It is the Trumpite attempt to reverse a legal, democratic vote: the campaign for a 2nd EU vote without enacting the first
The vote was advisory
It's not undemocratic to ask for more advice
David Cameron, addressing the British people, in late 2015
'Ultimately it will be the judgment of the British people in the referendum... You will have to judge what is best for you and your family, for your children and grandchildren, for our country, for our future. It will be your decision whether to remain in the EU on the basis of the reforms we secure, or whether we leave. Your decision. Nobody else’s. Not politicians’. Not Parliament’s. Not lobby groups’. Not mine. Just you. You, the British people, will decide. At that moment, you will hold this country’s destiny in your hands. This is a huge decision for our country, perhaps the biggest we will make in our lifetimes. And it will be the final decision.'
'So to those who suggest that a decision in the referendum to leave would merely produce another stronger renegotiation, and then a second referendum in which Britain would stay, I say: think again. The renegotiation is happening right now. And the referendum that follows will be a once in a generation choice. An in or out referendum. When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum.'
Now, i know this makes a lot of people on this site deeply uncomfortable. Perhaps even a little guilty?
They need to deal with it, own it, confess, say sorry, and we all move on
And it has been.
Now about those Brexit promises which were made?
Because I'm guessing - a wild guess here - that those unfulfilled promises, the broken promises and the admission that they don't know what to do now is making some people feel a bit uncomfortable. Perhaps even a little guilty?
Not remotely. I agree with the noble ex-PBer @SeanT who wrote in the Spectator in October 2016 that Brexit would be like having a baby. Painful, bloody, unpleasant… and explicitly dismissed the airy Leaver promises:
“Thirdly, there will be blood. Brexit is going to be painful, like childbirth. It just is. The Leave quacks who promised a brisk and blissful delivery don’t have enough diamorphine to dull the nerves. We might need epidurals from the Treasury. We will swear a lot, and not care. It might be rather embarrassing but again, we probably won’t care, because we’ll be concentrating on the pain. Other countries will look at us and think 'I’m never going through that'. Immediately after Brexit, we will likely appear reduced, saggy, wrinkled.
Then comes the depression. It’s unavoidable. Overnight, your horizons have shrunk to a nursery room, some cheap Lidl shiraz, and the sound of a fiendishly annoying plastic toy which sings 'Froggy goes a courting he did ride uh-huh' over and over again. The house is a mess, all the time, in every way. You haven’t slept properly for several economic quarters. And so, at one point you will stare at a bowl of mushed baby food, and then you’ll soulfully ask yourself: Why did I ever do this?”
How right he was. We desperately need him back. A much missed voice of calm sanity and moral probity
And now I must go and eat lagoon crabs. Later
Spot on, Leon. Sean T was not only witty and cultured, he was also highly entertaining.
I think we still miss him. He is fondly remembered, and still mentioned in dispatches.
I heard that SeanT went to Sri Lanka and got crabs, but I can't verify this.
Coming late to 20 years of PB is like first following a old soap. But I have worked a lot of it out now. Leon used to post as SeanT? So a reference to SeanT is a reference to Leon? Pronounced Shawn Tea? But that’s a stupid name, using Leon works much better.
I also like how people who haven’t posted for ages pop back in, just like soaps when they bring old legendary characters back. The evening with JackW was very good as could feel everyone overjoyed to have him in the room - but I didn’t understand at all what Jack was saying, it was like an episode of Clangers with the soup dragon in it.
You may have also worked out that there were a lot of other aliases between SeanT and Leon
No. I hadn’t realised that. And I thought I was making progress 😟
Not to mess with your head but there may even have been aliases after Leon. For sure there definitely WILL be aliases after Leon.
I don’t want to be too cheeky, but I guess they all stand out a mile though.
Scotland's "impartial" Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Professor Sir Gregor Smith has been accused of breaking the civil service code after retweeting an attack from the SNP on the UK government.
The CMO retweeted Humza Yousaf's comments on Boris Johnson's decision to get rid of all Covid restrictions in England at the end of the month.
Sir John Major is a man of principles and values who places integrity and honesty at the top of the priority list above partisanship and personal profit.
Such a man has no place in the amoral disgraceful modern Tory party as HY and the other remaining sycophants have no doubt already proven.
Fuck off. His “principles” extended to cancelling the vote of 17.4 million people, because “they got it wrong”, and having a second vote to reverse the first, without ever enacting the LEAVE vote. And he accuses Boris of generating “mistrust in democracy”? How much mistrust would be have generated if he’d managed to actually CANCEL democracy
The man is a rancid hypocrite. A c*nt of the lowest order. He should be ignored. He should not be in public life. He should fuck off at great speed to I-have-now-fucked-off-istan, and the government there should expel him to the tiny village of Fuck Off Again, whence he will be exiled into the surrounding FUCK OFF JOHN MAJOR RAINFOREST and hopefully eaten half to death by great big fuck off ants with faces like Nigel Farage
You won Brexit. Be pleased about it, own it but ffs stop going on about it so aggressively.
WTF??????
I’m not attacking anyone here. I’m attacking an ex prime minister who wanted to abolish democracy, and who now has the brass neck to lecture us about “breeding mistrust in democracy”
A little bit of ire is, to say the least, justified
"Abolish democracy"? We had a general election and a different slate of representatives were elected. How is a general election abolishing democracy? When people voted for Blair instead of Major was that abolishing their democratic will to have Major in 1992?
How would the 2nd Ref proposal to have VOTE of ALL THE ELECTORATE be abolishing democracy, for that matter?
Having such a second referendum (that is, with Remain on the ballot paper) would have been admitting that there's a right answer and a wrong answer, and if the electorate give the wrong answer you will ignore them. How is this democracy?
Ignoring the electorate would have been saying "f*ck it, you voted to leave the EU but we're not going to do anything about it - no article 50, no negotiations, carry on as if nothing had happened".
That patently did not happen.
Asking the electorate to approve the negotiated deal would have only enhanced democracy.
Of course the Tory government wouldn't do that because it knew its negotiated deal was such utter shit and likely to be judged as such by the electorate.
If - and only if - the other option on the ballot paper is "more negotiations".
Putting Remain back on the ballot paper would have invalidated the first vote, and would have meant that people who wanted to Leave would have had to win two referendums but people who wanted to Remain cound have done so by winning only one.
If you can't see that this is fundametally anithetical to democracy I cannot help you.
But that is *literally* our democratic system. I would be happy to join with you in condemning our electoral system - it needs blowing up and refounding. But it IS the system, one that amazingly enough puts a legally binding general election above an advisory referendum in terms of mandate.
If there had been no election in 2017 and it was the 2015 parliament trying to rerun a referendum I may have more sympathy towards your position. But the 2017 parliament was sovereign and could overturn every single law on the statute book if it wanted to.
The referendum result wasn't even law. And "leave the EU" isn't even a coherent position - EU was being interpreted as all kinds of things that were not the EU. That the 2017 parliament sought to find a workable position is absolutely democracy, and if it wanted to hold a fresh referendum with a clear question this time that is absolutely democracy.
So your position seems to be we don't actually live in a democracy. Which even if it's true isn't a reason to make it worse by ignoring a clear instruction from the people.
Our democratic system has major systematic problems. A few: 1 People vote for the named candidate. Yet so many voters incorrectly believe they vote for a party or a prime minister or a government. They do not. 2 People think their vote applies outside their constituency. It does not. There is no national election just 650 simultaneous local ones. So national vote tallies and percentages shares whilst interesting have zero bearing on the result no matter how passionately people believe they do
So when you say "clear instruction from the people" there are several obvious issues. People don't understand who they are instructing and how when it is a legally binding vote - an election. And when the referendum is advisory and not legally binding it is a basic error to believe it to be an instruction. It is not.
I voted to leave. I regret it hugely now with the route we have gone but you aren't talking to a remoaner. But I do understand our democratic system and you do not. Once you have a new general election and elect a new raft of MPs they have the legal political and literal mandate to do whatever they like. And if it is politically unsustainable people have the ability to vote differently in the next election.
In a democracy, if the government say before a referendum "we will implement whatever you decide" and "there will not be another referendum", it is reasonable to see the decision made by the public as a clear instruction. And the mandate from that doesn't just go away if you ignore it.
But it was a different government. The mandate of John Major's government didn't apply to Tony Blair's government.
Irrelevant. It was a direct mandate to HMG, regardless of whether the membership of such changed. You're confusing a direct mandate from a referendum with an indirect mandate given to a prime minister through a general election.
What you're suggesting isn't really democracy, more a dictatorship.
Wow.
Why wow? You said that an advisory vote in a previous parliament has overriding legal mandate that no law on the statute books has. That parliament cannot be sovereign regardless of what people vote for in an election.
This is the truth. Brexit will never be over because every parliament between now and the end of time will have the absolute right to revisit the issue. Yet you claim that an advisory vote in the 2015 parliament is somehow sacrosanct and cannot be touched, a "direct mandate to HMG regardless of whether the membership of such changed"
"Met chief says stopping illegal parties was not job for police guarding No 10
In her interview with Eddie Nestor on BBC Radio London, Dame Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan police commissioner, said it was not the job of officers guarding Downing Street to prevent illegal parties."
So if someone had tried to get into Downing Street to illegally steal confidential material or the silver candlesticks or to illegally deliver a suitcase full of poison it was not their job to prevent that either??
That sounds to me like an admission that officers knew full well what was going on but did not pass any of the information onto other officers who could have stopped them.
My take is, they likely shared the information, it went up the chain, where a decision came back down not to act. That’s most likely what happened isn’t it?
The list of what the UK Police and CPS don't consider to worth investigating is interesting.
- Fraud with an international aspect - Burglary - Rape of minors on an industrial scale - Illegal parties in government offices - Lots more - ???
It seems an eclectic mix.
Being really serious though, and putting ourselves in position of the police, it’s awkward to treat VIP on Downing Street estate just like anyone else. Admittedly granny was home alone at Christmas as people obeyed Boris law, singletons in pokey bedsits tried to meet up in a park for a few minutes and police came across to them etc. But that’s not a story. Intervening on the Downing Street estate on the people who set the rules would have consequences. You know what I mean?
Firstly, someone surely got on the phone. And decision was made not to act on ground but go through the channels higher up. “What is it John?” “Though there’s supposed to be restrictions, they’re partying here like its 1999, Sir. What should we do?” “Okay. I’ll go upstairs and get an answer back to you.”
Secondly, if you believe in the restrictions, part of your decision to intervene or not is not just a messy political scandal all over the media, but it’s going to make the police job enforcing restrictions become nigh impossible.
I’m not defending the police, or the particular ones probably very high up made who the decision. But I I am defending them a bit to be fair. Do you get what I mean. It’s lazy to mock without considering it from their point of view.
You won't last long on this Site with common sense like that, Moon.
Of course the Police would have taken account of who they were policing and what the consequence would likely be. They do that all the time, and in our own ways I expect we all do in our everyday lives. You can only fight so many battles. Makes sense to pick the ones that you might win and not burn up resources on highly problematic innterventions.
Now that it's all out in the open however there's no reason for the police to hold back. They will be damned whether they do or don't so may as well just get on with it promptly.
Delay is now likely to perceived as complicit.
I once worked with the most honest man I have ever met. He told the exact truth on every occasion.
On one occasion, a manger started screaming at a subordinate in a meeting. At one point the manager started raving "Am I over reacting? AM I?????"
My friend replied - "Yes"
"WHAAAAAT?????"
"Yes, you are over reacting"
We were working a consultants and the manager was working for the client. My friend was sent back to our office that day.
He's a Russian, incidentally - I've met a few in the same vein, all Russian, though perhaps not as hard core as that. Seems to be a sub-culture in Russia of not bravery.... just total honesty, without interest in the cost.
Sounds like the sort of thing I would pipe up and say.
It is the Trumpite attempt to reverse a legal, democratic vote: the campaign for a 2nd EU vote without enacting the first
The vote was advisory
It's not undemocratic to ask for more advice
There's a universe 'over there', just behind the looking glass:
David Cameron: 24th June 2016: "The British people have voted 52% to 48% to remain in the European Union......" *long pause* ".... however, despite voting and campaigning for Remain as well, I'm reminded the vote was only advisory.... I triggered Article 50, as I'm allowed to do, twenty minutes ago. Fuck you all! We leave the EU in two years time." *Slings back inside No. 10 with Samantha looking on dumbfounded. Slams door behind him*
Never an option.
It was clear before the referendum that there were precisely three options:
(1) We vote to Remain and Remain (2) We vote to Leave and Leave (3) We vote to Leave but Remain.
Some people who favoured option 1 (like Major, Grayling and Scott) preferred option 3 to option 2. They are not democrats.
This would need verification from @trussliz and her team. Did she misunderstand the Q? Was something lost in translation? Surely our Foreign Secretary wouldn't risk making the UK look foolish on a matter of basic geography?
We are sovereign. That is all that matters and it is a perfectly legitimate desire.
We were always Sovereign
Now we are poorer and still Sovereign
Yes. But we are more sovereign. I mean that is just the way it is.
Sovereignty as a nation state is an absolute. We were sovereign before leaving the EU and we are after it. You cannot be "more sovereign" any more than you can be "more a virgin" . If the US bases left UK soil we would not be "even more sovereign", because technically it is our choice to have them here, as it was that it was "our choice" to be a member of the EU.
Here endeth the lesson. That is enough pinhead dancing for one day!
"Met chief says stopping illegal parties was not job for police guarding No 10
In her interview with Eddie Nestor on BBC Radio London, Dame Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan police commissioner, said it was not the job of officers guarding Downing Street to prevent illegal parties."
So if someone had tried to get into Downing Street to illegally steal confidential material or the silver candlesticks or to illegally deliver a suitcase full of poison it was not their job to prevent that either??
That sounds to me like an admission that officers knew full well what was going on but did not pass any of the information onto other officers who could have stopped them.
My take is, they likely shared the information, it went up the chain, where a decision came back down not to act. That’s most likely what happened isn’t it?
The list of what the UK Police and CPS don't consider to worth investigating is interesting.
- Fraud with an international aspect - Burglary - Rape of minors on an industrial scale - Illegal parties in government offices - Lots more - ???
It seems an eclectic mix.
Being really serious though, and putting ourselves in position of the police, it’s awkward to treat VIP on Downing Street estate just like anyone else. Admittedly granny was home alone at Christmas as people obeyed Boris law, singletons in pokey bedsits tried to meet up in a park for a few minutes and police came across to them etc. But that’s not a story. Intervening on the Downing Street estate on the people who set the rules would have consequences. You know what I mean?
Firstly, someone surely got on the phone. And decision was made not to act on ground but go through the channels higher up. “What is it John?” “Though there’s supposed to be restrictions, they’re partying here like its 1999, Sir. What should we do?” “Okay. I’ll go upstairs and get an answer back to you.”
Secondly, if you believe in the restrictions, part of your decision to intervene or not is not just a messy political scandal all over the media, but it’s going to make the police job enforcing restrictions become nigh impossible.
I’m not defending the police, or the particular ones probably very high up made who the decision. But I I am defending them a bit to be fair. Do you get what I mean. It’s lazy to mock without considering it from their point of view.
You won't last long on this Site with common sense like that, Moon.
Of course the Police would have taken account of who they were policing and what the consequence would likely be. They do that all the time, and in our own ways I expect we all do in our everyday lives. You can only fight so many battles. Makes sense to pick the ones that you might win and not burn up resources on highly problematic innterventions.
Now that it's all out in the open however there's no reason for the police to hold back. They will be damned whether they do or don't so may as well just get on with it promptly.
Delay is now likely to perceived as complicit.
I once worked with the most honest man I have ever met. He told the exact truth on every occasion.
On one occasion, a manger started screaming at a subordinate in a meeting. At one point the manager started raving "Am I over reacting? AM I?????"
My friend replied - "Yes"
"WHAAAAAT?????"
"Yes, you are over reacting"
We were working a consultants and the manager was working for the client. My friend was sent back to our office that day.
He's a Russian, incidentally - I've met a few in the same vein, all Russian, though perhaps not as hard core as that. Seems to be a sub-culture in Russia of not bravery.... just total honesty, without interest in the cost.
Sounds like the sort of thing I would pipe up and say.
My Russian friend suggested that it has grown out of the horrible political problems in Russian politics over the years. A sort of perverse reaction - "I will tell the truth, send me to Siberia for 20 years. On my return I will say the same thing again and go back".
Apparently part of the "style" is taking the punishment without any regret or fear.
But we couldn't while we were in the EU zero-rate VAT on domestic energey supplies. Now we have left the EU we can do that.
Spain just did it
And we didn't
The EU forbade it. Saying well it was against the rules but we did it anyway is not a model of government I approve of.
Damn just did another Brexit post.
The EU has very strict rules on VAT, and it allows only two bands.
It is, however, perfectly possible to have zero as a band. I assume that this is what the Spaniards have done to enable zero rating of electricity.
We also had (and have) zero as a band (zero-rated and VAT exempt being different concepts that are often confused). But my understanding was that items that weren't zero-rated at a certain point in time couldn't later be made zero-rated (I'm unsure if this was specific to a zero-rated band or if items couldn't be moved down bands in general). Presumably something has subsequently changed - or the Spanish government has found an exception - or the Spanish government is ignoring the rules and doing it anyway.
My understanding (which could be wrong), is that the ban on moving items between categories was lifted during the Eurozone crisis, to enable Greece/Spain/Ireland/Portugal to move things to higher bands to close budget holes.
I see that today is going to be the day that Major's adultery is going to be used as an excuse for not listening to or thinking about any of the points he makes.
Since none us is perfect - or, if you prefer, without sin - we can never criticise anyone else at all, let alone Boris. Which is very convenient for him.
A bit of a bummer in a democracy, mind you. Oh well.
When I become unDictator of the UK I will, of course appoint myself Head of the Supreme Court.
Since attacking the decisions of the Supreme Court is a vile attack on the law & democracy, it will of course be punishable by life without parole.
So all my decisions.....
Any flaws you can see with this plan?
Why appoint yourself when @Cyclefree would do better?
For the rest, I don't care as long as I am Secretary of State for Education with capital powers over all civil servants.
Are retired civil servants safe from your ire? Just asking.
I should mention to @ydoethur that an early policy of my government will be contract with SpaceX to build an indigenous UK space launch and expiration capability. This will be on a strictly COD basis.
- 50% for the delivery of the entire UK parliament to Pluto - 50% for the delivery of the entire DfE to Uranus
If he still wants the job....
Well, not on those terms. I don't especially want the DfE to be delivered to my anus.
@Northern_Al depends on whether you obey my orders or not.
@lionelbarber Lavrov - Putin’s Gromyko - eats Liz Truss alive on camera, dismissing her as an ignorant lightweight who spends too much time on social media. Easy to have anticipated this payback !
The most interesting thing I note from the Twitter thread linked earlier is the people willing to express support for Lavrov because they are desperate to have a pop at Truss.
Sir John Major is a man of principles and values who places integrity and honesty at the top of the priority list above partisanship and personal profit.
Such a man has no place in the amoral disgraceful modern Tory party as HY and the other remaining sycophants have no doubt already proven.
Fuck off. His “principles” extended to cancelling the vote of 17.4 million people, because “they got it wrong”, and having a second vote to reverse the first, without ever enacting the LEAVE vote. And he accuses Boris of generating “mistrust in democracy”? How much mistrust would be have generated if he’d managed to actually CANCEL democracy
The man is a rancid hypocrite. A c*nt of the lowest order. He should be ignored. He should not be in public life. He should fuck off at great speed to I-have-now-fucked-off-istan, and the government there should expel him to the tiny village of Fuck Off Again, whence he will be exiled into the surrounding FUCK OFF JOHN MAJOR RAINFOREST and hopefully eaten half to death by great big fuck off ants with faces like Nigel Farage
You won Brexit. Be pleased about it, own it but ffs stop going on about it so aggressively.
WTF??????
I’m not attacking anyone here. I’m attacking an ex prime minister who wanted to abolish democracy, and who now has the brass neck to lecture us about “breeding mistrust in democracy”
A little bit of ire is, to say the least, justified
"Abolish democracy"? We had a general election and a different slate of representatives were elected. How is a general election abolishing democracy? When people voted for Blair instead of Major was that abolishing their democratic will to have Major in 1992?
How would the 2nd Ref proposal to have VOTE of ALL THE ELECTORATE be abolishing democracy, for that matter?
Having such a second referendum (that is, with Remain on the ballot paper) would have been admitting that there's a right answer and a wrong answer, and if the electorate give the wrong answer you will ignore them. How is this democracy?
Ignoring the electorate would have been saying "f*ck it, you voted to leave the EU but we're not going to do anything about it - no article 50, no negotiations, carry on as if nothing had happened".
That patently did not happen.
Asking the electorate to approve the negotiated deal would have only enhanced democracy.
Of course the Tory government wouldn't do that because it knew its negotiated deal was such utter shit and likely to be judged as such by the electorate.
If - and only if - the other option on the ballot paper is "more negotiations".
Putting Remain back on the ballot paper would have invalidated the first vote, and would have meant that people who wanted to Leave would have had to win two referendums but people who wanted to Remain cound have done so by winning only one.
If you can't see that this is fundametally anithetical to democracy I cannot help you.
But that is *literally* our democratic system. I would be happy to join with you in condemning our electoral system - it needs blowing up and refounding. But it IS the system, one that amazingly enough puts a legally binding general election above an advisory referendum in terms of mandate.
If there had been no election in 2017 and it was the 2015 parliament trying to rerun a referendum I may have more sympathy towards your position. But the 2017 parliament was sovereign and could overturn every single law on the statute book if it wanted to.
The referendum result wasn't even law. And "leave the EU" isn't even a coherent position - EU was being interpreted as all kinds of things that were not the EU. That the 2017 parliament sought to find a workable position is absolutely democracy, and if it wanted to hold a fresh referendum with a clear question this time that is absolutely democracy.
So your position seems to be we don't actually live in a democracy. Which even if it's true isn't a reason to make it worse by ignoring a clear instruction from the people.
Our democratic system has major systematic problems. A few: 1 People vote for the named candidate. Yet so many voters incorrectly believe they vote for a party or a prime minister or a government. They do not. 2 People think their vote applies outside their constituency. It does not. There is no national election just 650 simultaneous local ones. So national vote tallies and percentages shares whilst interesting have zero bearing on the result no matter how passionately people believe they do
So when you say "clear instruction from the people" there are several obvious issues. People don't understand who they are instructing and how when it is a legally binding vote - an election. And when the referendum is advisory and not legally binding it is a basic error to believe it to be an instruction. It is not.
I voted to leave. I regret it hugely now with the route we have gone but you aren't talking to a remoaner. But I do understand our democratic system and you do not. Once you have a new general election and elect a new raft of MPs they have the legal political and literal mandate to do whatever they like. And if it is politically unsustainable people have the ability to vote differently in the next election.
In a democracy, if the government say before a referendum "we will implement whatever you decide" and "there will not be another referendum", it is reasonable to see the decision made by the public as a clear instruction. And the mandate from that doesn't just go away if you ignore it.
But it was a different government. The mandate of John Major's government didn't apply to Tony Blair's government.
Irrelevant. It was a direct mandate to HMG, regardless of whether the membership of such changed. You're confusing a direct mandate from a referendum with an indirect mandate given to a prime minister through a general election.
What you're suggesting isn't really democracy, more a dictatorship.
Wow.
Why wow? You said that an advisory vote in a previous parliament has overriding legal mandate that no law on the statute books has. That parliament cannot be sovereign regardless of what people vote for in an election.
This is the truth. Brexit will never be over because every parliament between now and the end of time will have the absolute right to revisit the issue. Yet you claim that an advisory vote in the 2015 parliament is somehow sacrosanct and cannot be touched, a "direct mandate to HMG regardless of whether the membership of such changed"
You can't un-leave the EU. We're no longer members, and rejoining wouldn't simply reverse Brexit. Your idea of delegating large chunks of policy to the EU as a non-member with no voting rights is unlikely to win much political support.
We are sovereign. That is all that matters and it is a perfectly legitimate desire.
We were always Sovereign
Now we are poorer and still Sovereign
Yes. But we are more sovereign. I mean that is just the way it is.
Sovereignty as a nation state is an absolute. We were sovereign before leaving the EU and we are after it. You cannot be "more sovereign" any more than you can be "more a virgin" . If the US bases left UK soil we would not be "even more sovereign", because technically it is our choice to have them here, as it was that it was "our choice" to be a member of the EU.
Here endeth the lesson. That is enough pinhead dancing for one day!
Yes it is absolute and we had it. But we couldn't do some stuff that people wanted the right to do. So substitute whatever the name for that is instead of sovereignty and we are there. We couldn't zero-rate VAT on home energy supplies while we were in the EU. Now we can. Whatever that is called is what people voted for.
Edit: what 0.4% of the people who voted Leave voted for. The rest either didn't like foreigners or wanted a better economic outcome and, on both counts, these people will be disappointed.
If Prince Charles infects her Maj with Covid a mere four days after the aforesaid Her Maj has suggested Camilla should be made Queen, QAnon will actually explode.
"Met chief says stopping illegal parties was not job for police guarding No 10
In her interview with Eddie Nestor on BBC Radio London, Dame Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan police commissioner, said it was not the job of officers guarding Downing Street to prevent illegal parties."
So if someone had tried to get into Downing Street to illegally steal confidential material or the silver candlesticks or to illegally deliver a suitcase full of poison it was not their job to prevent that either??
That sounds to me like an admission that officers knew full well what was going on but did not pass any of the information onto other officers who could have stopped them.
My take is, they likely shared the information, it went up the chain, where a decision came back down not to act. That’s most likely what happened isn’t it?
The list of what the UK Police and CPS don't consider to worth investigating is interesting.
- Fraud with an international aspect - Burglary - Rape of minors on an industrial scale - Illegal parties in government offices - Lots more - ???
Countdown until someone tweets the Stalin with boy meme but containing a prosecco bottle and tinsel...
You mean this one? It's actually Yezhov (head of NKVD, architect of the purges, show trials etc) who was very short of stature. When his time came he wept and snivelled like a small boy, which may be of some satisfaction.
Can someone make a third photo here, except with a bottle of prosecco and some tinsel please?
It is the Trumpite attempt to reverse a legal, democratic vote: the campaign for a 2nd EU vote without enacting the first
The vote was advisory
It's not undemocratic to ask for more advice
David Cameron, addressing the British people, in late 2015
'Ultimately it will be the judgment of the British people in the referendum... You will have to judge what is best for you and your family, for your children and grandchildren, for our country, for our future. It will be your decision whether to remain in the EU on the basis of the reforms we secure, or whether we leave. Your decision. Nobody else’s. Not politicians’. Not Parliament’s. Not lobby groups’. Not mine. Just you. You, the British people, will decide. At that moment, you will hold this country’s destiny in your hands. This is a huge decision for our country, perhaps the biggest we will make in our lifetimes. And it will be the final decision.'
'So to those who suggest that a decision in the referendum to leave would merely produce another stronger renegotiation, and then a second referendum in which Britain would stay, I say: think again. The renegotiation is happening right now. And the referendum that follows will be a once in a generation choice. An in or out referendum. When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum.'
Now, i know this makes a lot of people on this site deeply uncomfortable. Perhaps even a little guilty?
They need to deal with it, own it, confess, say sorry, and we all move on
And it has been.
Now about those Brexit promises which were made?
Because I'm guessing - a wild guess here - that those unfulfilled promises, the broken promises and the admission that they don't know what to do now is making some people feel a bit uncomfortable. Perhaps even a little guilty?
Not remotely. I agree with the noble ex-PBer @SeanT who wrote in the Spectator in October 2016 that Brexit would be like having a baby. Painful, bloody, unpleasant… and explicitly dismissed the airy Leaver promises:
“Thirdly, there will be blood. Brexit is going to be painful, like childbirth. It just is. The Leave quacks who promised a brisk and blissful delivery don’t have enough diamorphine to dull the nerves. We might need epidurals from the Treasury. We will swear a lot, and not care. It might be rather embarrassing but again, we probably won’t care, because we’ll be concentrating on the pain. Other countries will look at us and think 'I’m never going through that'. Immediately after Brexit, we will likely appear reduced, saggy, wrinkled.
Then comes the depression. It’s unavoidable. Overnight, your horizons have shrunk to a nursery room, some cheap Lidl shiraz, and the sound of a fiendishly annoying plastic toy which sings 'Froggy goes a courting he did ride uh-huh' over and over again. The house is a mess, all the time, in every way. You haven’t slept properly for several economic quarters. And so, at one point you will stare at a bowl of mushed baby food, and then you’ll soulfully ask yourself: Why did I ever do this?”
I see that today is going to be the day that Major's adultery is going to be used as an excuse for not listening to or thinking about any of the points he makes.
Since none us is perfect - or, if you prefer, without sin - we can never criticise anyone else at all, let alone Boris. Which is very convenient for him.
A bit of a bummer in a democracy, mind you. Oh well.
When I become unDictator of the UK I will, of course appoint myself Head of the Supreme Court.
Since attacking the decisions of the Supreme Court is a vile attack on the law & democracy, it will of course be punishable by life without parole.
So all my decisions.....
Any flaws you can see with this plan?
Why appoint yourself when @Cyclefree would do better?
For the rest, I don't care as long as I am Secretary of State for Education with capital powers over all civil servants.
Are retired civil servants safe from your ire? Just asking.
I should mention to @ydoethur that an early policy of my government will be contract with SpaceX to build an indigenous UK space launch and expiration capability. This will be on a strictly COD basis.
- 50% for the delivery of the entire UK parliament to Pluto - 50% for the delivery of the entire DfE to Uranus
If he still wants the job....
Well, not on those terms. I don't especially want the DfE to be delivered to my anus.
@Northern_Al depends on whether you obey my orders or not.
Is Jupiter acceptable? - who says I don't listen to my ministers?
"Met chief says stopping illegal parties was not job for police guarding No 10
In her interview with Eddie Nestor on BBC Radio London, Dame Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan police commissioner, said it was not the job of officers guarding Downing Street to prevent illegal parties."
So if someone had tried to get into Downing Street to illegally steal confidential material or the silver candlesticks or to illegally deliver a suitcase full of poison it was not their job to prevent that either??
That sounds to me like an admission that officers knew full well what was going on but did not pass any of the information onto other officers who could have stopped them.
My take is, they likely shared the information, it went up the chain, where a decision came back down not to act. That’s most likely what happened isn’t it?
The list of what the UK Police and CPS don't consider to worth investigating is interesting.
- Fraud with an international aspect - Burglary - Rape of minors on an industrial scale - Illegal parties in government offices - Lots more - ???
It seems an eclectic mix.
Almost all fraud.
Almost all mobile phone/device thefts.
They think they are doing you a huge favour by giving you a crime reference so you can claim on your insurance.
For them, once the crime reference number is given, case closed.
"Met chief says stopping illegal parties was not job for police guarding No 10
In her interview with Eddie Nestor on BBC Radio London, Dame Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan police commissioner, said it was not the job of officers guarding Downing Street to prevent illegal parties."
So if someone had tried to get into Downing Street to illegally steal confidential material or the silver candlesticks or to illegally deliver a suitcase full of poison it was not their job to prevent that either??
That sounds to me like an admission that officers knew full well what was going on but did not pass any of the information onto other officers who could have stopped them.
My take is, they likely shared the information, it went up the chain, where a decision came back down not to act. That’s most likely what happened isn’t it?
The list of what the UK Police and CPS don't consider to worth investigating is interesting.
- Fraud with an international aspect - Burglary - Rape of minors on an industrial scale - Illegal parties in government offices - Lots more - ???
It seems an eclectic mix.
Being really serious though, and putting ourselves in position of the police, it’s awkward to treat VIP on Downing Street estate just like anyone else. Admittedly granny was home alone at Christmas as people obeyed Boris law, singletons in pokey bedsits tried to meet up in a park for a few minutes and police came across to them etc. But that’s not a story. Intervening on the Downing Street estate on the people who set the rules would have consequences. You know what I mean?
Firstly, someone surely got on the phone. And decision was made not to act on ground but go through the channels higher up. “What is it John?” “Though there’s supposed to be restrictions, they’re partying here like its 1999, Sir. What should we do?” “Okay. I’ll go upstairs and get an answer back to you.”
Secondly, if you believe in the restrictions, part of your decision to intervene or not is not just a messy political scandal all over the media, but it’s going to make the police job enforcing restrictions become nigh impossible.
I’m not defending the police, or the particular ones probably very high up made who the decision. But I I am defending them a bit to be fair. Do you get what I mean. It’s lazy to mock without considering it from their point of view.
You won't last long on this Site with common sense like that, Moon.
Of course the Police would have taken account of who they were policing and what the consequence would likely be. They do that all the time, and in our own ways I expect we all do in our everyday lives. You can only fight so many battles. Makes sense to pick the ones that you might win and not burn up resources on highly problematic innterventions.
Now that it's all out in the open however there's no reason for the police to hold back. They will be damned whether they do or don't so may as well just get on with it promptly.
Delay is now likely to perceived as complicit.
I once worked with the most honest man I have ever met. He told the exact truth on every occasion.
On one occasion, a manger started screaming at a subordinate in a meeting. At one point the manager started raving "Am I over reacting? AM I?????"
My friend replied - "Yes"
"WHAAAAAT?????"
"Yes, you are over reacting"
We were working a consultants and the manager was working for the client. My friend was sent back to our office that day.
He's a Russian, incidentally - I've met a few in the same vein, all Russian, though perhaps not as hard core as that. Seems to be a sub-culture in Russia of not bravery.... just total honesty, without interest in the cost.
Sounds like the sort of thing I would pipe up and say.
My Russian friend suggested that it has grown out of the horrible political problems in Russian politics over the years. A sort of perverse reaction - "I will tell the truth, send me to Siberia for 20 years. On my return I will say the same thing again and go back".
Apparently part of the "style" is taking the punishment without any regret or fear.
A lack of fear is obviously part of piping up, telling it as it is, telling the boss their master plan for the year or their behaviour is a load of crap, not just honesty.
When we think of Banished to Siberia we think of gulags and houses of the dead, but for some, like Lenin who lived in a house by a river, and the defeated Decembrists, it sounds quite pleasant to be living out in the wild outback? If it is so bad out there, why are their local populations making their way of life there.
When I am living in London I think foundly of walks across Yorkshire moors, after a few walks across wild moorland I think fondly of London shopping and coffee shops. ☺️
"Met chief says stopping illegal parties was not job for police guarding No 10
In her interview with Eddie Nestor on BBC Radio London, Dame Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan police commissioner, said it was not the job of officers guarding Downing Street to prevent illegal parties."
So if someone had tried to get into Downing Street to illegally steal confidential material or the silver candlesticks or to illegally deliver a suitcase full of poison it was not their job to prevent that either??
That sounds to me like an admission that officers knew full well what was going on but did not pass any of the information onto other officers who could have stopped them.
My take is, they likely shared the information, it went up the chain, where a decision came back down not to act. That’s most likely what happened isn’t it?
The list of what the UK Police and CPS don't consider to worth investigating is interesting.
- Fraud with an international aspect - Burglary - Rape of minors on an industrial scale - Illegal parties in government offices - Lots more - ???
It seems an eclectic mix.
Almost all fraud.
Almost all mobile phone/device thefts.
They think they are doing you a huge favour by giving you a crime reference so you can claim on your insurance.
For them, once the crime reference number is given, case closed.
Shortly after the Good Friday Agreement, I considered the following business plan -
Contract with some former Community Representatives in NI to roll out Restorative Community Justice on UK wide basis.
Perhaps I should go forward with this. I can give you a real shareholding in the ground floor of the business, in return for suitable investment.
"Met chief says stopping illegal parties was not job for police guarding No 10
In her interview with Eddie Nestor on BBC Radio London, Dame Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan police commissioner, said it was not the job of officers guarding Downing Street to prevent illegal parties."
So if someone had tried to get into Downing Street to illegally steal confidential material or the silver candlesticks or to illegally deliver a suitcase full of poison it was not their job to prevent that either??
That sounds to me like an admission that officers knew full well what was going on but did not pass any of the information onto other officers who could have stopped them.
My take is, they likely shared the information, it went up the chain, where a decision came back down not to act. That’s most likely what happened isn’t it?
The list of what the UK Police and CPS don't consider to worth investigating is interesting.
- Fraud with an international aspect - Burglary - Rape of minors on an industrial scale - Illegal parties in government offices - Lots more - ???
It seems an eclectic mix.
Almost all fraud.
Almost all mobile phone/device thefts.
They think they are doing you a huge favour by giving you a crime reference so you can claim on your insurance.
For them, once the crime reference number is given, case closed.
The consequence of having an in-out referendum on membership of the EU continue to be appalling; as I predicted at the time, it will dominate political discourse for years on end.
And I was right. Even six years after the event, it is still a dominant topic of conversation on a significant proportion of PB threads. Six ******* years. Can't people let go?
Cheeky,…..Ian Blackford, the First Merchant Banker Crofter…
UK pensions minister @GuyOpperman has been asked about state pensions provision in an independent Scotland at an event hosted by @thelangcat. earlier today
Sir John Major is a man of principles and values who places integrity and honesty at the top of the priority list above partisanship and personal profit.
Such a man has no place in the amoral disgraceful modern Tory party as HY and the other remaining sycophants have no doubt already proven.
Fuck off. His “principles” extended to cancelling the vote of 17.4 million people, because “they got it wrong”, and having a second vote to reverse the first, without ever enacting the LEAVE vote. And he accuses Boris of generating “mistrust in democracy”? How much mistrust would be have generated if he’d managed to actually CANCEL democracy
The man is a rancid hypocrite. A c*nt of the lowest order. He should be ignored. He should not be in public life. He should fuck off at great speed to I-have-now-fucked-off-istan, and the government there should expel him to the tiny village of Fuck Off Again, whence he will be exiled into the surrounding FUCK OFF JOHN MAJOR RAINFOREST and hopefully eaten half to death by great big fuck off ants with faces like Nigel Farage
You won Brexit. Be pleased about it, own it but ffs stop going on about it so aggressively.
WTF??????
I’m not attacking anyone here. I’m attacking an ex prime minister who wanted to abolish democracy, and who now has the brass neck to lecture us about “breeding mistrust in democracy”
A little bit of ire is, to say the least, justified
"Abolish democracy"? We had a general election and a different slate of representatives were elected. How is a general election abolishing democracy? When people voted for Blair instead of Major was that abolishing their democratic will to have Major in 1992?
How would the 2nd Ref proposal to have VOTE of ALL THE ELECTORATE be abolishing democracy, for that matter?
Having such a second referendum (that is, with Remain on the ballot paper) would have been admitting that there's a right answer and a wrong answer, and if the electorate give the wrong answer you will ignore them. How is this democracy?
Ignoring the electorate would have been saying "f*ck it, you voted to leave the EU but we're not going to do anything about it - no article 50, no negotiations, carry on as if nothing had happened".
That patently did not happen.
Asking the electorate to approve the negotiated deal would have only enhanced democracy.
Of course the Tory government wouldn't do that because it knew its negotiated deal was such utter shit and likely to be judged as such by the electorate.
If - and only if - the other option on the ballot paper is "more negotiations".
Putting Remain back on the ballot paper would have invalidated the first vote, and would have meant that people who wanted to Leave would have had to win two referendums but people who wanted to Remain cound have done so by winning only one.
If you can't see that this is fundametally anithetical to democracy I cannot help you.
But that is *literally* our democratic system. I would be happy to join with you in condemning our electoral system - it needs blowing up and refounding. But it IS the system, one that amazingly enough puts a legally binding general election above an advisory referendum in terms of mandate.
If there had been no election in 2017 and it was the 2015 parliament trying to rerun a referendum I may have more sympathy towards your position. But the 2017 parliament was sovereign and could overturn every single law on the statute book if it wanted to.
The referendum result wasn't even law. And "leave the EU" isn't even a coherent position - EU was being interpreted as all kinds of things that were not the EU. That the 2017 parliament sought to find a workable position is absolutely democracy, and if it wanted to hold a fresh referendum with a clear question this time that is absolutely democracy.
So your position seems to be we don't actually live in a democracy. Which even if it's true isn't a reason to make it worse by ignoring a clear instruction from the people.
Our democratic system has major systematic problems. A few: 1 People vote for the named candidate. Yet so many voters incorrectly believe they vote for a party or a prime minister or a government. They do not. 2 People think their vote applies outside their constituency. It does not. There is no national election just 650 simultaneous local ones. So national vote tallies and percentages shares whilst interesting have zero bearing on the result no matter how passionately people believe they do
So when you say "clear instruction from the people" there are several obvious issues. People don't understand who they are instructing and how when it is a legally binding vote - an election. And when the referendum is advisory and not legally binding it is a basic error to believe it to be an instruction. It is not.
I voted to leave. I regret it hugely now with the route we have gone but you aren't talking to a remoaner. But I do understand our democratic system and you do not. Once you have a new general election and elect a new raft of MPs they have the legal political and literal mandate to do whatever they like. And if it is politically unsustainable people have the ability to vote differently in the next election.
In a democracy, if the government say before a referendum "we will implement whatever you decide" and "there will not be another referendum", it is reasonable to see the decision made by the public as a clear instruction. And the mandate from that doesn't just go away if you ignore it.
But it was a different government. The mandate of John Major's government didn't apply to Tony Blair's government.
Irrelevant. It was a direct mandate to HMG, regardless of whether the membership of such changed. You're confusing a direct mandate from a referendum with an indirect mandate given to a prime minister through a general election.
What you're suggesting isn't really democracy, more a dictatorship.
Wow.
Why wow? You said that an advisory vote in a previous parliament has overriding legal mandate that no law on the statute books has. That parliament cannot be sovereign regardless of what people vote for in an election.
This is the truth. Brexit will never be over because every parliament between now and the end of time will have the absolute right to revisit the issue. Yet you claim that an advisory vote in the 2015 parliament is somehow sacrosanct and cannot be touched, a "direct mandate to HMG regardless of whether the membership of such changed"
You can't un-leave the EU. We're no longer members, and rejoining wouldn't simply reverse Brexit. Your idea of delegating large chunks of policy to the EU as a non-member with no voting rights is unlikely to win much political support.
1. I said "revist the issue". Which isn't unleaving - a return to the status quo ante. It would be changing our relationship - if we wanted to rejoin that would be to a different status than our previous half opted-out 2. It isn't my idea 3. If it was being revisited by a parliament elected on that mandate then it would have been popular enough to win a general election 4. What you think it's necessarily what everyone else thinks 5. All things are possible in politics regardless of how unlikely they appear to any given observer at any given time.
"Met chief says stopping illegal parties was not job for police guarding No 10
In her interview with Eddie Nestor on BBC Radio London, Dame Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan police commissioner, said it was not the job of officers guarding Downing Street to prevent illegal parties."
So if someone had tried to get into Downing Street to illegally steal confidential material or the silver candlesticks or to illegally deliver a suitcase full of poison it was not their job to prevent that either??
That sounds to me like an admission that officers knew full well what was going on but did not pass any of the information onto other officers who could have stopped them.
My take is, they likely shared the information, it went up the chain, where a decision came back down not to act. That’s most likely what happened isn’t it?
The list of what the UK Police and CPS don't consider to worth investigating is interesting.
- Fraud with an international aspect - Burglary - Rape of minors on an industrial scale - Illegal parties in government offices - Lots more - ???
It seems an eclectic mix.
Almost all fraud.
Almost all mobile phone/device thefts.
They think they are doing you a huge favour by giving you a crime reference so you can claim on your insurance.
For them, once the crime reference number is given, case closed.
But for mobiles that logic is just about correct nowadays - the value of a locked iphone is virtually nothing - (it's some of the parts and even then Apple lock down the bits so part 1 won't work with part 2 unless authorised to do so).
The consequence of having an in-out referendum on membership of the EU continue to be appalling; as I predicted at the time, it will dominate political discourse for years on end.
And I was right. Even six years after the event, it is still a dominant topic of conversation on a significant proportion of PB threads. Six ******* years. Can't people let go?
You had WW2 holdouts in the Philippines until the 1970s.
@lionelbarber Lavrov - Putin’s Gromyko - eats Liz Truss alive on camera, dismissing her as an ignorant lightweight who spends too much time on social media. Easy to have anticipated this payback !
The most interesting thing I note from the Twitter thread linked earlier is the people willing to express support for Lavrov because they are desperate to have a pop at Truss.
Deranged.
You don't have to be a Russian sympathiser to recognise that Truss is way out of her depth. The Tories had other, more serious-minded candidates for Foreign Secretary. They didn't make them.
NICOLA Sturgeon will lose an independence referendum if she links a Yes vote to Scotland going back into the European Union, a former SNP cabinet secretary has warned.
Alex Neil said said that if the First Minister wanted to win she would have to ditch a policy that combined the two issues in a “double referendum”.
Sir John Major is a man of principles and values who places integrity and honesty at the top of the priority list above partisanship and personal profit.
Such a man has no place in the amoral disgraceful modern Tory party as HY and the other remaining sycophants have no doubt already proven.
Fuck off. His “principles” extended to cancelling the vote of 17.4 million people, because “they got it wrong”, and having a second vote to reverse the first, without ever enacting the LEAVE vote. And he accuses Boris of generating “mistrust in democracy”? How much mistrust would be have generated if he’d managed to actually CANCEL democracy
The man is a rancid hypocrite. A c*nt of the lowest order. He should be ignored. He should not be in public life. He should fuck off at great speed to I-have-now-fucked-off-istan, and the government there should expel him to the tiny village of Fuck Off Again, whence he will be exiled into the surrounding FUCK OFF JOHN MAJOR RAINFOREST and hopefully eaten half to death by great big fuck off ants with faces like Nigel Farage
You won Brexit. Be pleased about it, own it but ffs stop going on about it so aggressively.
WTF??????
I’m not attacking anyone here. I’m attacking an ex prime minister who wanted to abolish democracy, and who now has the brass neck to lecture us about “breeding mistrust in democracy”
A little bit of ire is, to say the least, justified
"Abolish democracy"? We had a general election and a different slate of representatives were elected. How is a general election abolishing democracy? When people voted for Blair instead of Major was that abolishing their democratic will to have Major in 1992?
How would the 2nd Ref proposal to have VOTE of ALL THE ELECTORATE be abolishing democracy, for that matter?
Having such a second referendum (that is, with Remain on the ballot paper) would have been admitting that there's a right answer and a wrong answer, and if the electorate give the wrong answer you will ignore them. How is this democracy?
Ignoring the electorate would have been saying "f*ck it, you voted to leave the EU but we're not going to do anything about it - no article 50, no negotiations, carry on as if nothing had happened".
That patently did not happen.
Asking the electorate to approve the negotiated deal would have only enhanced democracy.
Of course the Tory government wouldn't do that because it knew its negotiated deal was such utter shit and likely to be judged as such by the electorate.
If - and only if - the other option on the ballot paper is "more negotiations".
Putting Remain back on the ballot paper would have invalidated the first vote, and would have meant that people who wanted to Leave would have had to win two referendums but people who wanted to Remain cound have done so by winning only one.
If you can't see that this is fundametally anithetical to democracy I cannot help you.
But that is *literally* our democratic system. I would be happy to join with you in condemning our electoral system - it needs blowing up and refounding. But it IS the system, one that amazingly enough puts a legally binding general election above an advisory referendum in terms of mandate.
If there had been no election in 2017 and it was the 2015 parliament trying to rerun a referendum I may have more sympathy towards your position. But the 2017 parliament was sovereign and could overturn every single law on the statute book if it wanted to.
The referendum result wasn't even law. And "leave the EU" isn't even a coherent position - EU was being interpreted as all kinds of things that were not the EU. That the 2017 parliament sought to find a workable position is absolutely democracy, and if it wanted to hold a fresh referendum with a clear question this time that is absolutely democracy.
So your position seems to be we don't actually live in a democracy. Which even if it's true isn't a reason to make it worse by ignoring a clear instruction from the people.
Our democratic system has major systematic problems. A few: 1 People vote for the named candidate. Yet so many voters incorrectly believe they vote for a party or a prime minister or a government. They do not. 2 People think their vote applies outside their constituency. It does not. There is no national election just 650 simultaneous local ones. So national vote tallies and percentages shares whilst interesting have zero bearing on the result no matter how passionately people believe they do
So when you say "clear instruction from the people" there are several obvious issues. People don't understand who they are instructing and how when it is a legally binding vote - an election. And when the referendum is advisory and not legally binding it is a basic error to believe it to be an instruction. It is not.
I voted to leave. I regret it hugely now with the route we have gone but you aren't talking to a remoaner. But I do understand our democratic system and you do not. Once you have a new general election and elect a new raft of MPs they have the legal political and literal mandate to do whatever they like. And if it is politically unsustainable people have the ability to vote differently in the next election.
In a democracy, if the government say before a referendum "we will implement whatever you decide" and "there will not be another referendum", it is reasonable to see the decision made by the public as a clear instruction. And the mandate from that doesn't just go away if you ignore it.
But it was a different government. The mandate of John Major's government didn't apply to Tony Blair's government.
Irrelevant. It was a direct mandate to HMG, regardless of whether the membership of such changed. You're confusing a direct mandate from a referendum with an indirect mandate given to a prime minister through a general election.
What you're suggesting isn't really democracy, more a dictatorship.
Wow.
Why wow? You said that an advisory vote in a previous parliament has overriding legal mandate that no law on the statute books has. That parliament cannot be sovereign regardless of what people vote for in an election.
This is the truth. Brexit will never be over because every parliament between now and the end of time will have the absolute right to revisit the issue. Yet you claim that an advisory vote in the 2015 parliament is somehow sacrosanct and cannot be touched, a "direct mandate to HMG regardless of whether the membership of such changed"
You can't un-leave the EU. We're no longer members, and rejoining wouldn't simply reverse Brexit. Your idea of delegating large chunks of policy to the EU as a non-member with no voting rights is unlikely to win much political support.
1. I said "revist the issue". Which isn't unleaving - a return to the status quo ante. It would be changing our relationship - if we wanted to rejoin that would be to a different status than our previous half opted-out 2. It isn't my idea 3. If it was being revisited by a parliament elected on that mandate then it would have been popular enough to win a general election 4. What you think it's necessarily what everyone else thinks 5. All things are possible in politics regardless of how unlikely they appear to any given observer at any given time.
Relations with the EU are now a part of normal foreign policy, so it's not revisiting the issue of Brexit for them to develop in that context.
"Met chief says stopping illegal parties was not job for police guarding No 10
In her interview with Eddie Nestor on BBC Radio London, Dame Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan police commissioner, said it was not the job of officers guarding Downing Street to prevent illegal parties."
So if someone had tried to get into Downing Street to illegally steal confidential material or the silver candlesticks or to illegally deliver a suitcase full of poison it was not their job to prevent that either??
That sounds to me like an admission that officers knew full well what was going on but did not pass any of the information onto other officers who could have stopped them.
My take is, they likely shared the information, it went up the chain, where a decision came back down not to act. That’s most likely what happened isn’t it?
The list of what the UK Police and CPS don't consider to worth investigating is interesting.
- Fraud with an international aspect - Burglary - Rape of minors on an industrial scale - Illegal parties in government offices - Lots more - ???
It seems an eclectic mix.
Almost all fraud.
Almost all mobile phone/device thefts.
They think they are doing you a huge favour by giving you a crime reference so you can claim on your insurance.
For them, once the crime reference number is given, case closed.
Rape and indecent exposure Any fraud at all
There are occasional investigations, and even successful prosecutions of the above, perhaps just to make sure people can say you're wrong.
"Met chief says stopping illegal parties was not job for police guarding No 10
In her interview with Eddie Nestor on BBC Radio London, Dame Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan police commissioner, said it was not the job of officers guarding Downing Street to prevent illegal parties."
So if someone had tried to get into Downing Street to illegally steal confidential material or the silver candlesticks or to illegally deliver a suitcase full of poison it was not their job to prevent that either??
That sounds to me like an admission that officers knew full well what was going on but did not pass any of the information onto other officers who could have stopped them.
My take is, they likely shared the information, it went up the chain, where a decision came back down not to act. That’s most likely what happened isn’t it?
The list of what the UK Police and CPS don't consider to worth investigating is interesting.
- Fraud with an international aspect - Burglary - Rape of minors on an industrial scale - Illegal parties in government offices - Lots more - ???
It seems an eclectic mix.
Almost all fraud.
Almost all mobile phone/device thefts.
They think they are doing you a huge favour by giving you a crime reference so you can claim on your insurance.
For them, once the crime reference number is given, case closed.
But for mobiles that logic is just about correct nowadays - the value of a locked iphone is virtually nothing - (it's some of the parts and even then Apple lock down the bits so part 1 won't work with part 2 unless authorised to do so).
Should have been clearer, I'm talking the incidents where violence is involved.
My colleague was mugged and her phone taken.
We went to the station to file a report, told them where it was, told them there's CCTV right opposite where it happened, and given the brush off here's the crime reference number and off you go.
There are millions upon millions, maybe 52% of the country, maybe more, who want an end to all restrictions this afternoon.
If it's a political decision then it is one that the government was elected legitimately to take.
They're certainly entitled to make it, and it may or may not be popular. Indeed, it may or may not be the right thing to do. However, on a matter of public health I should like our government to be motivated by the interest of public health, more than the relationship of the PM to his backbenchers. Spector doesn't think that's the case, and that seems a very legitimate concern.
"Spector doesn't think that's the case"
Righty-ho.
I'm happy for scientists to come out and say the government has got it wrong. And for others to come out and say the scientists have got it wrong.
But I don't share their viewpoint. Unless going zero-Covid, which does not look realistic at all for the UK then, in the absence of herd immunity*, when you ditch restrictions you will eventually get increasing cases**. There's nothing much coming down the line that is going to greatly change our immunity if we wait a few more months (a bit more immunity from infections, a bit more from vaccinations, but there's not much more to do there). There's not a very clear rationale for waiting longer, really.
*we may be there or thereabouts already - existing restrictions are pretty minimal, key thing is how much testing and isolation is pulling down R (and neither of those will cease just because they become voluntary)
**ok, so there is the issue of herd immunity overshoot - if you get to herd immunity with 100 people infected then you'll bob along at 100 people infected for a bit before that gradually declines; if you get to herd immunity with 1000000 infected then they'll infect another 1000000 before the numbers start coming down, but we're not at those kind of extremes
A question for those wanting restrictions retained.
1() What restrictions would you like retained? 2) What reduction in R do you estimate each restriction will create?
Mainly they want masks, and seem to believe that the reduce R by 100%. This, despite comparative evidence from the UK nations, that there is a small reduction at best.*
*Based on ONS data which consistently showed a slightly lower prevalence in Scotland and Wales, but with the caveat that there could be many other reasons.
There are millions upon millions, maybe 52% of the country, maybe more, who want an end to all restrictions this afternoon.
If it's a political decision then it is one that the government was elected legitimately to take.
They're certainly entitled to make it, and it may or may not be popular. Indeed, it may or may not be the right thing to do. However, on a matter of public health I should like our government to be motivated by the interest of public health, more than the relationship of the PM to his backbenchers. Spector doesn't think that's the case, and that seems a very legitimate concern.
Spector is wedded to his Zoe COVID app model, which was fantastically good prior to vaccination at being a week or so ahead of the official figures. However, since widespread vaccinations, his sample group is massively skewed towards the vaccinated and so he has had to add massive fudge factors to try to model the unvaccinated. The result has been his own numbers are all over the shop, often dominated (normally 2/3rds of the total case number) by unvaccinated, despite in his core dataset hardly having any.
As a result, his estimates are cases are really high and rising. The official figures are they are well down and falling. He might be picking something up, but over the past few months, this hasn't been the case, in the way it was a year ago.
That's helpful, thanks. I don't feel confident in the Government's motivations in the current climate, but that doesn't mean the decision is wrong.
"Met chief says stopping illegal parties was not job for police guarding No 10
In her interview with Eddie Nestor on BBC Radio London, Dame Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan police commissioner, said it was not the job of officers guarding Downing Street to prevent illegal parties."
So if someone had tried to get into Downing Street to illegally steal confidential material or the silver candlesticks or to illegally deliver a suitcase full of poison it was not their job to prevent that either??
That sounds to me like an admission that officers knew full well what was going on but did not pass any of the information onto other officers who could have stopped them.
They would have been carrying eth suitcases in for sure , up to their necks in it.
Ha Ha 😄 you saying do we know it was empty suitcases going back out?
The coppers would have hoovered up the contents left
@lionelbarber Lavrov - Putin’s Gromyko - eats Liz Truss alive on camera, dismissing her as an ignorant lightweight who spends too much time on social media. Easy to have anticipated this payback !
The most interesting thing I note from the Twitter thread linked earlier is the people willing to express support for Lavrov because they are desperate to have a pop at Truss.
Deranged.
Actually most of the tweets I can see responding to Lionel Barber accuse him of sucking up to Putin and Lavrov.
"Met chief says stopping illegal parties was not job for police guarding No 10
In her interview with Eddie Nestor on BBC Radio London, Dame Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan police commissioner, said it was not the job of officers guarding Downing Street to prevent illegal parties."
So if someone had tried to get into Downing Street to illegally steal confidential material or the silver candlesticks or to illegally deliver a suitcase full of poison it was not their job to prevent that either??
That sounds to me like an admission that officers knew full well what was going on but did not pass any of the information onto other officers who could have stopped them.
My take is, they likely shared the information, it went up the chain, where a decision came back down not to act. That’s most likely what happened isn’t it?
The list of what the UK Police and CPS don't consider to worth investigating is interesting.
- Fraud with an international aspect - Burglary - Rape of minors on an industrial scale - Illegal parties in government offices - Lots more - ???
It seems an eclectic mix.
Being really serious though, and putting ourselves in position of the police, it’s awkward to treat VIP on Downing Street estate just like anyone else. Admittedly granny was home alone at Christmas as people obeyed Boris law, singletons in pokey bedsits tried to meet up in a park for a few minutes and police came across to them etc. But that’s not a story. Intervening on the Downing Street estate on the people who set the rules would have consequences. You know what I mean?
Firstly, someone surely got on the phone. And decision was made not to act on ground but go through the channels higher up. “What is it John?” “Though there’s supposed to be restrictions, they’re partying here like its 1999, Sir. What should we do?” “Okay. I’ll go upstairs and get an answer back to you.”
Secondly, if you believe in the restrictions, part of your decision to intervene or not is not just a messy political scandal all over the media, but it’s going to make the police job enforcing restrictions become nigh impossible.
I’m not defending the police, or the particular ones probably very high up made who the decision. But I I am defending them a bit to be fair. Do you get what I mean. It’s lazy to mock without considering it from their point of view.
You won't last long on this Site with common sense like that, Moon.
Of course the Police would have taken account of who they were policing and what the consequence would likely be. They do that all the time, and in our own ways I expect we all do in our everyday lives. You can only fight so many battles. Makes sense to pick the ones that you might win and not burn up resources on highly problematic innterventions.
Now that it's all out in the open however there's no reason for the police to hold back. They will be damned whether they do or don't so may as well just get on with it promptly.
Delay is now likely to perceived as complicit.
I once worked with the most honest man I have ever met. He told the exact truth on every occasion.
On one occasion, a manger started screaming at a subordinate in a meeting. At one point the manager started raving "Am I over reacting? AM I?????"
My friend replied - "Yes"
"WHAAAAAT?????"
"Yes, you are over reacting"
We were working a consultants and the manager was working for the client. My friend was sent back to our office that day.
He's a Russian, incidentally - I've met a few in the same vein, all Russian, though perhaps not as hard core as that. Seems to be a sub-culture in Russia of not bravery.... just total honesty, without interest in the cost.
That was standard management in Scotland when I was a boy, if you had not learned every curse under the sun you soon knew them. I am referring to the shouting bit , probably not always the truth bit. Though to be fair they did buy rounds.
@lionelbarber Lavrov - Putin’s Gromyko - eats Liz Truss alive on camera, dismissing her as an ignorant lightweight who spends too much time on social media. Easy to have anticipated this payback !
The most interesting thing I note from the Twitter thread linked earlier is the people willing to express support for Lavrov because they are desperate to have a pop at Truss.
Deranged.
You don't have to be a Russian sympathiser to recognise that Truss is way out of her depth. The Tories had other, more serious-minded candidates for Foreign Secretary. They didn't make them.
I've just wiki-ed her. Why do you say she is not "serious minded"? The biog reads like just about every politician in the HoC.
Just to add, if the Mirror actually did publish the doctored image, then they are in deep shit
But, I don't think they did
The fact that doctored photos are being used in a weird way in an attempt to bring down the PM is not good.
The Mirror? Using faked photos?
There are no tanks.
I agree, there really should be some hard punishment on the Daily Mirror for publishing that fake photo this morning. They’ve made the police investigation slower, harder, and more expensive to get to the truth.
It’s been scientifically proved a fake, by how everything else casting a shadow and the bottle isn’t?
I think I speak for all everyday people who just want police to report facts and truth asap. Fake pictures published by National media in surely undermining that. 😠
The consequence of having an in-out referendum on membership of the EU continue to be appalling; as I predicted at the time, it will dominate political discourse for years on end.
And I was right. Even six years after the event, it is still a dominant topic of conversation on a significant proportion of PB threads. Six ******* years. Can't people let go?
Well, it's been a long time, and so far it has been uniformly disastrous, but that's about to change now: at last, Jacob Rees-Mogg is going to tell us what all the wonderful new opportunities are. I can't wait.
@lionelbarber Lavrov - Putin’s Gromyko - eats Liz Truss alive on camera, dismissing her as an ignorant lightweight who spends too much time on social media. Easy to have anticipated this payback !
The most interesting thing I note from the Twitter thread linked earlier is the people willing to express support for Lavrov because they are desperate to have a pop at Truss.
Deranged.
Lavrov has Truss bang to rights, though.
She’s a self-publicising nitwit, and the main reason for her trip to Moscow seems to have been to get her official in-house instagram consultant to take picture of her in a certain hat.
@lionelbarber Lavrov - Putin’s Gromyko - eats Liz Truss alive on camera, dismissing her as an ignorant lightweight who spends too much time on social media. Easy to have anticipated this payback !
The most interesting thing I note from the Twitter thread linked earlier is the people willing to express support for Lavrov because they are desperate to have a pop at Truss.
Deranged.
You don't have to be a Russian sympathiser to recognise that Truss is way out of her depth. The Tories had other, more serious-minded candidates for Foreign Secretary. They didn't make them.
I've just wiki-ed her. Why do you say she is not "serious minded"? The biog reads like just about every politician in the HoC.
I'm happy for scientists to come out and say the government has got it wrong. And for others to come out and say the scientists have got it wrong.
But I don't share their viewpoint. Unless going zero-Covid, which does not look realistic at all for the UK then, in the absence of herd immunity*, when you ditch restrictions you will eventually get increasing cases**. There's nothing much coming down the line that is going to greatly change our immunity if we wait a few more months (a bit more immunity from infections, a bit more from vaccinations, but there's not much more to do there). There's not a very clear rationale for waiting longer, really.
*we may be there or thereabouts already - existing restrictions are pretty minimal, key thing is how much testing and isolation is pulling down R (and neither of those will cease just because they become voluntary)
**ok, so there is the issue of herd immunity overshoot - if you get to herd immunity with 100 people infected then you'll bob along at 100 people infected for a bit before that gradually declines; if you get to herd immunity with 1000000 infected then they'll infect another 1000000 before the numbers start coming down, but we're not at those kind of extremes
Yes, I am sure you are right. Hospitalisation numbers, and especially the most severe ones, are manageable and falling. We already have fairly high levels of immunity, through jabs and prior infection. That protection is probably waning. We can't stop Omicron without absolutely draconian April 2020-style lockdowns, which would be absurd now we're mostly jabbed; all we can do is slow it down a bit, but what's the point? The only effect would be to mean it flares up again when our protection has waned and therefore catching the thing will be more dangerous.
I'd be cautious about whether waning protection (mainly going to be in nAB's at this stage) means that catching it will be more dangerous. The residual capacity of the trained immune system means that waning nAB's means you are more likely to catch it, but will be perfectly capable of handling the infection. I expect protection against serious illness etc to be more robust, particularly after three doses (four for the immune compromised). I also suspect that we won't need to boost until the autumn, if at all. I expect we will boost the cohort who normally receive flu shots.
We've reached the point now where if we weren't testing people, we would not know there is a major pandemic underway. The hospitals have around 400 people on MV beds across the entire nation. There are around 13000 in hospital that have tested positive for covid, but possibly as many as 50% are there for other reasons.
It really is the classic if not now, when question. Not everyone will agree of course. But anyone who says now is not the time really ought to front up with the conditions that they would accept for removing all legal restrictions.
NICOLA Sturgeon will lose an independence referendum if she links a Yes vote to Scotland going back into the European Union, a former SNP cabinet secretary has warned.
Alex Neil said said that if the First Minister wanted to win she would have to ditch a policy that combined the two issues in a “double referendum”.
I'm happy for scientists to come out and say the government has got it wrong. And for others to come out and say the scientists have got it wrong.
But I don't share their viewpoint. Unless going zero-Covid, which does not look realistic at all for the UK then, in the absence of herd immunity*, when you ditch restrictions you will eventually get increasing cases**. There's nothing much coming down the line that is going to greatly change our immunity if we wait a few more months (a bit more immunity from infections, a bit more from vaccinations, but there's not much more to do there). There's not a very clear rationale for waiting longer, really.
*we may be there or thereabouts already - existing restrictions are pretty minimal, key thing is how much testing and isolation is pulling down R (and neither of those will cease just because they become voluntary)
**ok, so there is the issue of herd immunity overshoot - if you get to herd immunity with 100 people infected then you'll bob along at 100 people infected for a bit before that gradually declines; if you get to herd immunity with 1000000 infected then they'll infect another 1000000 before the numbers start coming down, but we're not at those kind of extremes
Yes, I am sure you are right. Hospitalisation numbers, and especially the most severe ones, are manageable and falling. We already have fairly high levels of immunity, through jabs and prior infection. That protection is probably waning. We can't stop Omicron without absolutely draconian April 2020-style lockdowns, which would be absurd now we're mostly jabbed; all we can do is slow it down a bit, but what's the point? The only effect would be to mean it flares up again when our protection has waned and therefore catching the thing will be more dangerous.
The only nuance I'd add to this is that it is likely that the only aspect of immunity that wanes significantly is the immunity to infection (i.e. spike protein antibody effectiveness). I think memory T- and B-cell immunity remains strong, and hence so does protection against severe illness.
The consequence of having an in-out referendum on membership of the EU continue to be appalling; as I predicted at the time, it will dominate political discourse for years on end.
And I was right. Even six years after the event, it is still a dominant topic of conversation on a significant proportion of PB threads. Six ******* years. Can't people let go?
Well, it's been a long time, and so far it has been uniformly disastrous, but that's about to change now: at last, Jacob Rees-Mogg is going to tell us what all the wonderful new opportunities are. I can't wait.
Yes. Now we have a REAL Brexiter in charge of finding those opportunities!
Unlike (checks notes)
Lord Frost Iain Duncan Smith Steve Barclay Dominic Raab David Davis
I'm happy for scientists to come out and say the government has got it wrong. And for others to come out and say the scientists have got it wrong.
But I don't share their viewpoint. Unless going zero-Covid, which does not look realistic at all for the UK then, in the absence of herd immunity*, when you ditch restrictions you will eventually get increasing cases**. There's nothing much coming down the line that is going to greatly change our immunity if we wait a few more months (a bit more immunity from infections, a bit more from vaccinations, but there's not much more to do there). There's not a very clear rationale for waiting longer, really.
*we may be there or thereabouts already - existing restrictions are pretty minimal, key thing is how much testing and isolation is pulling down R (and neither of those will cease just because they become voluntary)
**ok, so there is the issue of herd immunity overshoot - if you get to herd immunity with 100 people infected then you'll bob along at 100 people infected for a bit before that gradually declines; if you get to herd immunity with 1000000 infected then they'll infect another 1000000 before the numbers start coming down, but we're not at those kind of extremes
Yes, I am sure you are right. Hospitalisation numbers, and especially the most severe ones, are manageable and falling. We already have fairly high levels of immunity, through jabs and prior infection. That protection is probably waning. We can't stop Omicron without absolutely draconian April 2020-style lockdowns, which would be absurd now we're mostly jabbed; all we can do is slow it down a bit, but what's the point? The only effect would be to mean it flares up again when our protection has waned and therefore catching the thing will be more dangerous.
The only nuance I'd add to this is that it is likely that the only aspect of immunity that wanes significantly is the immunity to infection (i.e. spike protein antibody effectiveness). I think memory T- and B-cell immunity remains strong, and hence so does protection against severe illness.
Let's hope so. But, either way, protection is not going to improve, unless we roll out another big booster programme.
"Met chief says stopping illegal parties was not job for police guarding No 10
In her interview with Eddie Nestor on BBC Radio London, Dame Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan police commissioner, said it was not the job of officers guarding Downing Street to prevent illegal parties."
So if someone had tried to get into Downing Street to illegally steal confidential material or the silver candlesticks or to illegally deliver a suitcase full of poison it was not their job to prevent that either??
That sounds to me like an admission that officers knew full well what was going on but did not pass any of the information onto other officers who could have stopped them.
They would have been carrying eth suitcases in for sure , up to their necks in it.
Ha Ha 😄 you saying do we know it was empty suitcases going back out?
The coppers would have hoovered up the contents left
“Just popping down the offy.” 🙂
There went the Downing Street silver. Incriminating papers destined for motorway concrete.
Are government still allowed to select what paintings they want from the national archives, to decorate their offices?
I'm happy for scientists to come out and say the government has got it wrong. And for others to come out and say the scientists have got it wrong.
But I don't share their viewpoint. Unless going zero-Covid, which does not look realistic at all for the UK then, in the absence of herd immunity*, when you ditch restrictions you will eventually get increasing cases**. There's nothing much coming down the line that is going to greatly change our immunity if we wait a few more months (a bit more immunity from infections, a bit more from vaccinations, but there's not much more to do there). There's not a very clear rationale for waiting longer, really.
*we may be there or thereabouts already - existing restrictions are pretty minimal, key thing is how much testing and isolation is pulling down R (and neither of those will cease just because they become voluntary)
**ok, so there is the issue of herd immunity overshoot - if you get to herd immunity with 100 people infected then you'll bob along at 100 people infected for a bit before that gradually declines; if you get to herd immunity with 1000000 infected then they'll infect another 1000000 before the numbers start coming down, but we're not at those kind of extremes
Yes, I am sure you are right. Hospitalisation numbers, and especially the most severe ones, are manageable and falling. We already have fairly high levels of immunity, through jabs and prior infection. That protection is probably waning. We can't stop Omicron without absolutely draconian April 2020-style lockdowns, which would be absurd now we're mostly jabbed; all we can do is slow it down a bit, but what's the point? The only effect would be to mean it flares up again when our protection has waned and therefore catching the thing will be more dangerous.
The only nuance I'd add to this is that it is likely that the only aspect of immunity that wanes significantly is the immunity to infection (i.e. spike protein antibody effectiveness). I think memory T- and B-cell immunity remains strong, and hence so does protection against severe illness.
Let's hope so. But, either way, protection is not going to improve, unless we roll out another big booster programme.
It will, if we get natural infections on top of vaccinations.
Sir John Major is a man of principles and values who places integrity and honesty at the top of the priority list above partisanship and personal profit.
Such a man has no place in the amoral disgraceful modern Tory party as HY and the other remaining sycophants have no doubt already proven.
Fuck off. His “principles” extended to cancelling the vote of 17.4 million people, because “they got it wrong”, and having a second vote to reverse the first, without ever enacting the LEAVE vote. And he accuses Boris of generating “mistrust in democracy”? How much mistrust would be have generated if he’d managed to actually CANCEL democracy
The man is a rancid hypocrite. A c*nt of the lowest order. He should be ignored. He should not be in public life. He should fuck off at great speed to I-have-now-fucked-off-istan, and the government there should expel him to the tiny village of Fuck Off Again, whence he will be exiled into the surrounding FUCK OFF JOHN MAJOR RAINFOREST and hopefully eaten half to death by great big fuck off ants with faces like Nigel Farage
You won Brexit. Be pleased about it, own it but ffs stop going on about it so aggressively.
WTF??????
I’m not attacking anyone here. I’m attacking an ex prime minister who wanted to abolish democracy, and who now has the brass neck to lecture us about “breeding mistrust in democracy”
A little bit of ire is, to say the least, justified
"Abolish democracy"? We had a general election and a different slate of representatives were elected. How is a general election abolishing democracy? When people voted for Blair instead of Major was that abolishing their democratic will to have Major in 1992?
How would the 2nd Ref proposal to have VOTE of ALL THE ELECTORATE be abolishing democracy, for that matter?
Having such a second referendum (that is, with Remain on the ballot paper) would have been admitting that there's a right answer and a wrong answer, and if the electorate give the wrong answer you will ignore them. How is this democracy?
Ignoring the electorate would have been saying "f*ck it, you voted to leave the EU but we're not going to do anything about it - no article 50, no negotiations, carry on as if nothing had happened".
That patently did not happen.
Asking the electorate to approve the negotiated deal would have only enhanced democracy.
Of course the Tory government wouldn't do that because it knew its negotiated deal was such utter shit and likely to be judged as such by the electorate.
If - and only if - the other option on the ballot paper is "more negotiations".
Putting Remain back on the ballot paper would have invalidated the first vote, and would have meant that people who wanted to Leave would have had to win two referendums but people who wanted to Remain cound have done so by winning only one.
If you can't see that this is fundametally anithetical to democracy I cannot help you.
But that is *literally* our democratic system. I would be happy to join with you in condemning our electoral system - it needs blowing up and refounding. But it IS the system, one that amazingly enough puts a legally binding general election above an advisory referendum in terms of mandate.
If there had been no election in 2017 and it was the 2015 parliament trying to rerun a referendum I may have more sympathy towards your position. But the 2017 parliament was sovereign and could overturn every single law on the statute book if it wanted to.
The referendum result wasn't even law. And "leave the EU" isn't even a coherent position - EU was being interpreted as all kinds of things that were not the EU. That the 2017 parliament sought to find a workable position is absolutely democracy, and if it wanted to hold a fresh referendum with a clear question this time that is absolutely democracy.
So your position seems to be we don't actually live in a democracy. Which even if it's true isn't a reason to make it worse by ignoring a clear instruction from the people.
Our democratic system has major systematic problems. A few: 1 People vote for the named candidate. Yet so many voters incorrectly believe they vote for a party or a prime minister or a government. They do not. 2 People think their vote applies outside their constituency. It does not. There is no national election just 650 simultaneous local ones. So national vote tallies and percentages shares whilst interesting have zero bearing on the result no matter how passionately people believe they do
So when you say "clear instruction from the people" there are several obvious issues. People don't understand who they are instructing and how when it is a legally binding vote - an election. And when the referendum is advisory and not legally binding it is a basic error to believe it to be an instruction. It is not.
I voted to leave. I regret it hugely now with the route we have gone but you aren't talking to a remoaner. But I do understand our democratic system and you do not. Once you have a new general election and elect a new raft of MPs they have the legal political and literal mandate to do whatever they like. And if it is politically unsustainable people have the ability to vote differently in the next election.
In a democracy, if the government say before a referendum "we will implement whatever you decide" and "there will not be another referendum", it is reasonable to see the decision made by the public as a clear instruction. And the mandate from that doesn't just go away if you ignore it.
But it was a different government. The mandate of John Major's government didn't apply to Tony Blair's government.
Irrelevant. It was a direct mandate to HMG, regardless of whether the membership of such changed. You're confusing a direct mandate from a referendum with an indirect mandate given to a prime minister through a general election.
What you're suggesting isn't really democracy, more a dictatorship.
Wow.
Why wow? You said that an advisory vote in a previous parliament has overriding legal mandate that no law on the statute books has. That parliament cannot be sovereign regardless of what people vote for in an election.
This is the truth. Brexit will never be over because every parliament between now and the end of time will have the absolute right to revisit the issue. Yet you claim that an advisory vote in the 2015 parliament is somehow sacrosanct and cannot be touched, a "direct mandate to HMG regardless of whether the membership of such changed"
Wow, because the people being the highest authority is the exact opposite of a dictatorship.
I claim that the political and democratic instruction (even if legally it was technically only advice) from the 2015 referendum has now been implemented. Therefore if a future parliament wants to rejoin, it would be legitimate. It wouldn't even necessarily need a referendum. Everything changed the moment the politicians finally did what we told them (not advised them) to do.
The consequence of having an in-out referendum on membership of the EU continue to be appalling; as I predicted at the time, it will dominate political discourse for years on end.
And I was right. Even six years after the event, it is still a dominant topic of conversation on a significant proportion of PB threads. Six ******* years. Can't people let go?
Well, it's been a long time, and so far it has been uniformly disastrous, but that's about to change now: at last, Jacob Rees-Mogg is going to tell us what all the wonderful new opportunities are. I can't wait.
There are loads of opportunities for merchant bankers and the like. For other people however.... not so many
It will, if we get natural infections on top of vaccinations.
Yes, quite possibly, but I mean that it's not to improve by itself. If you're going to get infected (and you probably are), better to do so while your protection from the booster jab hasn't waned. So, as long as the health service isn't being overwhelmed, it's hard to see the case for continuing most of the restrictions now. The only exception I'd make is masks on public transport, which should have been kept and properly enforced, because many people, including vulnerable people, can't really avoid public transport.
There are millions upon millions, maybe 52% of the country, maybe more, who want an end to all restrictions this afternoon.
If it's a political decision then it is one that the government was elected legitimately to take.
They're certainly entitled to make it, and it may or may not be popular. Indeed, it may or may not be the right thing to do. However, on a matter of public health I should like our government to be motivated by the interest of public health, more than the relationship of the PM to his backbenchers. Spector doesn't think that's the case, and that seems a very legitimate concern.
Spector is wedded to his Zoe COVID app model, which was fantastically good prior to vaccination at being a week or so ahead of the official figures. However, since widespread vaccinations, his sample group is massively skewed towards the vaccinated and so he has had to add massive fudge factors to try to model the unvaccinated. The result has been his own numbers are all over the shop, often dominated (normally 2/3rds of the total case number) by unvaccinated, despite in his core dataset hardly having any.
As a result, his estimates are cases are really high and rising. The official figures are they are well down and falling. He might be picking something up, but over the past few months, this hasn't been the case, in the way it was a year ago.
That's helpful, thanks. I don't feel confident in the Government's motivations in the current climate, but that doesn't mean the decision is wrong.
I take a much more pragmatic outlook these days in terms of dealing with COVID. I don't think the decision is wrong, just as I don't think they were wrong around Christmas. Is Boris so weak now that he couldn't continue to impose lots of restrictions even if he wanted, probably, but I see it as a negative, as the "just wait a bit longer, its not safe quiet yet" brigade will always be there.
We now have 98% of people with antibodies, you can get triple jabbed at the top of a hat, there are anti-virals available for the most vulnerable. The Omicron specific jab is well into the development cycle.
Does this mean we might have some new variant that vaccines don't work again, perhaps.
But at the moment, Omicron is the combination of too transmissible to actually stop (without 6 week rock hard Chinese style lockdown), added with combination of all the above. There really isn't much you can do to stop it, remember now that a very large transmission vector is inter-household transmission, so just asking people to stay at home isolating doesn't even do that much. But we have lots of protection and tools to fight it.
@lionelbarber Lavrov - Putin’s Gromyko - eats Liz Truss alive on camera, dismissing her as an ignorant lightweight who spends too much time on social media. Easy to have anticipated this payback !
The most interesting thing I note from the Twitter thread linked earlier is the people willing to express support for Lavrov because they are desperate to have a pop at Truss.
Deranged.
Lavrov has Truss bang to rights, though.
She’s a self-publicising nitwit, and the main reason for her trip to Moscow seems to have been to get her official in-house instagram consultant to take picture of her in a certain hat.
You are paying for this narcissistic shambles.
Yes, the photo-shoot, looking wistful in a fur hat in front of the Kremlin, was ludicrous. She should have done some hard-nosed prep instead of promoting herself for the forthcoming Tory leadership campaign.
It’s crap. Seems designed to provoke an epileptic fit.
I assume thats the idea. BR is nationalised is crap remember?
Lots of chuffa train fun these days anyway. We have those meddling kids at the DfT ruining everything they touch (as an example procuring not fit for purpose trains on daft contracts at ludicrous expense. Yes we now recognise the ironing board seats on the Thameslink trains are too hard too close to the window and too close to each other with no seat back tables, but the DaFT contract means it costs £lots to make changes).
Scotrail are being taken off their current operator and nationalised. Except that their current operator is the dutch government and their new operator is a consortium of private companies...
There is nothing about the Shapps Green Fox "Great" British Railways plan that works. Grand and vague ambitions that haven't been formulated into even an outline plan, no timescale as the vague aspiration has already been laughed out of court by the industry bods responsible for delivery, a ludicrous logo and a pointless cock war as to where it should be based.
But it has the words "Great British" in it and uses the union flag colours so its marvellous. Huzzah.
@lionelbarber Lavrov - Putin’s Gromyko - eats Liz Truss alive on camera, dismissing her as an ignorant lightweight who spends too much time on social media. Easy to have anticipated this payback !
The most interesting thing I note from the Twitter thread linked earlier is the people willing to express support for Lavrov because they are desperate to have a pop at Truss.
Deranged.
Lavrov has Truss bang to rights, though.
She’s a self-publicising nitwit, and the main reason for her trip to Moscow seems to have been to get her official in-house instagram consultant to take picture of her in a certain hat.
You are paying for this narcissistic shambles.
Yes, the photo-shoot, looking wistful in a fur hat in front of the Kremlin, was ludicrous. She should have done some hard-nosed prep instead of promoting herself for the forthcoming Tory leadership campaign.
Trying too hard. She looks like an intimidated schoolgirl next to the stern Headmaster. Don’t think this will do her chances in the election contest one bit of good.
There are millions upon millions, maybe 52% of the country, maybe more, who want an end to all restrictions this afternoon.
If it's a political decision then it is one that the government was elected legitimately to take.
They're certainly entitled to make it, and it may or may not be popular. Indeed, it may or may not be the right thing to do. However, on a matter of public health I should like our government to be motivated by the interest of public health, more than the relationship of the PM to his backbenchers. Spector doesn't think that's the case, and that seems a very legitimate concern.
Spector is wedded to his Zoe COVID app model, which was fantastically good prior to vaccination at being a week or so ahead of the official figures. However, since widespread vaccinations, his sample group is massively skewed towards the vaccinated and so he has had to add massive fudge factors to try to model the unvaccinated. The result has been his own numbers are all over the shop, often dominated (normally 2/3rds of the total case number) by unvaccinated, despite in his core dataset hardly having any.
As a result, his estimates are cases are really high and rising. The official figures are they are well down and falling. He might be picking something up, but over the past few months, this hasn't been the case, in the way it was a year ago.
That's helpful, thanks. I don't feel confident in the Government's motivations in the current climate, but that doesn't mean the decision is wrong.
I take a much more pragmatic outlook these days in terms of dealing with COVID. I don't think the decision is wrong, just as I don't think they were wrong around Christmas. Is Boris so weak now that he couldn't continue to impose lots of restrictions even if he wanted, probably, but I see it as a negative, as the "just wait a bit longer, its not safe quiet yet" brigade will always be there.
We now have 98% of people with antibodies, you can get triple jabbed at the top of a hat, there are anti-virals available for the most vulnerable. The Omicron specific jab is well into the development cycle.
Does this mean we might have some new variant that vaccines don't work again, perhaps.
But at the moment, Omicron is the combination of too transmissible to actually stop (without 6 week rock hard Chinese style lockdown), added with combination of all the above. There really isn't much you can do to stop it, remember now that a very large transmission vector is inter-household transmission, so just asking people to stay at home isolating doesn't even do that much. But we have lots of protection and tools to fight it.
The consequence of having an in-out referendum on membership of the EU continue to be appalling; as I predicted at the time, it will dominate political discourse for years on end.
And I was right. Even six years after the event, it is still a dominant topic of conversation on a significant proportion of PB threads. Six ******* years. Can't people let go?
Looking around you, can you absolutely not see any consequences of Brexit which are worse then the fact that people are still talking about it?
The consequence of having an in-out referendum on membership of the EU continue to be appalling; as I predicted at the time, it will dominate political discourse for years on end.
And I was right. Even six years after the event, it is still a dominant topic of conversation on a significant proportion of PB threads. Six ******* years. Can't people let go?
Well, it's been a long time, and so far it has been uniformly disastrous, but that's about to change now: at last, Jacob Rees-Mogg is going to tell us what all the wonderful new opportunities are. I can't wait.
There are loads of opportunities for merchant bankers and the like. For other people however.... not so many
It’s even worse than useless. The Government could have appointed someone who could have tried - and I realise people have different opinions on this - to see how Brexit would help the levelling up agenda eg state aid and investment etc. Instead, they give the post to someone who (at best) will be focused on how being free of the EU helps the City.
"Met chief says stopping illegal parties was not job for police guarding No 10
In her interview with Eddie Nestor on BBC Radio London, Dame Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan police commissioner, said it was not the job of officers guarding Downing Street to prevent illegal parties."
So if someone had tried to get into Downing Street to illegally steal confidential material or the silver candlesticks or to illegally deliver a suitcase full of poison it was not their job to prevent that either??
That sounds to me like an admission that officers knew full well what was going on but did not pass any of the information onto other officers who could have stopped them.
They would have been carrying eth suitcases in for sure , up to their necks in it.
Ha Ha 😄 you saying do we know it was empty suitcases going back out?
The coppers would have hoovered up the contents left
“Just popping down the offy.” 🙂
There went the Downing Street silver. Incriminating papers destined for motorway concrete.
Are government still allowed to select what paintings they want from the national archives, to decorate their offices?
“ Are government still allowed to select what paintings they want from the national collection, to decorate their offices? “
NICOLA Sturgeon will lose an independence referendum if she links a Yes vote to Scotland going back into the European Union, a former SNP cabinet secretary has warned.
Alex Neil said said that if the First Minister wanted to win she would have to ditch a policy that combined the two issues in a “double referendum”.
I wonder if EUrosceptic and leave voter Alex has any personal axe to grind on this issue?
It doesn't necessarily follow that he doesn't have a point. I seem to recall polling evidence being published post-2016 suggesting that about a third of the entire SNP vote was among the fraction of the Scottish population that voted Leave, which is not that surprising. The same sovereigntist arguments advanced in favour of breaking one Union can very easily be deployed against the other, too.
It'd be interesting to hear if anyone has any evidence to suggest that banging on about Europe might convert No/Remain voters to backing independence at a greater rate than Yes/Leave voters are scared off it: doubtless a meaningful number of people who want Scottish independence might nonetheless regard being 8% of a heavily devolved, and still loosening, UK as being the lesser of two evils, when compared to ending up as 1% of an EU with centralising instincts.
Regardless, there's little to suggest that "being dragged out of the EU against our will" has turned out to be the trump card that the Scottish Government clearly hoped that it would be.
NICOLA Sturgeon will lose an independence referendum if she links a Yes vote to Scotland going back into the European Union, a former SNP cabinet secretary has warned.
Alex Neil said said that if the First Minister wanted to win she would have to ditch a policy that combined the two issues in a “double referendum”.
I wonder if EUrosceptic and leave voter Alex has any personal axe to grind on this issue?
It doesn't necessarily follow that he doesn't have a point. I seem to recall polling evidence being published post-2016 suggesting that about a third of the entire SNP vote was among the fraction of the Scottish population that voted Leave, which is not that surprising. The same sovereigntist arguments advanced in favour of breaking one Union can very easily be deployed against the other, too.
It'd be interesting to hear if anyone has any evidence to suggest that banging on about Europe might convert No/Remain voters to backing independence at a greater rate than Yes/Leave voters are scared off it: doubtless a meaningful number of people who want Scottish independence might nonetheless regard being 8% of a heavily devolved, and still loosening, UK as being the lesser of two evils, when compared to ending up as 1% of an EU with centralising instincts.
Regardless, there's little to suggest that "being dragged out of the EU against our will" has turned out to be the trump card that the Scottish Government clearly hoped that it would be.
She doesn’t want a vote on it….
AN independent Scotland would be one of only a handful of countries to join the EU without a stand-alone referendum under Nicola Sturgeon’s plans.
The First Minister, who has said she wants a second vote on UK membership by 2024, said last April it was not her policy to have another vote on returning to the EU.
The consequence of having an in-out referendum on membership of the EU continue to be appalling; as I predicted at the time, it will dominate political discourse for years on end.
And I was right. Even six years after the event, it is still a dominant topic of conversation on a significant proportion of PB threads. Six ******* years. Can't people let go?
Well, it's been a long time, and so far it has been uniformly disastrous, but that's about to change now: at last, Jacob Rees-Mogg is going to tell us what all the wonderful new opportunities are. I can't wait.
There are loads of opportunities for merchant bankers and the like. For other people however.... not so many
Not in terms of access to the single market, it was low paid workers in the Redwall and pensioners who won it for leave to reduce unskilled immigration and regain sovereignty, most of the City, especially the established firms, voted Remain.
This would need verification from @trussliz and her team. Did she misunderstand the Q? Was something lost in translation? Surely our Foreign Secretary wouldn't risk making the UK look foolish on a matter of basic geography?
Rostov, Voronezh, Dover, Calais. The problem is not that Liz Truss did not recognise Russian place names, but that she decided to bullshit anyway. And that she'd not bothered to glance at a map during Foreign Office briefings or on the flight over. Assuming, of course, we can rely on the Russian account.
The consequence of having an in-out referendum on membership of the EU continue to be appalling; as I predicted at the time, it will dominate political discourse for years on end.
And I was right. Even six years after the event, it is still a dominant topic of conversation on a significant proportion of PB threads. Six ******* years. Can't people let go?
Well, it's been a long time, and so far it has been uniformly disastrous, but that's about to change now: at last, Jacob Rees-Mogg is going to tell us what all the wonderful new opportunities are. I can't wait.
There are loads of opportunities for merchant bankers and the like. For other people however.... not so many
It’s even worse than useless. The Government could have appointed someone who could have tried - and I realise people have different opinions on this - to see how Brexit would help the levelling up agenda eg state aid and investment etc. Instead, they give the post to someone who (at best) will be focused on how being free of the EU helps the City.
That is a good post @MrEd . I assume (possibly incorrectly) you are a leaver so that is very honest of you. I'm generally not a fan of state aid as it distorts the market and Governments are pretty useless at it, but as you say if you have a levelling up agenda then presumably that is the sort of thing you are thinking of, so why give the job to someone for whom that is not their speciality. I hadn't thought of any of that.
Comments
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/3c31b1b0-8e6c-41e7-af89-f79018f7683b
I found the uncritical platform given to Scargill interesting.
She is apparently not displaying any symptoms, we are told.
https://twitter.com/chrisshipitv/status/1491793980282998788
This is the truth. Brexit will never be over because every parliament between now and the end of time will have the absolute right to revisit the issue. Yet you claim that an advisory vote in the 2015 parliament is somehow sacrosanct and cannot be touched, a "direct mandate to HMG regardless of whether the membership of such changed"
It’s to do with temperament isn’t it? https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/psychology/four-temperament
Surely our Foreign Secretary wouldn't risk making the UK look foolish on a matter of basic geography?
https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1491795152272195587
https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/1491771623497777159
Here endeth the lesson. That is enough pinhead dancing for one day!
Apparently part of the "style" is taking the punishment without any regret or fear.
@Northern_Al depends on whether you obey my orders or not.
Deranged.
Edit: what 0.4% of the people who voted Leave voted for. The rest either didn't like foreigners or wanted a better economic outcome and, on both counts, these people will be disappointed.
There are no tanks.
https://twitter.com/KevinASchofield/status/1491796728135049227
They think they are doing you a huge favour by giving you a crime reference so you can claim on your insurance.
For them, once the crime reference number is given, case closed.
When we think of Banished to Siberia we think of gulags and houses of the dead, but for some, like Lenin who lived in a house by a river, and the defeated Decembrists, it sounds quite pleasant to be living out in the wild outback? If it is so bad out there, why are their local populations making their way of life there.
When I am living in London I think foundly of walks across Yorkshire moors, after a few walks across wild moorland I think fondly of London shopping and coffee shops. ☺️
Contract with some former Community Representatives in NI to roll out Restorative Community Justice on UK wide basis.
Perhaps I should go forward with this. I can give you a real shareholding in the ground floor of the business, in return for suitable investment.
Any fraud at all
And I was right. Even six years after the event, it is still a dominant topic of conversation on a significant proportion of PB threads. Six ******* years. Can't people let go?
UK pensions minister @GuyOpperman has been asked about state pensions provision in an independent Scotland at an event hosted by @thelangcat. earlier today
https://twitter.com/GlennBBC/status/1491796125535277060
2. It isn't my idea
3. If it was being revisited by a parliament elected on that mandate then it would have been popular enough to win a general election
4. What you think it's necessarily what everyone else thinks
5. All things are possible in politics regardless of how unlikely they appear to any given observer at any given time.
In a way, you've got to respect that.
...
But….
NICOLA Sturgeon will lose an independence referendum if she links a Yes vote to Scotland going back into the European Union, a former SNP cabinet secretary has warned.
Alex Neil said said that if the First Minister wanted to win she would have to ditch a policy that combined the two issues in a “double referendum”.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/19909934.nicola-sturgeon-warned-will-lose-indyref2-means-return-eu/?ref=twtrec
My colleague was mugged and her phone taken.
We went to the station to file a report, told them where it was, told them there's CCTV right opposite where it happened, and given the brush off here's the crime reference number and off you go.
Nothing else was done afterwards.
This, despite comparative evidence from the UK nations, that there is a small reduction at best.*
*Based on ONS data which consistently showed a slightly lower prevalence in Scotland and Wales, but with the caveat that there could be many other reasons.
Hence he had to add a later clarifying tweet
It’s been scientifically proved a fake, by how everything else casting a shadow and the bottle isn’t?
I think I speak for all everyday people who just want police to report facts and truth asap. Fake pictures published by National media in surely undermining that. 😠
She’s a self-publicising nitwit, and the main reason for her trip to Moscow seems to have been to get her official in-house instagram consultant to take picture of her in a certain hat.
You are paying for this narcissistic shambles.
https://trademarks.ipo.gov.uk/ipo-tmowner/page/search?id=1122140&domain=1&app=0&mark=UK00003742053
Someone’s tried to be too clever..
We've reached the point now where if we weren't testing people, we would not know there is a major pandemic underway. The hospitals have around 400 people on MV beds across the entire nation. There are around 13000 in hospital that have tested positive for covid, but possibly as many as 50% are there for other reasons.
It really is the classic if not now, when question. Not everyone will agree of course. But anyone who says now is not the time really ought to front up with the conditions that they would accept for removing all legal restrictions.
Unlike (checks notes)
Lord Frost
Iain Duncan Smith
Steve Barclay
Dominic Raab
David Davis
The extra white bit doesn't help and you probably need the symbol in multiple colours anyway.
There went the Downing Street silver. Incriminating papers destined for motorway concrete.
Are government still allowed to select what paintings they want from the national archives, to decorate their offices?
I claim that the political and democratic instruction (even if legally it was technically only advice) from the 2015 referendum has now been implemented. Therefore if a future parliament wants to rejoin, it would be legitimate. It wouldn't even necessarily need a referendum. Everything changed the moment the politicians finally did what we told them (not advised them) to do.
We now have 98% of people with antibodies, you can get triple jabbed at the top of a hat, there are anti-virals available for the most vulnerable. The Omicron specific jab is well into the development cycle.
Does this mean we might have some new variant that vaccines don't work again, perhaps.
But at the moment, Omicron is the combination of too transmissible to actually stop (without 6 week rock hard Chinese style lockdown), added with combination of all the above. There really isn't much you can do to stop it, remember now that a very large transmission vector is inter-household transmission, so just asking people to stay at home isolating doesn't even do that much. But we have lots of protection and tools to fight it.
Lots of chuffa train fun these days anyway. We have those meddling kids at the DfT ruining everything they touch (as an example procuring not fit for purpose trains on daft contracts at ludicrous expense. Yes we now recognise the ironing board seats on the Thameslink trains are too hard too close to the window and too close to each other with no seat back tables, but the DaFT contract means it costs £lots to make changes).
Scotrail are being taken off their current operator and nationalised. Except that their current operator is the dutch government and their new operator is a consortium of private companies...
There is nothing about the Shapps Green Fox "Great" British Railways plan that works. Grand and vague ambitions that haven't been formulated into even an outline plan, no timescale as the vague aspiration has already been laughed out of court by the industry bods responsible for delivery, a ludicrous logo and a pointless cock war as to where it should be based.
But it has the words "Great British" in it and uses the union flag colours so its marvellous. Huzzah.
Enviable
I don’t follow Matt religiously; is this the first time he’s done a Brexit-sceptic take before?
The tide is turning, even in the Telegraph (incorporating Whizzer and Chips).
There’s one by Vermeer they may like to use
https://www.gov.uk/government/ministers/minister-of-state-minister-for-brexit-opportunities-and-government-efficiency
It'd be interesting to hear if anyone has any evidence to suggest that banging on about Europe might convert No/Remain voters to backing independence at a greater rate than Yes/Leave voters are scared off it: doubtless a meaningful number of people who want Scottish independence might nonetheless regard being 8% of a heavily devolved, and still loosening, UK as being the lesser of two evils, when compared to ending up as 1% of an EU with centralising instincts.
Regardless, there's little to suggest that "being dragged out of the EU against our will" has turned out to be the trump card that the Scottish Government clearly hoped that it would be.
AN independent Scotland would be one of only a handful of countries to join the EU without a stand-alone referendum under Nicola Sturgeon’s plans.
The First Minister, who has said she wants a second vote on UK membership by 2024, said last April it was not her policy to have another vote on returning to the EU.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/referendumnews/19908095.nicola-sturgeon-backs-second-vote-independence-not-eu-membership/