the increasing selfishness of our entire society over the last few decades.
You make a good point. I'm not a raving anti drugs person, far from it, but cocaine really brings out the worst in people. They behave like arseholes. While giving you an incessant monologue of their tedious opinions and ideas. And feel super confidently ecstatic while so doing.
Um... for some bizarre reason that made me think of one or two PB posters.
Good morning. Still 3 000+ homes without power up here. And Storm Barra due tomorrow. Scotland all back on I believe.
The compare and contrast between England and Scotland has been stark. In Scotland the network provider has been providing very regular updates to people, has paid for hot food every day and provided feeding stations in the centre of affected towns / villages. In England I know several people who have had nothing and were told by the network operator to stop asking them for the updates they weren't getting.
Yep. Had a friend off 5 days. In a town of more than 13k population. No mobile signal. No information whatsoever. Luckily he had an open fire. It's not been much above freezing and is now nine days in. Scandalous really.
Yes it is. 92 year olds left without power and heating for 10 days.
Comments
That is one of the benefits of having a constitutional monarch
It's like a trip to hell with Dante Alighieri.
So there's a certain logic in having incompetent henchmen for bluffing purposes, and dealing with the downtrodden masses.
It says that Parliament would, that's a completely different thing.
I can't work out why this is the headline to the story. It might just as well say "Sarah Gilbert: doesn't moronically believe that we've had the worst pandemic possible"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-59542211
It looks like irresponsible alarmism and fear mongering. The BBC should desist.
The modern iteration of the Tory party:
- English Nationalist, not One Nation
- Revolutionary, not Conservative
- High tax/high debt, not Friedman
- State control, not free market
- Social engineering, not conservatism
- Nasty, not paternal
- Reactive, not confident
- Populist, not principled
- Clown, not competence
- Degenerate, not moral
- Cash for pals, not good governance
- Fiscal spaffing, not fiscal moderation
- Fuck business, not pro business
- Proroguing parliament, not the rule of law
- Lying to the monarch, not respecting institutions
- Authoritarian, not liberal
- Corruption, not ethics
- Second jobs, not public service
- Serving clients, not constituents
- Peppa Pig, not promoting productivity
- Cokeheads, not sober
- Law-breakers, not law enforcers
The only constant is the blue rosettes, greed and jingoism.
We saw this with the prorogation in 2019. There is no circumstance in which the Monarch would set themselves against the incumbent Executive. They will do as they are told. Anything else is too risky.
Starmer should oppose Harper's Law - that would be the brave and principled thing to do. He will know it's wrong. But then, of course, he will be labelled as soft on crime and a menace to emergency workers; you can just see the tabloid headlines. Tricky. Maybe some Tory MPs will stand up for what is right? I doubt it, somehow.
I genuinely fear that the last race is going to end in a deliberate crash, Max was at best ambivalent yesterday on several occasions, as to whether an accident happened.
You know that grandstand at the chicane, where the runoff area goes under it? Well that’s where I’ll be sitting next Sunday, genuinely scared for most of the race.
Now one can buy take-away alcohol very easily and we have more a problem with street drinking.
I wonder if there's a connection.
But this is to ignore the criminal structure of the supply side. There weren't fast boats coming into the Dover coast loaded with contraband cases of Latour '61. More's the pity.
The press have to make money. The BBC avoids that requirement and doesn't need to stoop to their level.
There is a difference between those incidents and the monarch allowing their government to never call a general election and stay in power forever. In those circumstances the monarch would indeed dissolve parliament and force a general election after 5 years and as the armed forces ultimately are headed by the monarch not the PM there is nothing the government could do about it
There are problems on law and order: the police, for one thing. The under-funding of the justice system, for another. Starmer had an a opportunity to put the boot into Cressida Dick but didn't. His Justice spokesman has been invisible.
The only MP who regularly speaks up on these issues is Bob O'Neill, a Tory MP but one who understands why the rule of law matters.
However, the point that I didn't press is that we have a wide range of places where alcohol can be purchased legally. If we had places where 'drugs' could be purchased legally the criminal element would be largely cut out. Quality and price would be affected too.
As a resident of Witham constituency I can think of a few places where a crackdown on middle class users might actually lose her support!
I wonder why ?
Scotland all back on I believe.
And that should include those in public office or are 'celebrities' who have confessed to their crimes.
There is a difference between those incidents and the monarch allowing their government to never call a general election and stay in power forever. In those circumstances the monarch would indeed dissolve parliament and force a general election after 5 years and as the armed forces ultimately are headed by the monarch not the PM there is nothing the government could do about it
_________________________________________________________________________
Because a PM who calls himself a Conservative did it, it must have right. Is that your case?
Note: 'Quote' function seems to be misbehaving.
Sure. You could lock all users up. But the country would be covered in jails and sectors of the economy would grind to a halt.
The prorogation was ruled to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and the Monarch meekly did as she was told by her Ministers in bringing it about. This is very strong evidence that she is too weak to play any role in safeguarding our democracy.
Republicans have had this all wrong. They still concentrate their criticism of the monarchy on them having too much power, but the truth of the matter is that their lack of democratic legitimacy means they are unable to play the crucial role of an independent bulwark against authoritarianism. They're too weak, not too strong, and it's why we need an elected head of state.
Edit: fixing broken quotes. And spelling. I'll go back to bed now.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/more-than-300-000-housebound-britons-yet-to-receive-booster-vaccines-as-gps-opt-out-of-home-visits/ar-AARuPbr?ocid=entnewsntp
1/100
Or just randomly select those of us on the fringes of society or those in public office to set an example, but that is not really fair is it?
Luckily he had an open fire. It's not been much above freezing and is now nine days in.
Scandalous really.
- Epstein victim: ‘Prince Andrew on Lolita flight’
Financial services, law and the media?
Until the Supreme Court invented the grounds for overturning the prorogation it was entirely legal.
The standard due process for having one was followed in full. It is worth remembering that England's prior court before the Supreme Court had ruled that the prorogation was legal. If that ruling had been upheld by the Supreme Court instead of being overturned, then on what grounds should the Queen have pre-empted it by denying the prorogation?
The Supreme Court issued its ruling, which was then implemented, but prior courts had disagreed, so its not like the issue was always obvious which way it would go.
You are believing the government spin. They are trying to tee this up as ordinary folk vs the Elite.
And you are lapping it up.
When Senna died in an accident in Italy, there followed several years of investigations, enquiries and criminal proceedings that kept key members of the Williams team and race organisers away from the country, for fear they could be arrested for manslaughter or endangerment.
Fortunately, I don’t pay the bills by bookmaking. The family aren’t keen on starvation.
https://twitter.com/hannahalothman/status/1467406818590797825?s=21
It's not good enough but equally I'm concerned that things are so bad that after 9 days it still isn't 100% fixed outside of isolated farms.
Pelton Fell is still without power, some of the kit taken there by northern power to get them back up and running got nicked which didn’t help.
I don't necessarily approve of it (it makes people a bit obnoxious) but it's not particularly addictive and usually has a smaller effect on users than alcohol does so I don't really get the big hoo-ha about it.
First user I met was a beautifully spoken and dressed young woman who 'worked' for a swish advertising firm.
It’s just not good enough.
Bottas driving a little slowly as they formed up behind the SC was not against the rules, which only specify a minimum time between marshal posts, not a maximum. Article 48.7. If he’d been “unnecessarily” slow in the pit lane itself, that would have been a penalty.
I don't see how you hold back the current tide, though. It's incredibly widespread, now.
So if the PM and speaker of the Swedish parliament are of the same party in theory they could agree to postpone elections indefinitely.
They behave like arseholes. While giving you an incessant monologue of their tedious opinions and ideas.
And feel super confidently ecstatic while so doing.
Everything gets done in her name, but that doesn't make her the decision maker. Had she overruled the Governor General then that would have been her getting involved.
And folk get criticism for blaming it all on Thatcher or Blair.
As long as a monarchy is a constitutional monarchy like ours not an absolute monarchy like Saudi Arabia's it preserves democracy the best of any system
Yes, it should.
Proving intent is, of course, difficult. This looked pretty clear to me - you simply don't apply the brakes immediately after weaving around like that - but the stewards clearly didn't want to give any penalty which would affect the championship battle, so they called it "erratic".
If the Normans hadn't won and stayed there would no SeanT, with his much vaunted Norman ancestry. At least not on this side of the channel.
Not so bad you say but... my (real) surname also comes from a Norman warlord according to the Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland, so that's me gone too.
Then, according to Adam Rutherford, all Europeans are descendents of William the Conqueror. So without his victory at Hastings, not only would England be much more like Scandanavia... but we'd all be French. Or something.
"10.30am: The high court gives its ruling in a case brought by the FDA, the senior civil servants’ union, challenging Boris Johnson’s decision to ignore the ruling that Priti Patel, the home secretary, broke the ministerial code by bullying civil servants."
Could have 'interesting' consequences.
Well one PB poster tbf.