Reasons why Boris doesn't want to go now No 1 to 60million
Boris wants another 4-6 months to get past Brown and May - and he needs to avoid a VONC otherwise he isn't going to get there.
I still think Boris wins a VONC 55% to 45% or so for now
He'll probably beat Spencer Perceval. Unlikely he'll beat Gordon Brown.
Ah, Boris, you old duffer, it could all have been so different. You were played a hugely difficult hand - take over a party with no majority and with two wings in open rebellion, in different directions, deal with the most contentious constitutional issue of the post-war era, and then thrown off course by the biggest emergency of my lifetime. The first you managed with astonishing success, the second to no less dissatisfaction than anyone else would have achieved*, and the third better than many, with some brave calls along the way.
And then you threw it away on - what? Holding some not-very-good-parties? Evacuating someone's pets from Afghanistan? Owen Paterson? A distasteful jibe at PMQs?
I'm not trying to excuse Boris. I didn't want him in the first place and I certainly don't want him now. But he dealt with the really difficult issues quite well - certainly better than many. The first few months of his premiership when he took a fractious party without a majority which had recently polled below 10% in a national election to a landslide-ish majority was just astonishing.
He's played an astonishingly difficult hand with a surprising degree of success, and then made some really, really, really stupid and unnecessary unforced errors. Like the spy who finds the Macguffin, defeats three different sets of baddies, makes it home through no-mans land, then gets hilariously drunk on the train back from Dover, picks a fight with a bouncer and leaves the Macguffin on the tube.
*I can sense Remainer piss boiling from here when I write this. Sorry. It's hard to frame in a neutral way. But I stand by it - other solutions may or may not have been better; but any other solution would have pissed off at least as many people.
As a former remainer (meaningless term now, really) I agree completely. The options were piss off the Brexiters, piss off the Remainers or piss off everybody both extremes (something Norway-esque). Probably the last option was best for the country, but would have still greatly annoyed those on both extremes and been seen as a betrayal, for different reasons, by many. It would have required a great leader to bring people together behind it.
Actually I think most Remainers would have grabbed Norway with both hands, certainly once the initial shock of the vote was absorbed. That is certainly suggested by the parliamentary votes on this where Remainers overwhelmingly voted for it. The opposition came from Leavers who were in full on yah boo you lost mode and held out for a maximal position - which fair play to them they achieved. The least they could do now is own it instead of whining about the fact they've got everything they wanted.
The problem with the first part is that the Remainers who "overwhelmingly voted for it" came across as it being their second choice behind overturning the referendum result, so it looked like a trap.
If Remainers had been strong from June 2016 until May's election that "we lost, but only narrowly, but EEA is a reasonable outcome from the result" then plenty of Leavers would have been more than happy with that.
I think that is just a sign of Leaver paranoia.
Given how bitterly a faction of sore-loser Remainers fought to overturn the referendum result, a certain level of paranoia was quite understandable.
Not really, Leavers controlled the process at all times. The only reason that there was stalemate was that they promised something impossible (leaving the single market and customs union with no implications for the Irish border). That wasn't the fault of Remainers.
I wonder what the DUP were thinking when they campaigned for Brexit? Were they (secretly and sordidly) hoping it would lead to a hard border between NI and the Republic? Or were they assuming the whole of the UK would stay in the Single Market? It's quite hard to fathom.
The DUP ought to be reminded that 56% of NI voted to Remain in 2016.
Infantile gesture politics is much more satisfying.
COOKE, Christian Christopher (Local Conservatives) 613 LOXTON Huw Geraint (Independent) 482 FOSTER, David Geoffrey (Labour Party Candidate) 311 Con 43.6 (-11.7) Ind 34.3 (+16.9) Lab 22.1 (-3.0)
Labour have done universally and weirdly badly in last night's elections. Can't work out whether it's a freak or the national polls are wrong (or some other explanation like the increased Labour VI is concentrated among the less politically engaged who don't vote in council byelections).
A small factor is that we’re in the six month period during which those councils with elections in May - which are predominantly urban - can’t have by-elections. So those we do have are self-selected to Labour’s weaker areas.
But I also agree with others that Labour are still miles from having sold any sort of deal with the electorate. They are benefitting from looking a little more clued up and professional just as the government has fallen apart. Doing better remains work in progress for Labour - but of course oppositions don’t need to be popular to win, if the government becomes sufficiently unpopular.
I'm not sure unpopularity is enough in its own right, at least to win a majority starting from the other side having an 80-odd majority. In 1992 and 2010, the government was unpopular but the opposition wasn't popular enough to turn it into an outright win (or, in 1992, a win at all).
Chaps, I am coming off this website. After this morning, I've just decided the downsides are far greater than the upsides re info, betting tips. Good luck to the many decent individuals on here and thanks for all the betting tips you have given over the years.
Sorry to see you go MrEd.
Indeed, MrEd was a minority view but an important one for a site that is a betting site and therefore needs to reflect all views, even pro Trump and pro Boris ones.
The last thing we want is for it to become a left liberal echo chamber
Over 93,000 posts from your good self suggest there is little chance of that.
HYFUD counts me in the same liberal left as you, Al. His definition seems to constitute anyone who doesn't show 100% loyalty and fealty to whoever the Tory leader is on the day.
No you are a fiscal conservative, centre right liberal.
However again still not hard right populist like Mr Ed
Oh how would you compare Max to me then @hyufd. I'm interested.
You are a centrist liberal, Max is a centre right liberal.
Worse than the drop after the GFC or Black Wednesday is quite a grim situation.
Yes, indeed. Also, that graph is obviously an average; there will be a large number of low-paid people for whom the effect is proportionately larger, and who probably will already have had a tough time during the pandemic. The only relatively bright spot is that at the moment unemployment doesn't seem to be likely to be a big problem, but it is going to be pretty grim for many.
Not all of this is the government's fault, of course, and their room for manoeuvre is limited, but Sunak's mitigation measures are only going to address a small part of the pain.
It will be interesting to see if voters wake up to the fact that Brexit has made this substantially worse.
The other chart of relevance is this one from the FT which gives some idea of the regional bounce back, and where it is lacking:
The West Midlands being the cockpit of any election, but by far the worst affected doesn't bode well, especially for a government that talks about "The North" and ignores the Midlands.
I've never noticed a difference whether I salt pasta or not, can't see what the big deal is.
Fair play to the Italians for setting out their own standards on traditionally italian dishes, but it's all about the cultural appropriation, and everyone can make their own pizza and pasta derived dishes to their own tastes.
And what do they have against garlic bread?
I think it's an American invention and doesn't exist in most regional Italian cuisines.
Mr. Boy, your assertion leavers continually controlled the process is not accurate.
Thrice May's deal came before Parliament. It was thwarted on the votes of pro-EU Labour (and other) MPs.
If May had put a Norway style deal to the House it would have passed easily. She couldn't get a majority for her deal because it was shit. And she couldn't put forward a Norway deal because it would have split her party down the middle.
The last bit's true, but only because of the way she acted when she first took office.
If Cameron had not flounced and had gone for EEA immediately, it wouldn't have been too controversial.
Better yet if it had been on the ballot paper, of course.
It would have become controversial the moment the EU responded by saying, "No, you have to have a full negotiatation of a new relationship, and no negotiation without notification."
It's also not a very good deal, the EEA option comes with the same trade friction as the TCA but none of the divergence capability.
SM and CU combined has no trade frictions. It isn't without downsides but then neither is anything else.
But that's not what is being discussed, people are talking about the EEA, not EEA+CU, which was never really on the table.
If the SM and CU options had both passed in the meaningful votes then perhaps that's where we would have ended up. Unfortunately we will never know because the Tories voted them down.
Voting to stay in the Customs Union was like voting for free unicorns. It was legally and practically impossible gaving left the EU. No matter how many votes were passed in favour of it it still couldn't happen.
I've never noticed a difference whether I salt pasta or not, can't see what the big deal is.
Fair play to the Italians for setting out their own standards on traditionally italian dishes, but it's all about the cultural appropriation, and everyone can make their own pizza and pasta derived dishes to their own tastes.
And what do they have against garlic bread?
I think it's an American invention and doesn't exist in most regional Italian cuisines.
Paprika isn't native to Hungary either, doesn't stop it being used in many 'traditional' dishes apparently.
Mr. Boy, your assertion leavers continually controlled the process is not accurate.
Thrice May's deal came before Parliament. It was thwarted on the votes of pro-EU Labour (and other) MPs.
If May had put a Norway style deal to the House it would have passed easily. She couldn't get a majority for her deal because it was shit. And she couldn't put forward a Norway deal because it would have split her party down the middle.
The last bit's true, but only because of the way she acted when she first took office.
If Cameron had not flounced and had gone for EEA immediately, it wouldn't have been too controversial.
Better yet if it had been on the ballot paper, of course.
It would have become controversial the moment the EU responded by saying, "No, you have to have a full negotiatation of a new relationship, and no negotiation without notification."
Then he notifies with the intention to negotiate an EEA-type solution - in which case, would the EU really have been so vindictive as to prefer "no deal"? Remember that in this universe unlike ours, the bitter sore-loser Remainer faction, whilst they might still have dripped poison in Brussels' ears, would have been much less effective in doing so as there wouldn't have been a significant UK "no deal" faction.
As soon as you enter into any kind of negotiation, the temptation to say "no deal is better than a bad deal" would be overwhelming, and then you plunge both factions into the same purity spiral.
In my postulated universe, there aren't two roughly-equally strong factions...
I think your postulated universe could only have existed if Vote Leave hadn't been boxed in on the single market question during the referendum campaign. Having won the vote on the basis of leaving the SM/CU, it would have been asking a lot to expect the people who saw that kind of Brexit as pointless to hold their tongue throughout the whole process.
Well, again, the single market question could have been best dealt with by Cameron putting it on the ballot paper. But since he wanted to get something that would be used as endorsement for full membership (euro/Schengen) without actually campaigning for it, your claim that VL "won the vote on the basis of leaving the SM/CU" is irrelevant.
Chaps, I am coming off this website. After this morning, I've just decided the downsides are far greater than the upsides re info, betting tips. Good luck to the many decent individuals on here and thanks for all the betting tips you have given over the years.
Sorry to see you go MrEd.
Indeed, MrEd was a minority view but an important one for a site that is a betting site and therefore needs to reflect all views, even pro Trump and pro Boris ones.
The last thing we want is for it to become a left liberal echo chamber
Over 93,000 posts from your good self suggest there is little chance of that.
HYFUD counts me in the same liberal left as you, Al. His definition seems to constitute anyone who doesn't show 100% loyalty and fealty to whoever the Tory leader is on the day.
No you are a fiscal conservative, centre right liberal.
However again still not hard right populist like Mr Ed
Oh how would you compare Max to me then @hyufd. I'm interested.
You are a centrist liberal, Max is a centre right liberal.
Most liberals I know don't consider me a liberal. For example, I'd bring in a lot of treason laws to deal with people like Shamina Begum, though maybe not the death penalty. Most liberals would be pretty upset by that notion.
I've never noticed a difference whether I salt pasta or not, can't see what the big deal is.
Everyone's taste buds are different, but I never learned the difference as a child between my mum's spaghetti and her mum's (better, sorry mum) spaghetti - when I became an adult and started experimenting, it turned out it was the salt.
Chaps, I am coming off this website. After this morning, I've just decided the downsides are far greater than the upsides re info, betting tips. Good luck to the many decent individuals on here and thanks for all the betting tips you have given over the years.
Sorry to see you go MrEd.
Indeed, MrEd was a minority view but an important one for a site that is a betting site and therefore needs to reflect all views, even pro Trump and pro Boris ones.
The last thing we want is for it to become a left liberal echo chamber
Over 93,000 posts from your good self suggest there is little chance of that.
HYFUD counts me in the same liberal left as you, Al. His definition seems to constitute anyone who doesn't show 100% loyalty and fealty to whoever the Tory leader is on the day.
No you are a fiscal conservative, centre right liberal.
However again still not hard right populist like Mr Ed
Oh how would you compare Max to me then @hyufd. I'm interested.
You are a centrist liberal, Max is a centre right liberal.
If only you were more competent in persuading all these liberals to actually vote liberal.
Quite a muscly Owen Jones piece here imo. His main point is we shouldn't be suckered by the Tory Party into thinking if Boris Johnson goes all is fine.
Johnson is no grotesque interloper: his behaviour and attitudes are emblematic of the British establishment. If our ruling institutions have a shared culture, it’s entitlement and shamelessness, a conviction that wrongdoing should meet consequences only if you are poor and powerless.
OJ is half right. The British establishment is very much as he depicts, but the British establishment is overwhelmingly centre left leaning, Remainy, and moderately woke. Oddly OJ draws attention only to Tory exemplars.
There is no single Establishment, there are just well-connected people with power - political, financial, social - these being strongly correlated. If you think the overwhelming majority of these people hold left of centre views I'd like you to send me a postcard from whatever place you're living in because it sounds exotic and rather lovely.
Hm. If the Establishment is a sliding scale from 0 to 100, I must be at least an 80. I have a public sector office job and live in a comfortable middle class suburb of a big city. The views I am surrounded by are overwhelmingly left-wing. Every voice at work (people sometimes talk about being in 'the party' - there is never any doubt which party they mean). The schools my children attend. The views expressed by my Establishment peers.
There may be right wing views in the Establishment. But apart from some noisy and ineffective froth in the political sphere, you almost never hear any right wing views expressed.
I did once hear someone confess to me, sotto voce, that having worked in a field which required European funding, he had become a little sceptical about the whole European process. And once, in a previous (non-public sector) job, someone admitted to me he had voted Conservative at the 2015 GE.
These are the only right wing views I can remember being openly expressed in the last ten years.
Yes.
The point that @kinabalu (and others) misses is that while the New Establishment is not hereditary*, it is still a system by which people are schooled in how to belong to it.
*Well not entirely. There is a lot of family linkage going on.
One's chances of entering the financial/social/political elites - plural on purpose - of this country are impacted more than anything by who your parents are and where you went to school. I not only don't miss this point it's the very essence (!) of my politics that I want the link between birth circumstances and life outcomes to be radically weakened. I want it so much that I actually support economic & social policies that would act strongly in that direction.
Mr. Boy, your assertion leavers continually controlled the process is not accurate.
Thrice May's deal came before Parliament. It was thwarted on the votes of pro-EU Labour (and other) MPs.
If May had put a Norway style deal to the House it would have passed easily. She couldn't get a majority for her deal because it was shit. And she couldn't put forward a Norway deal because it would have split her party down the middle.
The last bit's true, but only because of the way she acted when she first took office.
If Cameron had not flounced and had gone for EEA immediately, it wouldn't have been too controversial.
Better yet if it had been on the ballot paper, of course.
It would have become controversial the moment the EU responded by saying, "No, you have to have a full negotiatation of a new relationship, and no negotiation without notification."
Then he notifies with the intention to negotiate an EEA-type solution - in which case, would the EU really have been so vindictive as to prefer "no deal"? Remember that in this universe unlike ours, the bitter sore-loser Remainer faction, whilst they might still have dripped poison in Brussels' ears, would have been much less effective in doing so as there wouldn't have been a significant UK "no deal" faction.
As soon as you enter into any kind of negotiation, the temptation to say "no deal is better than a bad deal" would be overwhelming, and then you plunge both factions into the same purity spiral.
In my postulated universe, there aren't two roughly-equally strong factions...
I think your postulated universe could only have existed if Vote Leave hadn't been boxed in on the single market question during the referendum campaign. Having won the vote on the basis of leaving the SM/CU, it would have been asking a lot to expect the people who saw that kind of Brexit as pointless to hold their tongue throughout the whole process.
Well, again, the single market question could have been best dealt with by Cameron putting it on the ballot paper. But since he wanted to get something that would be used as endorsement for full membership (euro/Schengen) without actually campaigning for it, your claim that VL "won the vote on the basis of leaving the SM/CU" is irrelevant.
That's an odd rewriting of history. Are you claiming that his deal was a sham?
Mr. Boy, your assertion leavers continually controlled the process is not accurate.
Thrice May's deal came before Parliament. It was thwarted on the votes of pro-EU Labour (and other) MPs.
If May had put a Norway style deal to the House it would have passed easily. She couldn't get a majority for her deal because it was shit. And she couldn't put forward a Norway deal because it would have split her party down the middle.
The last bit's true, but only because of the way she acted when she first took office.
If Cameron had not flounced and had gone for EEA immediately, it wouldn't have been too controversial.
Better yet if it had been on the ballot paper, of course.
It would have become controversial the moment the EU responded by saying, "No, you have to have a full negotiatation of a new relationship, and no negotiation without notification."
Then he notifies with the intention to negotiate an EEA-type solution - in which case, would the EU really have been so vindictive as to prefer "no deal"? Remember that in this universe unlike ours, the bitter sore-loser Remainer faction, whilst they might still have dripped poison in Brussels' ears, would have been much less effective in doing so as there wouldn't have been a significant UK "no deal" faction.
As soon as you enter into any kind of negotiation, the temptation to say "no deal is better than a bad deal" would be overwhelming, and then you plunge both factions into the same purity spiral.
In my postulated universe, there aren't two roughly-equally strong factions...
I think your postulated universe could only have existed if Vote Leave hadn't been boxed in on the single market question during the referendum campaign. Having won the vote on the basis of leaving the SM/CU, it would have been asking a lot to expect the people who saw that kind of Brexit as pointless to hold their tongue throughout the whole process.
Well, again, the single market question could have been best dealt with by Cameron putting it on the ballot paper. But since he wanted to get something that would be used as endorsement for full membership (euro/Schengen) without actually campaigning for it, your claim that VL "won the vote on the basis of leaving the SM/CU" is irrelevant.
Cameron devised the EU referendum as a way of signing us up to the Euro and Schengen by stealth? I have to say that really is a new one.
I've never noticed a difference whether I salt pasta or not, can't see what the big deal is.
Everyone's taste buds are different, but I never learned the difference as a child between my mum's spaghetti and her mum's (better, sorry mum) spaghetti - when I became an adult and started experimenting, it turned out it was the salt.
Salt water also boils at a slightly higher temperature which will affect the absorbtion rate of the pasta. But I gave up putting salt in water for pasta, or indeed pretty much anything else a long time ago.
Mr. Boy, your assertion leavers continually controlled the process is not accurate.
Thrice May's deal came before Parliament. It was thwarted on the votes of pro-EU Labour (and other) MPs.
If May had put a Norway style deal to the House it would have passed easily. She couldn't get a majority for her deal because it was shit. And she couldn't put forward a Norway deal because it would have split her party down the middle.
The last bit's true, but only because of the way she acted when she first took office.
If Cameron had not flounced and had gone for EEA immediately, it wouldn't have been too controversial.
Better yet if it had been on the ballot paper, of course.
It would have become controversial the moment the EU responded by saying, "No, you have to have a full negotiatation of a new relationship, and no negotiation without notification."
Then he notifies with the intention to negotiate an EEA-type solution - in which case, would the EU really have been so vindictive as to prefer "no deal"? Remember that in this universe unlike ours, the bitter sore-loser Remainer faction, whilst they might still have dripped poison in Brussels' ears, would have been much less effective in doing so as there wouldn't have been a significant UK "no deal" faction.
As soon as you enter into any kind of negotiation, the temptation to say "no deal is better than a bad deal" would be overwhelming, and then you plunge both factions into the same purity spiral.
In my postulated universe, there aren't two roughly-equally strong factions...
I think your postulated universe could only have existed if Vote Leave hadn't been boxed in on the single market question during the referendum campaign. Having won the vote on the basis of leaving the SM/CU, it would have been asking a lot to expect the people who saw that kind of Brexit as pointless to hold their tongue throughout the whole process.
Well, again, the single market question could have been best dealt with by Cameron putting it on the ballot paper. But since he wanted to get something that would be used as endorsement for full membership (euro/Schengen) without actually campaigning for it, your claim that VL "won the vote on the basis of leaving the SM/CU" is irrelevant.
That's an odd rewriting of history. Are you claiming that his deal was a sham?
I am claiming that, without a shadow of a doubt in my mind, a Remain vote would have been taken as an endorsement of the EU Project. At first it would have started with things like feeling forced to take part in the EU vaccine procurement programme "to show we are good Europeans" but would certainly have ended with full membership being required. And we couldn't have said no - we would have chosen to Remain "knowing what it meant" just like we "knew what it meant" at the 1975 referendum.
Chaps, I am coming off this website. After this morning, I've just decided the downsides are far greater than the upsides re info, betting tips. Good luck to the many decent individuals on here and thanks for all the betting tips you have given over the years.
Sorry to see you go MrEd.
Indeed, MrEd was a minority view but an important one for a site that is a betting site and therefore needs to reflect all views, even pro Trump and pro Boris ones.
The last thing we want is for it to become a left liberal echo chamber
Over 93,000 posts from your good self suggest there is little chance of that.
HYFUD counts me in the same liberal left as you, Al. His definition seems to constitute anyone who doesn't show 100% loyalty and fealty to whoever the Tory leader is on the day.
No you are a fiscal conservative, centre right liberal.
However again still not hard right populist like Mr Ed
Oh how would you compare Max to me then @hyufd. I'm interested.
You are a centrist liberal, Max is a centre right liberal.
Most liberals I know don't consider me a liberal. For example, I'd bring in a lot of treason laws to deal with people like Shamina Begum, though maybe not the death penalty. Most liberals would be pretty upset by that notion.
I actually think of that as Old Fashioned Liberalism.
1) Define the crime - both for the potential criminals and the world at large. Everyone knows the score. 2) The punishment for the crime is in a court of law, with all the proper check and balances.
Contrast that with deleting your citizenship at whim - which was introduced precisely because of the elimination of ways of dealing with such situations under the law!
I'd include in the legislation, specifically, that it pulls in the international law on war crimes. So Begum, for example, could be prosecuted for war crimes *and* treason.
Setting aside judgement on specific DPPs, quite a lot of commentary on here this morning doesn't do justice to what is a very complex debate. Anybody who's worked in a role where safeguarding is important knows that.
The problem is that historically (over centuries, and right through to the 1980s at least) too few victims of abuse were believed. It was assumed they were lying or attention-seeking, especially if their allegations related to powerful institutions such as the Catholic Church. So abusers got away with murder, both metaphorically and literally. Cover-ups were frequent and egregious.
Quite rightly, that has changed. The starting point now is to listen to 'victims' and believe what they say - notice the word 'starting'. To give them a voice. Not to start by assuming they are lying, especially if they are 'worthless' victims. But that doesn't mean that you carry on believing them if the evidence doesn't stack up. I don't think anybody reasonably could disagree with this.
So what people are really complaining about is that it's a really difficult balance to strike (for teachers, social workers, and similar as well as law enforcement), and it's hard to get it right all the time. But we live in a better time now than we did in the past, when victims of abuse were callously disregarded even when everything they alleged was, in fact, true.
You make a good point. But the key issue is not that you believe the victims. But that you listen to them properly and you investigate what they say thoroughly. So that you can do them justice.
What those who raise concerns want above all else is to be truly heard and for those concerns to be taken seriously.
That has been conflated into "you must believe" for the reasons you describe. But it is an erroneous conflation. Because there is a subtle but important distinction between the two.
That distinction has not been appreciated fully or taught effectively. The combination of empathy and a ruthless focus on evidence and facts is essential for an investigator. But hard to get right.
Some individual policemen may do so. But on the whole this is not understood or appreciated or taught or rewarded. Investigation is both art and science and becoming skilled in it is much much harder than it seems.
I think we're in agreement, actually, especially if you read what I wrote carefully. I didn't say that the key issue is that you believe the victims. I said that your starting point should be to believe the victims - there's a big difference. The issue being that the starting point should definitely not be to disbelieve the victims, as it so often used to be.
Sajid Javid says that Sir Keir Starmer did "a good job" as director of public prosecutions and insists Boris Johnson has "clarified" his accusation that he had failed to prosecute Jimmy Savile.
Chaps, I am coming off this website. After this morning, I've just decided the downsides are far greater than the upsides re info, betting tips. Good luck to the many decent individuals on here and thanks for all the betting tips you have given over the years.
Sorry to see you go MrEd.
Indeed, MrEd was a minority view but an important one for a site that is a betting site and therefore needs to reflect all views, even pro Trump and pro Boris ones.
The last thing we want is for it to become a left liberal echo chamber
Over 93,000 posts from your good self suggest there is little chance of that.
HYFUD counts me in the same liberal left as you, Al. His definition seems to constitute anyone who doesn't show 100% loyalty and fealty to whoever the Tory leader is on the day.
No you are a fiscal conservative, centre right liberal.
However again still not hard right populist like Mr Ed
Oh how would you compare Max to me then @hyufd. I'm interested.
You are a centrist liberal, Max is a centre right liberal.
Most liberals I know don't consider me a liberal. For example, I'd bring in a lot of treason laws to deal with people like Shamina Begum, though maybe not the death penalty. Most liberals would be pretty upset by that notion.
Go you gravitate towards the importance of family, nation and retaining the status-quo; or do you gravitate towards individual rights and freedoms?
Chaps, I am coming off this website. After this morning, I've just decided the downsides are far greater than the upsides re info, betting tips. Good luck to the many decent individuals on here and thanks for all the betting tips you have given over the years.
The Big Dog wouldn't flounce and neither should you.
Really? Is it fun reading him throw around discredited crap that he picked up from an Alt Right website? If anyone enjoys that sort of stuff you'll find it all over the place. You could work your way up to it by a trudge through Guido's site.
Sajid Javid says that Sir Keir Starmer did "a good job" as director of public prosecutions and insists Boris Johnson has "clarified" his accusation that he had failed to prosecute Jimmy Savile.
Setting aside judgement on specific DPPs, quite a lot of commentary on here this morning doesn't do justice to what is a very complex debate. Anybody who's worked in a role where safeguarding is important knows that.
The problem is that historically (over centuries, and right through to the 1980s at least) too few victims of abuse were believed. It was assumed they were lying or attention-seeking, especially if their allegations related to powerful institutions such as the Catholic Church. So abusers got away with murder, both metaphorically and literally. Cover-ups were frequent and egregious.
Quite rightly, that has changed. The starting point now is to listen to 'victims' and believe what they say - notice the word 'starting'. To give them a voice. Not to start by assuming they are lying, especially if they are 'worthless' victims. But that doesn't mean that you carry on believing them if the evidence doesn't stack up. I don't think anybody reasonably could disagree with this.
So what people are really complaining about is that it's a really difficult balance to strike (for teachers, social workers, and similar as well as law enforcement), and it's hard to get it right all the time. But we live in a better time now than we did in the past, when victims of abuse were callously disregarded even when everything they alleged was, in fact, true.
You make a good point. But the key issue is not that you believe the victims. But that you listen to them properly and you investigate what they say thoroughly. So that you can do them justice.
What those who raise concerns want above all else is to be truly heard and for those concerns to be taken seriously.
That has been conflated into "you must believe" for the reasons you describe. But it is an erroneous conflation. Because there is a subtle but important distinction between the two.
That distinction has not been appreciated fully or taught effectively. The combination of empathy and a ruthless focus on evidence and facts is essential for an investigator. But hard to get right.
Some individual policemen may do so. But on the whole this is not understood or appreciated or taught or rewarded. Investigation is both art and science and becoming skilled in it is much much harder than it seems.
I think we're in agreement, actually, especially if you read what I wrote carefully. I didn't say that the key issue is that you believe the victims. I said that your starting point should be to believe the victims - there's a big difference. The issue being that the starting point should definitely not be to disbelieve the victims, as it so often used to be.
The problem, I think is people who have problems understanding even the slightest concept of judgement and accountability. They seem to be able to either
- Disbelieve the accusers - Believe the accusers
The idea that you start by accepting the accusers evidence and then go and get other evidence and add it up to see what is *probably true* seems too complex for them.
Quite a muscly Owen Jones piece here imo. His main point is we shouldn't be suckered by the Tory Party into thinking if Boris Johnson goes all is fine.
Johnson is no grotesque interloper: his behaviour and attitudes are emblematic of the British establishment. If our ruling institutions have a shared culture, it’s entitlement and shamelessness, a conviction that wrongdoing should meet consequences only if you are poor and powerless.
OJ is half right. The British establishment is very much as he depicts, but the British establishment is overwhelmingly centre left leaning, Remainy, and moderately woke. Oddly OJ draws attention only to Tory exemplars.
There is no single Establishment, there are just well-connected people with power - political, financial, social - these being strongly correlated. If you think the overwhelming majority of these people hold left of centre views I'd like you to send me a postcard from whatever place you're living in because it sounds exotic and rather lovely.
Hm. If the Establishment is a sliding scale from 0 to 100, I must be at least an 80. I have a public sector office job and live in a comfortable middle class suburb of a big city. The views I am surrounded by are overwhelmingly left-wing. Every voice at work (people sometimes talk about being in 'the party' - there is never any doubt which party they mean). The schools my children attend. The views expressed by my Establishment peers.
There may be right wing views in the Establishment. But apart from some noisy and ineffective froth in the political sphere, you almost never hear any right wing views expressed.
I did once hear someone confess to me, sotto voce, that having worked in a field which required European funding, he had become a little sceptical about the whole European process. And once, in a previous (non-public sector) job, someone admitted to me he had voted Conservative at the 2015 GE.
These are the only right wing views I can remember being openly expressed in the last ten years.
But what I'm talking about are the upper echelons. The people with real political and financial clout. What you're talking about here is more the affluent middle class. In Malmesbury speak the Establishment is the 10,000 not the 2 million.
Sajid Javid says that Sir Keir Starmer did "a good job" as director of public prosecutions and insists Boris Johnson has "clarified" his accusation that he had failed to prosecute Jimmy Savile.
Mr. Boy, your assertion leavers continually controlled the process is not accurate.
Thrice May's deal came before Parliament. It was thwarted on the votes of pro-EU Labour (and other) MPs.
If May had put a Norway style deal to the House it would have passed easily. She couldn't get a majority for her deal because it was shit. And she couldn't put forward a Norway deal because it would have split her party down the middle.
The last bit's true, but only because of the way she acted when she first took office.
If Cameron had not flounced and had gone for EEA immediately, it wouldn't have been too controversial.
Better yet if it had been on the ballot paper, of course.
It would have become controversial the moment the EU responded by saying, "No, you have to have a full negotiatation of a new relationship, and no negotiation without notification."
Then he notifies with the intention to negotiate an EEA-type solution - in which case, would the EU really have been so vindictive as to prefer "no deal"? Remember that in this universe unlike ours, the bitter sore-loser Remainer faction, whilst they might still have dripped poison in Brussels' ears, would have been much less effective in doing so as there wouldn't have been a significant UK "no deal" faction.
As soon as you enter into any kind of negotiation, the temptation to say "no deal is better than a bad deal" would be overwhelming, and then you plunge both factions into the same purity spiral.
In my postulated universe, there aren't two roughly-equally strong factions...
I think your postulated universe could only have existed if Vote Leave hadn't been boxed in on the single market question during the referendum campaign. Having won the vote on the basis of leaving the SM/CU, it would have been asking a lot to expect the people who saw that kind of Brexit as pointless to hold their tongue throughout the whole process.
Well, again, the single market question could have been best dealt with by Cameron putting it on the ballot paper. But since he wanted to get something that would be used as endorsement for full membership (euro/Schengen) without actually campaigning for it, your claim that VL "won the vote on the basis of leaving the SM/CU" is irrelevant.
That's an odd rewriting of history. Are you claiming that his deal was a sham?
I am claiming that, without a shadow of a doubt in my mind, a Remain vote would have been taken as an endorsement of the EU Project. At first it would have started with things like feeling forced to take part in the EU vaccine procurement programme "to show we are good Europeans" but would certainly have ended with full membership being required. And we couldn't have said no - we would have chosen to Remain "knowing what it meant" just like we "knew what it meant" at the 1975 referendum.
The difference is that in 1975, people spoke about the possibiltiy of a future single currency, even a future United States of Europe. It really was an endorsement of the project.
In contrast, David Cameron campaigned by saying that will *never* join the Euro. It's a bit hard to twist that after the fact.
Chaps, I am coming off this website. After this morning, I've just decided the downsides are far greater than the upsides re info, betting tips. Good luck to the many decent individuals on here and thanks for all the betting tips you have given over the years.
Sorry to see you go MrEd.
Indeed, MrEd was a minority view but an important one for a site that is a betting site and therefore needs to reflect all views, even pro Trump and pro Boris ones.
The last thing we want is for it to become a left liberal echo chamber
Over 93,000 posts from your good self suggest there is little chance of that.
HYFUD counts me in the same liberal left as you, Al. His definition seems to constitute anyone who doesn't show 100% loyalty and fealty to whoever the Tory leader is on the day.
No you are a fiscal conservative, centre right liberal.
However again still not hard right populist like Mr Ed
Oh how would you compare Max to me then @hyufd. I'm interested.
You are a centrist liberal, Max is a centre right liberal.
Most liberals I know don't consider me a liberal. For example, I'd bring in a lot of treason laws to deal with people like Shamina Begum, though maybe not the death penalty. Most liberals would be pretty upset by that notion.
Go you gravitate towards the importance of family, nation and retaining the status-quo; or do you gravitate towards individual rights and freedoms?
It really depends on the situation, in general I'd favour the rights of individuals in most situations, but there are times where the greater good or the unity of the nation are more important. Hence my support for much tougher treason laws and sentencing. There are some cases where the national interest overrides individual rights, war is a common example given, the pandemic start is a recent one as well. It's why Boris' parties offend us all so much, lots of people agree that in times of war special governance is needed to get through a tough spot and we expect everyone around us to abide by the rules even if they disagree.
Mr. Boy, your assertion leavers continually controlled the process is not accurate.
Thrice May's deal came before Parliament. It was thwarted on the votes of pro-EU Labour (and other) MPs.
If May had put a Norway style deal to the House it would have passed easily. She couldn't get a majority for her deal because it was shit. And she couldn't put forward a Norway deal because it would have split her party down the middle.
The last bit's true, but only because of the way she acted when she first took office.
If Cameron had not flounced and had gone for EEA immediately, it wouldn't have been too controversial.
Better yet if it had been on the ballot paper, of course.
It would have become controversial the moment the EU responded by saying, "No, you have to have a full negotiatation of a new relationship, and no negotiation without notification."
Then he notifies with the intention to negotiate an EEA-type solution - in which case, would the EU really have been so vindictive as to prefer "no deal"? Remember that in this universe unlike ours, the bitter sore-loser Remainer faction, whilst they might still have dripped poison in Brussels' ears, would have been much less effective in doing so as there wouldn't have been a significant UK "no deal" faction.
As soon as you enter into any kind of negotiation, the temptation to say "no deal is better than a bad deal" would be overwhelming, and then you plunge both factions into the same purity spiral.
In my postulated universe, there aren't two roughly-equally strong factions...
I think your postulated universe could only have existed if Vote Leave hadn't been boxed in on the single market question during the referendum campaign. Having won the vote on the basis of leaving the SM/CU, it would have been asking a lot to expect the people who saw that kind of Brexit as pointless to hold their tongue throughout the whole process.
Well, again, the single market question could have been best dealt with by Cameron putting it on the ballot paper. But since he wanted to get something that would be used as endorsement for full membership (euro/Schengen) without actually campaigning for it, your claim that VL "won the vote on the basis of leaving the SM/CU" is irrelevant.
That's an odd rewriting of history. Are you claiming that his deal was a sham?
I am claiming that, without a shadow of a doubt in my mind, a Remain vote would have been taken as an endorsement of the EU Project. At first it would have started with things like feeling forced to take part in the EU vaccine procurement programme "to show we are good Europeans" but would certainly have ended with full membership being required. And we couldn't have said no - we would have chosen to Remain "knowing what it meant" just like we "knew what it meant" at the 1975 referendum.
The difference is that in 1975, people spoke about the possibiltiy of a future single currency, even a future United States of Europe. It really was an endorsement of the project.
In contrast, David Cameron campaigned by saying that will *never* join the Euro. It's a bit hard to twist that after the fact.
Have you ever met the EU? Twisting things towards the way they see the world is exactly what they do.
Mr. Boy, your assertion leavers continually controlled the process is not accurate.
Thrice May's deal came before Parliament. It was thwarted on the votes of pro-EU Labour (and other) MPs.
If May had put a Norway style deal to the House it would have passed easily. She couldn't get a majority for her deal because it was shit. And she couldn't put forward a Norway deal because it would have split her party down the middle.
The last bit's true, but only because of the way she acted when she first took office.
If Cameron had not flounced and had gone for EEA immediately, it wouldn't have been too controversial.
Better yet if it had been on the ballot paper, of course.
It would have become controversial the moment the EU responded by saying, "No, you have to have a full negotiatation of a new relationship, and no negotiation without notification."
It's also not a very good deal, the EEA option comes with the same trade friction as the TCA but none of the divergence capability.
SM and CU combined has no trade frictions. It isn't without downsides but then neither is anything else.
But that's not what is being discussed, people are talking about the EEA, not EEA+CU, which was never really on the table.
If the SM and CU options had both passed in the meaningful votes then perhaps that's where we would have ended up. Unfortunately we will never know because the Tories voted them down.
Voting to stay in the Customs Union was like voting for free unicorns. It was legally and practically impossible gaving left the EU. No matter how many votes were passed in favour of it it still couldn't happen.
Quite a muscly Owen Jones piece here imo. His main point is we shouldn't be suckered by the Tory Party into thinking if Boris Johnson goes all is fine.
Johnson is no grotesque interloper: his behaviour and attitudes are emblematic of the British establishment. If our ruling institutions have a shared culture, it’s entitlement and shamelessness, a conviction that wrongdoing should meet consequences only if you are poor and powerless.
OJ is half right. The British establishment is very much as he depicts, but the British establishment is overwhelmingly centre left leaning, Remainy, and moderately woke. Oddly OJ draws attention only to Tory exemplars.
There is no single Establishment, there are just well-connected people with power - political, financial, social - these being strongly correlated. If you think the overwhelming majority of these people hold left of centre views I'd like you to send me a postcard from whatever place you're living in because it sounds exotic and rather lovely.
Hm. If the Establishment is a sliding scale from 0 to 100, I must be at least an 80. I have a public sector office job and live in a comfortable middle class suburb of a big city. The views I am surrounded by are overwhelmingly left-wing. Every voice at work (people sometimes talk about being in 'the party' - there is never any doubt which party they mean). The schools my children attend. The views expressed by my Establishment peers.
There may be right wing views in the Establishment. But apart from some noisy and ineffective froth in the political sphere, you almost never hear any right wing views expressed.
I did once hear someone confess to me, sotto voce, that having worked in a field which required European funding, he had become a little sceptical about the whole European process. And once, in a previous (non-public sector) job, someone admitted to me he had voted Conservative at the 2015 GE.
These are the only right wing views I can remember being openly expressed in the last ten years.
But what I'm talking about are the upper echelons. The people with real political and financial clout. What you're talking about here is more the affluent middle class. In Malmesbury speak it's the 10,000 not the 2 million.
The Crispin Odeys, the William and Jacob Rees-Moggs, even the Sir Jim Ratcliffes, Britain's richest person. Also the Lord Rothermeres and Rupert Murdochs, equally globally financially mobile as all of these.
Mr. Boy, your assertion leavers continually controlled the process is not accurate.
Thrice May's deal came before Parliament. It was thwarted on the votes of pro-EU Labour (and other) MPs.
If May had put a Norway style deal to the House it would have passed easily. She couldn't get a majority for her deal because it was shit. And she couldn't put forward a Norway deal because it would have split her party down the middle.
The last bit's true, but only because of the way she acted when she first took office.
If Cameron had not flounced and had gone for EEA immediately, it wouldn't have been too controversial.
Better yet if it had been on the ballot paper, of course.
It would have become controversial the moment the EU responded by saying, "No, you have to have a full negotiatation of a new relationship, and no negotiation without notification."
Then he notifies with the intention to negotiate an EEA-type solution - in which case, would the EU really have been so vindictive as to prefer "no deal"? Remember that in this universe unlike ours, the bitter sore-loser Remainer faction, whilst they might still have dripped poison in Brussels' ears, would have been much less effective in doing so as there wouldn't have been a significant UK "no deal" faction.
As soon as you enter into any kind of negotiation, the temptation to say "no deal is better than a bad deal" would be overwhelming, and then you plunge both factions into the same purity spiral.
In my postulated universe, there aren't two roughly-equally strong factions...
I think your postulated universe could only have existed if Vote Leave hadn't been boxed in on the single market question during the referendum campaign. Having won the vote on the basis of leaving the SM/CU, it would have been asking a lot to expect the people who saw that kind of Brexit as pointless to hold their tongue throughout the whole process.
Well, again, the single market question could have been best dealt with by Cameron putting it on the ballot paper. But since he wanted to get something that would be used as endorsement for full membership (euro/Schengen) without actually campaigning for it, your claim that VL "won the vote on the basis of leaving the SM/CU" is irrelevant.
That's an odd rewriting of history. Are you claiming that his deal was a sham?
I am claiming that, without a shadow of a doubt in my mind, a Remain vote would have been taken as an endorsement of the EU Project. At first it would have started with things like feeling forced to take part in the EU vaccine procurement programme "to show we are good Europeans" but would certainly have ended with full membership being required. And we couldn't have said no - we would have chosen to Remain "knowing what it meant" just like we "knew what it meant" at the 1975 referendum.
The difference is that in 1975, people spoke about the possibiltiy of a future single currency, even a future United States of Europe. It really was an endorsement of the project.
In contrast, David Cameron campaigned by saying that will *never* join the Euro. It's a bit hard to twist that after the fact.
Have you ever met the EU? Twisting things towards the way they see the world is exactly what they do.
I'm beginning to think that you wouldn't have accepted David Cameron going for an EEA-style option.
Sajid Javid says that Sir Keir Starmer did "a good job" as director of public prosecutions and insists Boris Johnson has "clarified" his accusation that he had failed to prosecute Jimmy Savile.
Mr. Boy, your assertion leavers continually controlled the process is not accurate.
Thrice May's deal came before Parliament. It was thwarted on the votes of pro-EU Labour (and other) MPs.
If May had put a Norway style deal to the House it would have passed easily. She couldn't get a majority for her deal because it was shit. And she couldn't put forward a Norway deal because it would have split her party down the middle.
The last bit's true, but only because of the way she acted when she first took office.
If Cameron had not flounced and had gone for EEA immediately, it wouldn't have been too controversial.
Better yet if it had been on the ballot paper, of course.
It would have become controversial the moment the EU responded by saying, "No, you have to have a full negotiatation of a new relationship, and no negotiation without notification."
Then he notifies with the intention to negotiate an EEA-type solution - in which case, would the EU really have been so vindictive as to prefer "no deal"? Remember that in this universe unlike ours, the bitter sore-loser Remainer faction, whilst they might still have dripped poison in Brussels' ears, would have been much less effective in doing so as there wouldn't have been a significant UK "no deal" faction.
As soon as you enter into any kind of negotiation, the temptation to say "no deal is better than a bad deal" would be overwhelming, and then you plunge both factions into the same purity spiral.
In my postulated universe, there aren't two roughly-equally strong factions...
I think your postulated universe could only have existed if Vote Leave hadn't been boxed in on the single market question during the referendum campaign. Having won the vote on the basis of leaving the SM/CU, it would have been asking a lot to expect the people who saw that kind of Brexit as pointless to hold their tongue throughout the whole process.
Well, again, the single market question could have been best dealt with by Cameron putting it on the ballot paper. But since he wanted to get something that would be used as endorsement for full membership (euro/Schengen) without actually campaigning for it, your claim that VL "won the vote on the basis of leaving the SM/CU" is irrelevant.
That's an odd rewriting of history. Are you claiming that his deal was a sham?
I am claiming that, without a shadow of a doubt in my mind, a Remain vote would have been taken as an endorsement of the EU Project. At first it would have started with things like feeling forced to take part in the EU vaccine procurement programme "to show we are good Europeans" but would certainly have ended with full membership being required. And we couldn't have said no - we would have chosen to Remain "knowing what it meant" just like we "knew what it meant" at the 1975 referendum.
The difference is that in 1975, people spoke about the possibiltiy of a future single currency, even a future United States of Europe. It really was an endorsement of the project.
In contrast, David Cameron campaigned by saying that will *never* join the Euro. It's a bit hard to twist that after the fact.
Have you ever met the EU? Twisting things towards the way they see the world is exactly what they do.
If Remain had won by a thirty point margin or more, then I could maybe have seen that as a mandate for the *project*. A 52-48 win for Remain really wouldn't have been.
COOKE, Christian Christopher (Local Conservatives) 613 LOXTON Huw Geraint (Independent) 482 FOSTER, David Geoffrey (Labour Party Candidate) 311 Con 43.6 (-11.7) Ind 34.3 (+16.9) Lab 22.1 (-3.0)
Labour have done universally and weirdly badly in last night's elections. Can't work out whether it's a freak or the national polls are wrong (or some other explanation like the increased Labour VI is concentrated among the less politically engaged who don't vote in council byelections).
Their vote is super soft. NOTA is strong at the moment.
Well it doesn't seem like 1995 were there was a genuine enthusiasm for Blair, and it was only a matter of time before the Tories were turfed out office. If the Tories ditch Boris and actually got someone pretty decent they'd have a good chance of winning the next election.
This is true. However, the cost of living crisis hasn't hit yet. I commented yesterday that 1992 was a one -two punch. The election of a credible LOTO was the first. Black Wednesday was the knockout. The economic picture is truly dire.
To be truly dire, we would have to have high unemployment. Wages falling behind prices is bad, and for the poor very bad, but it’s nothing compared to the personal and societal damage of long-term unemployment.
Chaps, I am coming off this website. After this morning, I've just decided the downsides are far greater than the upsides re info, betting tips. Good luck to the many decent individuals on here and thanks for all the betting tips you have given over the years.
Sorry to see you go MrEd.
Indeed, MrEd was a minority view but an important one for a site that is a betting site and therefore needs to reflect all views, even pro Trump and pro Boris ones.
The last thing we want is for it to become a left liberal echo chamber
Over 93,000 posts from your good self suggest there is little chance of that.
HYFUD counts me in the same liberal left as you, Al. His definition seems to constitute anyone who doesn't show 100% loyalty and fealty to whoever the Tory leader is on the day.
No you are a fiscal conservative, centre right liberal.
However again still not hard right populist like Mr Ed
Oh how would you compare Max to me then @hyufd. I'm interested.
You are a centrist liberal, Max is a centre right liberal.
Most liberals I know don't consider me a liberal. For example, I'd bring in a lot of treason laws to deal with people like Shamina Begum, though maybe not the death penalty. Most liberals would be pretty upset by that notion.
Go you gravitate towards the importance of family, nation and retaining the status-quo; or do you gravitate towards individual rights and freedoms?
It really depends on the situation, in general I'd favour the rights of individuals in most situations, but there are times where the greater good or the unity of the nation are more important. Hence my support for much tougher treason laws and sentencing. There are some cases where the national interest overrides individual rights, war is a common example given, the pandemic start is a recent one as well. It's why Boris' parties offend us all so much, lots of people agree that in times of war special governance is needed to get through a tough spot and we expect everyone around us to abide by the rules even if they disagree.
I suspect you have a high level of tolerance for alternative (i.e. not trad family) lifestyles and eccentricities. And prefer a smaller state generally but accepts its role in ameliorating inequality to some degree in the name of extending freedoms?
From your posts I have you down more of a liberal than a conservative I think.
Of course, we are talking ideology (small c and small l). Party affiliation is a different, though connected, matter.
Reasons why Boris doesn't want to go now No 1 to 60million
Boris wants another 4-6 months to get past Brown and May - and he needs to avoid a VONC otherwise he isn't going to get there.
I still think Boris wins a VONC 55% to 45% or so for now
He'll probably beat Spencer Perceval. Unlikely he'll beat Gordon Brown.
Ah, Boris, you old duffer, it could all have been so different. You were played a hugely difficult hand - take over a party with no majority and with two wings in open rebellion, in different directions, deal with the most contentious constitutional issue of the post-war era, and then thrown off course by the biggest emergency of my lifetime. The first you managed with astonishing success, the second to no less dissatisfaction than anyone else would have achieved*, and the third better than many, with some brave calls along the way.
And then you threw it away on - what? Holding some not-very-good-parties? Evacuating someone's pets from Afghanistan? Owen Paterson? A distasteful jibe at PMQs?
I'm not trying to excuse Boris. I didn't want him in the first place and I certainly don't want him now. But he dealt with the really difficult issues quite well - certainly better than many. The first few months of his premiership when he took a fractious party without a majority which had recently polled below 10% in a national election to a landslide-ish majority was just astonishing.
He's played an astonishingly difficult hand with a surprising degree of success, and then made some really, really, really stupid and unnecessary unforced errors. Like the spy who finds the Macguffin, defeats three different sets of baddies, makes it home through no-mans land, then gets hilariously drunk on the train back from Dover, picks a fight with a bouncer and leaves the Macguffin on the tube.
*I can sense Remainer piss boiling from here when I write this. Sorry. It's hard to frame in a neutral way. But I stand by it - other solutions may or may not have been better; but any other solution would have pissed off at least as many people.
As a former remainer (meaningless term now, really) I agree completely. The options were piss off the Brexiters, piss off the Remainers or piss off everybody both extremes (something Norway-esque). Probably the last option was best for the country, but would have still greatly annoyed those on both extremes and been seen as a betrayal, for different reasons, by many. It would have required a great leader to bring people together behind it.
Actually I think most Remainers would have grabbed Norway with both hands, certainly once the initial shock of the vote was absorbed. That is certainly suggested by the parliamentary votes on this where Remainers overwhelmingly voted for it. The opposition came from Leavers who were in full on yah boo you lost mode and held out for a maximal position - which fair play to them they achieved. The least they could do now is own it instead of whining about the fact they've got everything they wanted.
The problem with the first part is that the Remainers who "overwhelmingly voted for it" came across as it being their second choice behind overturning the referendum result, so it looked like a trap.
If Remainers had been strong from June 2016 until May's election that "we lost, but only narrowly, but EEA is a reasonable outcome from the result" then plenty of Leavers would have been more than happy with that.
I think that is just a sign of Leaver paranoia.
Given how bitterly a faction of sore-loser Remainers fought to overturn the referendum result, a certain level of paranoia was quite understandable.
Not really, Leavers controlled the process at all times. The only reason that there was stalemate was that they promised something impossible (leaving the single market and customs union with no implications for the Irish border). That wasn't the fault of Remainers.
I wonder what the DUP were thinking when they campaigned for Brexit? Were they (secretly and sordidly) hoping it would lead to a hard border between NI and the Republic? Or were they assuming the whole of the UK would stay in the Single Market? It's quite hard to fathom.
I don’t think they could tell you themselves. I suspect Brexit right wing populism chimed with their own version of conservatism, their distrust of May and the foolish trust they put in BJ kinda indicates such. Never let it be said that Doopers let analysis get in the way of atavistic feeling.
Quite something to remember that there was a time on here when the DUP were according grudging respect for the way they’d played Theresa.
Chaps, I am coming off this website. After this morning, I've just decided the downsides are far greater than the upsides re info, betting tips. Good luck to the many decent individuals on here and thanks for all the betting tips you have given over the years.
The Big Dog wouldn't flounce and neither should you.
Really? Is it fun reading him throw around discredited crap that he picked up from an Alt Right website? If anyone enjoys that sort of stuff you'll find it all over the place. You could work your way up to it by a trudge through Guido's site.
Chaps, I am coming off this website. After this morning, I've just decided the downsides are far greater than the upsides re info, betting tips. Good luck to the many decent individuals on here and thanks for all the betting tips you have given over the years.
Sorry to see you go MrEd.
Indeed, MrEd was a minority view but an important one for a site that is a betting site and therefore needs to reflect all views, even pro Trump and pro Boris ones.
The last thing we want is for it to become a left liberal echo chamber
Over 93,000 posts from your good self suggest there is little chance of that.
HYFUD counts me in the same liberal left as you, Al. His definition seems to constitute anyone who doesn't show 100% loyalty and fealty to whoever the Tory leader is on the day.
No you are a fiscal conservative, centre right liberal.
However again still not hard right populist like Mr Ed
Chaps, I am coming off this website. After this morning, I've just decided the downsides are far greater than the upsides re info, betting tips. Good luck to the many decent individuals on here and thanks for all the betting tips you have given over the years.
Sorry to see this. I have often agreed with your posts.
Quite a muscly Owen Jones piece here imo. His main point is we shouldn't be suckered by the Tory Party into thinking if Boris Johnson goes all is fine.
Johnson is no grotesque interloper: his behaviour and attitudes are emblematic of the British establishment. If our ruling institutions have a shared culture, it’s entitlement and shamelessness, a conviction that wrongdoing should meet consequences only if you are poor and powerless.
OJ is half right. The British establishment is very much as he depicts, but the British establishment is overwhelmingly centre left leaning, Remainy, and moderately woke. Oddly OJ draws attention only to Tory exemplars.
There is no single Establishment, there are just well-connected people with power - political, financial, social - these being strongly correlated. If you think the overwhelming majority of these people hold left of centre views I'd like you to send me a postcard from whatever place you're living in because it sounds exotic and rather lovely.
Hm. If the Establishment is a sliding scale from 0 to 100, I must be at least an 80. I have a public sector office job and live in a comfortable middle class suburb of a big city. The views I am surrounded by are overwhelmingly left-wing. Every voice at work (people sometimes talk about being in 'the party' - there is never any doubt which party they mean). The schools my children attend. The views expressed by my Establishment peers.
There may be right wing views in the Establishment. But apart from some noisy and ineffective froth in the political sphere, you almost never hear any right wing views expressed.
I did once hear someone confess to me, sotto voce, that having worked in a field which required European funding, he had become a little sceptical about the whole European process. And once, in a previous (non-public sector) job, someone admitted to me he had voted Conservative at the 2015 GE.
These are the only right wing views I can remember being openly expressed in the last ten years.
But what I'm talking about are the upper echelons. The people with real political and financial clout. What you're talking about here is more the affluent middle class. In Malmesbury speak the Establishment is the 10,000 not the 2 million.
But presumably the upper echelons of my organisation are part of the 10,000 rather than the 2 million. And they move in the circles of others from the 10,000. And it seems unlikely that the consistently left-leaning voices that those people use to us in the organisation, and which is communicated so assiduously in weekly emails, is suddenly turned off behind closed doors.
Mr. Boy, your assertion leavers continually controlled the process is not accurate.
Thrice May's deal came before Parliament. It was thwarted on the votes of pro-EU Labour (and other) MPs.
If May had put a Norway style deal to the House it would have passed easily. She couldn't get a majority for her deal because it was shit. And she couldn't put forward a Norway deal because it would have split her party down the middle.
The last bit's true, but only because of the way she acted when she first took office.
If Cameron had not flounced and had gone for EEA immediately, it wouldn't have been too controversial.
Better yet if it had been on the ballot paper, of course.
It would have become controversial the moment the EU responded by saying, "No, you have to have a full negotiatation of a new relationship, and no negotiation without notification."
Then he notifies with the intention to negotiate an EEA-type solution - in which case, would the EU really have been so vindictive as to prefer "no deal"? Remember that in this universe unlike ours, the bitter sore-loser Remainer faction, whilst they might still have dripped poison in Brussels' ears, would have been much less effective in doing so as there wouldn't have been a significant UK "no deal" faction.
As soon as you enter into any kind of negotiation, the temptation to say "no deal is better than a bad deal" would be overwhelming, and then you plunge both factions into the same purity spiral.
In my postulated universe, there aren't two roughly-equally strong factions...
I think your postulated universe could only have existed if Vote Leave hadn't been boxed in on the single market question during the referendum campaign. Having won the vote on the basis of leaving the SM/CU, it would have been asking a lot to expect the people who saw that kind of Brexit as pointless to hold their tongue throughout the whole process.
Well, again, the single market question could have been best dealt with by Cameron putting it on the ballot paper. But since he wanted to get something that would be used as endorsement for full membership (euro/Schengen) without actually campaigning for it, your claim that VL "won the vote on the basis of leaving the SM/CU" is irrelevant.
That's an odd rewriting of history. Are you claiming that his deal was a sham?
I am claiming that, without a shadow of a doubt in my mind, a Remain vote would have been taken as an endorsement of the EU Project. At first it would have started with things like feeling forced to take part in the EU vaccine procurement programme "to show we are good Europeans" but would certainly have ended with full membership being required. And we couldn't have said no - we would have chosen to Remain "knowing what it meant" just like we "knew what it meant" at the 1975 referendum.
The difference is that in 1975, people spoke about the possibiltiy of a future single currency, even a future United States of Europe. It really was an endorsement of the project.
In contrast, David Cameron campaigned by saying that will *never* join the Euro. It's a bit hard to twist that after the fact.
Have you ever met the EU? Twisting things towards the way they see the world is exactly what they do.
I'm beginning to think that you wouldn't have accepted David Cameron going for an EEA-style option.
Quite a muscly Owen Jones piece here imo. His main point is we shouldn't be suckered by the Tory Party into thinking if Boris Johnson goes all is fine.
Johnson is no grotesque interloper: his behaviour and attitudes are emblematic of the British establishment. If our ruling institutions have a shared culture, it’s entitlement and shamelessness, a conviction that wrongdoing should meet consequences only if you are poor and powerless.
OJ is half right. The British establishment is very much as he depicts, but the British establishment is overwhelmingly centre left leaning, Remainy, and moderately woke. Oddly OJ draws attention only to Tory exemplars.
There is no single Establishment, there are just well-connected people with power - political, financial, social - these being strongly correlated. If you think the overwhelming majority of these people hold left of centre views I'd like you to send me a postcard from whatever place you're living in because it sounds exotic and rather lovely.
Hm. If the Establishment is a sliding scale from 0 to 100, I must be at least an 80. I have a public sector office job and live in a comfortable middle class suburb of a big city. The views I am surrounded by are overwhelmingly left-wing. Every voice at work (people sometimes talk about being in 'the party' - there is never any doubt which party they mean). The schools my children attend. The views expressed by my Establishment peers.
There may be right wing views in the Establishment. But apart from some noisy and ineffective froth in the political sphere, you almost never hear any right wing views expressed.
I did once hear someone confess to me, sotto voce, that having worked in a field which required European funding, he had become a little sceptical about the whole European process. And once, in a previous (non-public sector) job, someone admitted to me he had voted Conservative at the 2015 GE.
These are the only right wing views I can remember being openly expressed in the last ten years.
But what I'm talking about are the upper echelons. The people with real political and financial clout. What you're talking about here is more the affluent middle class. In Malmesbury speak it's the 10,000 not the 2 million.
It's the same all the way up.
A fun example....
You may remember some entertainment in Afghanistan with guns jamming. The spin was that Ol' Ma Duece (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M2_Browning) was unreliable. Which is hysterically funny - people have been trying to replace the M2 for a century. And failing, since it is so reliable.
What happened was this.
- Ammunition procurement for the British Army was run by an office of old farts. - The New Establishment types replaced them with a new office of representative, modern, younger civil servants - They knew nothing of ammunition or guns. As good, modern, sensible people, they hated firearms and regarded them as unpleasant. - ...And bought the cheapest they could find. - The cheap stuff leaves massive amounts of residue in the guns. Which is great for jamming things up
When I talked to a bright young star in the Cabinet Office (a friend) - he was horrified by the suggestion that anything had gone wrong.
They had replaced tired old fashioned people with properly selected and trained people. Who were impeccably right in every way.
He actually said "Do you want the ammunition for the British Army to be bought by a bunch of gun nuts??!?"
As a postscript. It was discovered, in the nick of time that the same people had noticed that sniper ammunition was costing a lot of money. So they were about to place an order to replace all of it with the cheapest they could find. And sell the expensive stuff.....
One of the partners in my firm declared the other day that the cost of living situation is starting to bite and even he is having to scrutinise his direct debits more closely.
Chaps, I am coming off this website. After this morning, I've just decided the downsides are far greater than the upsides re info, betting tips. Good luck to the many decent individuals on here and thanks for all the betting tips you have given over the years.
Sorry to see you go MrEd.
Indeed, MrEd was a minority view but an important one for a site that is a betting site and therefore needs to reflect all views, even pro Trump and pro Boris ones.
The last thing we want is for it to become a left liberal echo chamber
Over 93,000 posts from your good self suggest there is little chance of that.
HYFUD counts me in the same liberal left as you, Al. His definition seems to constitute anyone who doesn't show 100% loyalty and fealty to whoever the Tory leader is on the day.
No you are a fiscal conservative, centre right liberal.
However again still not hard right populist like Mr Ed
Oh how would you compare Max to me then @hyufd. I'm interested.
You are a centrist liberal, Max is a centre right liberal.
Most liberals I know don't consider me a liberal. For example, I'd bring in a lot of treason laws to deal with people like Shamina Begum, though maybe not the death penalty. Most liberals would be pretty upset by that notion.
I actually think of that as Old Fashioned Liberalism.
1) Define the crime - both for the potential criminals and the world at large. Everyone knows the score. 2) The punishment for the crime is in a court of law, with all the proper check and balances.
Contrast that with deleting your citizenship at whim - which was introduced precisely because of the elimination of ways of dealing with such situations under the law!
I'd include in the legislation, specifically, that it pulls in the international law on war crimes. So Begum, for example, could be prosecuted for war crimes *and* treason.
Good post.
Bring Begum back for whatever crime you think she's committed and then try her in a court of law. Don't just bow to the masses and exclude her rendering her effectively stateless.
The discussion about Alison Saunders, Starmer and the CPS is all very interesting. But what you are missing is that the Met - and other police forces - are still operating on the basis of the flawed assumptions about uncritical belief in what a victim alleges, despite Sir Richard Henriques pointing out all the wrongheadedness of this in his report following Operation Midland.
That report was written 3 years ago.
Nothing has been done to implement his recommendations. The police have simply waved 2 fingers at him. The government in charge while all this has been happening has been led by one Boris Johnson and the Home Secretary throughout has been Priti Patel.
So wondering whether Saunders or Starmer could have done their jobs better in the past is a diversion from the fact that this gruesome duo (Johnson and Patel) are not doing their jobs well in this regard now. The injustices are continuing now.
One curiosity of modern policing is how the SMT is so willing to overlook grooming gangs, push Yewtree on minimal evidence, celebrate Pride week, yet has developed a canteen culture of misogyny and racism as seen in Charing Cross Station.
Perhaps just a reflection of wider society, but even so.
Misogyny explains in part the attitude to the girls raped by grooming gangs.
Yewtree - this is easily explained by incompetence and a desire to please political masters.
Pride - no work involved. Turn up at a parade, wear a few badges & get lots of praise for doing nothing substantive.
So basically old attitudes, sucking up to your boss & doing easy stuff that gets you a pat on the back but involves no work.
I don't find it that puzzling.
Yes, with the Rotherham and similar, there's much heard about how it was allowed to go on because of cultural cringe to muslim sensibilities, and that's a valid and important observation, but I also (like you) think a part of it was the dismissal of the victims because they were working class girls. So class and gender - or sex! - in there too.
And as for rocking up at Pride, that looks particularly sick in the light of the Stephen Port case. Did you see the report and the various progs on that? What an absolute scandal. 3 gay men murdered due to the police deciding the death of the 1st one was no big deal.
Chaps, I am coming off this website. After this morning, I've just decided the downsides are far greater than the upsides re info, betting tips. Good luck to the many decent individuals on here and thanks for all the betting tips you have given over the years.
Sorry to see you go MrEd.
Indeed, MrEd was a minority view but an important one for a site that is a betting site and therefore needs to reflect all views, even pro Trump and pro Boris ones.
The last thing we want is for it to become a left liberal echo chamber
Over 93,000 posts from your good self suggest there is little chance of that.
HYFUD counts me in the same liberal left as you, Al. His definition seems to constitute anyone who doesn't show 100% loyalty and fealty to whoever the Tory leader is on the day.
No you are a fiscal conservative, centre right liberal.
However again still not hard right populist like Mr Ed
Oh how would you compare Max to me then @hyufd. I'm interested.
You are a centrist liberal, Max is a centre right liberal.
Most liberals I know don't consider me a liberal. For example, I'd bring in a lot of treason laws to deal with people like Shamina Begum, though maybe not the death penalty. Most liberals would be pretty upset by that notion.
Reasons why Boris doesn't want to go now No 1 to 60million
Boris wants another 4-6 months to get past Brown and May - and he needs to avoid a VONC otherwise he isn't going to get there.
I still think Boris wins a VONC 55% to 45% or so for now
He'll probably beat Spencer Perceval. Unlikely he'll beat Gordon Brown.
Ah, Boris, you old duffer, it could all have been so different. You were played a hugely difficult hand - take over a party with no majority and with two wings in open rebellion, in different directions, deal with the most contentious constitutional issue of the post-war era, and then thrown off course by the biggest emergency of my lifetime. The first you managed with astonishing success, the second to no less dissatisfaction than anyone else would have achieved*, and the third better than many, with some brave calls along the way.
And then you threw it away on - what? Holding some not-very-good-parties? Evacuating someone's pets from Afghanistan? Owen Paterson? A distasteful jibe at PMQs?
I'm not trying to excuse Boris. I didn't want him in the first place and I certainly don't want him now. But he dealt with the really difficult issues quite well - certainly better than many. The first few months of his premiership when he took a fractious party without a majority which had recently polled below 10% in a national election to a landslide-ish majority was just astonishing.
He's played an astonishingly difficult hand with a surprising degree of success, and then made some really, really, really stupid and unnecessary unforced errors. Like the spy who finds the Macguffin, defeats three different sets of baddies, makes it home through no-mans land, then gets hilariously drunk on the train back from Dover, picks a fight with a bouncer and leaves the Macguffin on the tube.
*I can sense Remainer piss boiling from here when I write this. Sorry. It's hard to frame in a neutral way. But I stand by it - other solutions may or may not have been better; but any other solution would have pissed off at least as many people.
As a former remainer (meaningless term now, really) I agree completely. The options were piss off the Brexiters, piss off the Remainers or piss off everybody both extremes (something Norway-esque). Probably the last option was best for the country, but would have still greatly annoyed those on both extremes and been seen as a betrayal, for different reasons, by many. It would have required a great leader to bring people together behind it.
Actually I think most Remainers would have grabbed Norway with both hands, certainly once the initial shock of the vote was absorbed. That is certainly suggested by the parliamentary votes on this where Remainers overwhelmingly voted for it. The opposition came from Leavers who were in full on yah boo you lost mode and held out for a maximal position - which fair play to them they achieved. The least they could do now is own it instead of whining about the fact they've got everything they wanted.
The problem with the first part is that the Remainers who "overwhelmingly voted for it" came across as it being their second choice behind overturning the referendum result, so it looked like a trap.
If Remainers had been strong from June 2016 until May's election that "we lost, but only narrowly, but EEA is a reasonable outcome from the result" then plenty of Leavers would have been more than happy with that.
I think that is just a sign of Leaver paranoia.
Given how bitterly a faction of sore-loser Remainers fought to overturn the referendum result, a certain level of paranoia was quite understandable.
Not really, Leavers controlled the process at all times. The only reason that there was stalemate was that they promised something impossible (leaving the single market and customs union with no implications for the Irish border). That wasn't the fault of Remainers.
I wonder what the DUP were thinking when they campaigned for Brexit? Were they (secretly and sordidly) hoping it would lead to a hard border between NI and the Republic? Or were they assuming the whole of the UK would stay in the Single Market? It's quite hard to fathom.
Ironically it is probably better for the DUP now that Starmer wins the next general election.
Starmer would align the whole UK closer to a CU and the EEA than either Boris or Sunak would (hence solving much of the NIP and Irish Sea border issue by default anyway). Plus unlike Corbyn, Starmer has said he wants to keep Northern Ireland in the UK
That sounds like a converted Remain voter to Leaver with secondhand buyer's remorse.
Quite a muscly Owen Jones piece here imo. His main point is we shouldn't be suckered by the Tory Party into thinking if Boris Johnson goes all is fine.
Johnson is no grotesque interloper: his behaviour and attitudes are emblematic of the British establishment. If our ruling institutions have a shared culture, it’s entitlement and shamelessness, a conviction that wrongdoing should meet consequences only if you are poor and powerless.
OJ is half right. The British establishment is very much as he depicts, but the British establishment is overwhelmingly centre left leaning, Remainy, and moderately woke. Oddly OJ draws attention only to Tory exemplars.
There is no single Establishment, there are just well-connected people with power - political, financial, social - these being strongly correlated. If you think the overwhelming majority of these people hold left of centre views I'd like you to send me a postcard from whatever place you're living in because it sounds exotic and rather lovely.
Hm. If the Establishment is a sliding scale from 0 to 100, I must be at least an 80. I have a public sector office job and live in a comfortable middle class suburb of a big city. The views I am surrounded by are overwhelmingly left-wing. Every voice at work (people sometimes talk about being in 'the party' - there is never any doubt which party they mean). The schools my children attend. The views expressed by my Establishment peers.
There may be right wing views in the Establishment. But apart from some noisy and ineffective froth in the political sphere, you almost never hear any right wing views expressed.
I did once hear someone confess to me, sotto voce, that having worked in a field which required European funding, he had become a little sceptical about the whole European process. And once, in a previous (non-public sector) job, someone admitted to me he had voted Conservative at the 2015 GE.
These are the only right wing views I can remember being openly expressed in the last ten years.
But what I'm talking about are the upper echelons. The people with real political and financial clout. What you're talking about here is more the affluent middle class. In Malmesbury speak it's the 10,000 not the 2 million.
It's the same all the way up.
A fun example....
You may remember some entertainment in Afghanistan with guns jamming. The spin was that Ol' Ma Duece (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M2_Browning) was unreliable. Which is hysterically funny - people have been trying to replace the M2 for a century. And failing, since it is so reliable.
What happened was this.
- Ammunition procurement for the British Army was run by an office of old farts. - The New Establishment types replaced them with a new office of representative, modern, younger civil servants - They knew nothing of ammunition or guns. As good, modern, sensible people, they hated firearms and regarded them as unpleasant. - ...And bought the cheapest they could find. - The cheap stuff leaves massive amounts of residue in the guns. Which is great for jamming things up
When I talked to a bright young star in the Cabinet Office (a friend) - he was horrified by the suggestion that anything had gone wrong.
They had replaced tired old fashioned people with properly selected and trained people. Who were impeccably right in every way.
He actually said "Do you want the ammunition for the British Army to be bought by a bunch of gun nuts??!?"
As a postscript. It was discovered, in the nick of time that the same people had noticed that sniper ammunition was costing a lot of money. So they were about to place an order to replace all of it with the cheapest they could find. And sell the expensive stuff.....
Yes, subject matter expertise increasingly ignored in favour of bland slick generalism. Good point. Agree. But you don't draw the same conclusions from it as I do. Don't think you do, anyway, because you never support me when I'm floating remedies.
Your table does not give the number of spoilt papers which I see elsewhere exceeded 1000. Thus "spoilt papers" would have come "second" and "saved" its deposit. Food for thought for those of us interested in the nuts and bolts of the electoral process.
Quite a muscly Owen Jones piece here imo. His main point is we shouldn't be suckered by the Tory Party into thinking if Boris Johnson goes all is fine.
Johnson is no grotesque interloper: his behaviour and attitudes are emblematic of the British establishment. If our ruling institutions have a shared culture, it’s entitlement and shamelessness, a conviction that wrongdoing should meet consequences only if you are poor and powerless.
OJ is half right. The British establishment is very much as he depicts, but the British establishment is overwhelmingly centre left leaning, Remainy, and moderately woke. Oddly OJ draws attention only to Tory exemplars.
There is no single Establishment, there are just well-connected people with power - political, financial, social - these being strongly correlated. If you think the overwhelming majority of these people hold left of centre views I'd like you to send me a postcard from whatever place you're living in because it sounds exotic and rather lovely.
Hm. If the Establishment is a sliding scale from 0 to 100, I must be at least an 80. I have a public sector office job and live in a comfortable middle class suburb of a big city. The views I am surrounded by are overwhelmingly left-wing. Every voice at work (people sometimes talk about being in 'the party' - there is never any doubt which party they mean). The schools my children attend. The views expressed by my Establishment peers.
There may be right wing views in the Establishment. But apart from some noisy and ineffective froth in the political sphere, you almost never hear any right wing views expressed.
I did once hear someone confess to me, sotto voce, that having worked in a field which required European funding, he had become a little sceptical about the whole European process. And once, in a previous (non-public sector) job, someone admitted to me he had voted Conservative at the 2015 GE.
These are the only right wing views I can remember being openly expressed in the last ten years.
But what I'm talking about are the upper echelons. The people with real political and financial clout. What you're talking about here is more the affluent middle class. In Malmesbury speak the Establishment is the 10,000 not the 2 million.
But presumably the upper echelons of my organisation are part of the 10,000 rather than the 2 million. And they move in the circles of others from the 10,000. And it seems unlikely that the consistently left-leaning voices that those people use to us in the organisation, and which is communicated so assiduously in weekly emails, is suddenly turned off behind closed doors.
Yes, fair enough. Amongst the elites - which I'm defining as the small number of people will big political and financial clout - there will be some lefties. But I was mainly disagreeing with Algakirk's assertion that this was 'overwhelmingly' the case. I think the opposite. There are far more of the type of operators that Whispering Oracle refers to.
Comments
And of course it’s the Americans that see macaroni cheese as a side dish.
Off to the ologist at the hospital, so no digging time.
But the Pizza Oven just arrived, so I can take a break from filing.
If only you were more competent in persuading all these liberals to actually vote liberal.
1) Define the crime - both for the potential criminals and the world at large. Everyone knows the score.
2) The punishment for the crime is in a court of law, with all the proper check and balances.
Contrast that with deleting your citizenship at whim - which was introduced precisely because of the elimination of ways of dealing with such situations under the law!
I'd include in the legislation, specifically, that it pulls in the international law on war crimes. So Begum, for example, could be prosecuted for war crimes *and* treason.
Shocked!
- Disbelieve the accusers
- Believe the accusers
The idea that you start by accepting the accusers evidence and then go and get other evidence and add it up to see what is *probably true* seems too complex for them.
In contrast, David Cameron campaigned by saying that will *never* join the Euro. It's a bit hard to twist that after the fact.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2022/sf-fentanyl-opioid-epidemic/
A 52-48 win for Remain really wouldn't have been.
From your posts I have you down more of a liberal than a conservative I think.
Of course, we are talking ideology (small c and small l). Party affiliation is a different, though connected, matter.
Quite something to remember that there was a time on here when the DUP were according grudging respect for the way they’d played Theresa.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2685627
A fun example....
You may remember some entertainment in Afghanistan with guns jamming. The spin was that Ol' Ma Duece (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M2_Browning) was unreliable. Which is hysterically funny - people have been trying to replace the M2 for a century. And failing, since it is so reliable.
What happened was this.
- Ammunition procurement for the British Army was run by an office of old farts.
- The New Establishment types replaced them with a new office of representative, modern, younger civil servants
- They knew nothing of ammunition or guns. As good, modern, sensible people, they hated firearms and regarded them as unpleasant.
- ...And bought the cheapest they could find.
- The cheap stuff leaves massive amounts of residue in the guns. Which is great for jamming things up
When I talked to a bright young star in the Cabinet Office (a friend) - he was horrified by the suggestion that anything had gone wrong.
They had replaced tired old fashioned people with properly selected and trained people. Who were impeccably right in every way.
He actually said "Do you want the ammunition for the British Army to be bought by a bunch of gun nuts??!?"
As a postscript. It was discovered, in the nick of time that the same people had noticed that sniper ammunition was costing a lot of money. So they were about to place an order to replace all of it with the cheapest they could find. And sell the expensive stuff.....
My “tone deaf”-dar was screaming.
New Thread
Bring Begum back for whatever crime you think she's committed and then try her in a court of law. Don't just bow to the masses and exclude her rendering her effectively stateless.
I wrote a whole header on the Stephen Port case. Here - https://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2021/12/12/dont-tell-show-us/.
(You need to pay more attention ..... to me anyway ....😁)