Mr. Eagles, slicing England into little pieces is a wretched idea.
Without a national parliament and a clear national identity, yes. But drop this whole "British" instead of "English" guff and devolution of spending to regions and localities does make sense.
Far better for Yorkshire, or a city, to spend money on provision of local services than have it dictated from Whitehall.
I never thought I'd say Scott Morrison is the new Duke of Wellington.
Former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has resisted calls to resign from parliament, after news emerged that he had secretly assumed five additional roles during his tenure.
He defended his decision - which was taken during the pandemic - as "necessary" in "extraordinary times".
Mr Morrison is currently the member of parliament for Cook.
The revelations caused uproar amongst the public and his colleagues, with one calling his behaviour "dictatorial".
Mr Morrison became joint minister for the health, finance, treasury, home affairs and resources portfolios from March 2020 and May 2021.
In a press conference on Wednesday, Mr Morrison defended his decision by saying he was "acting in the national interest in a crisis" in the event a minister was incapacitated with Covid-19.
"I believed it was necessary to have authority, to have what were effectively emergency powers, to exercise in extreme situations," he said.
He added he had never acted as minister despite being secretly sworn into those portfolios.
"I did not instruct any department that I was to have jurisdiction for carriage of any of the issues that the ministers were dealing with on a day-to-day basis," he said.
When queried about why he had not disclosed the expansion of portfolios to cabinet or to the broader public, he argued there was a risk the powers he took on could have been misconstrued.
"I think there was a great risk that ... those powers could be misinterpreted and misunderstood, which would have caused unnecessary angst in the middle of a pandemic," he said.
I never thought I'd say Scott Morrison is the new Duke of Wellington.
Former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has resisted calls to resign from parliament, after news emerged that he had secretly assumed five additional roles during his tenure.
He defended his decision - which was taken during the pandemic - as "necessary" in "extraordinary times".
Mr Morrison is currently the member of parliament for Cook.
The revelations caused uproar amongst the public and his colleagues, with one calling his behaviour "dictatorial".
Mr Morrison became joint minister for the health, finance, treasury, home affairs and resources portfolios from March 2020 and May 2021.
In a press conference on Wednesday, Mr Morrison defended his decision by saying he was "acting in the national interest in a crisis" in the event a minister was incapacitated with Covid-19.
"I believed it was necessary to have authority, to have what were effectively emergency powers, to exercise in extreme situations," he said.
He added he had never acted as minister despite being secretly sworn into those portfolios.
"I did not instruct any department that I was to have jurisdiction for carriage of any of the issues that the ministers were dealing with on a day-to-day basis," he said.
When queried about why he had not disclosed the expansion of portfolios to cabinet or to the broader public, he argued there was a risk the powers he took on could have been misconstrued.
"I think there was a great risk that ... those powers could be misinterpreted and misunderstood, which would have caused unnecessary angst in the middle of a pandemic," he said.
During his first election campaign, he was asked who would have the final say on any policy. He replied simply, 'Me.'
I don't think anybody expected him to take it quite so literally though!
I think we need an urgent review to check if similar behaviour is possible here (I assume it is) and put measures in place to prevent it.
Yes, it would be possible, there is no law saying you can only hold one post at a time. Butler held three from 1960-62, for example.
What's different is I don't think it would be needed. In Britain the Prime Minister has the power to run departments directly anyway in an emergency, without any changes in them, because the Prime Minister is the Head of the Cabinet. Technically, in Australia Ministers answer to the Governor-General so the Prime Minister can't directly interfere in a department s/he is not a member of.
It was actually a sensible precaution to ensure continuity of government from that point of view, but the way he's done it is incredibly stupid and counterproductive.
I hope that one outcome of the coming Winter Of Hell is that when we come out the other side, English voters wake up to the realities of their problems and start demanding political solutions.
They identified the right issue with Brexit - a democratic deficit - but chose the wrong target - Brussels instead of Westminster.
We have so many structural problems in the UK that can't be solved with the elect idiots / get lied to / make voters even less connected to reality / elect even bigger idiots cycle. And Keir Starmer is not the solution by himself.
Create fit for purpose structures - starting with an English parliament - and we have a chance to work these issues through. Constitutional matters can't be seen as a distraction from the day to day issues because it drives so much of them...
An English Parliament would at least potentially give the Conservatives a strong base to control much English domestic policy even if we had a UK Labour led government
Mr. Romford, parliamentary boundaries deepen political divisions on a permanent basis as Holyrood has proven (from killing nationalism stone dead to an independence referendum in a couple of decades).
If England is carved into bits then either the 'assemblies' have power equal to Holyrood or they don't. If they do then that means income tax tinkering, differing health and transports policies, and it'll be about six minutes before demagogues in London are claiming the city should keep more of its own taxes and demagogues elsewhere are claiming they deserve their 'fair share' (per head) of spending and London get too much.
If the 'assemblies' do not have equal power then they're a waste of time and money, as opposed to permanently slicing England into pieces. Neither way is acceptable.
If Scotland deserves a Parliament, so can England. And I don't care that England has a higher population.
Mr. Eagles, slicing England into little pieces is a wretched idea.
Without a national parliament and a clear national identity, yes. But drop this whole "British" instead of "English" guff and devolution of spending to regions and localities does make sense.
Far better for Yorkshire, or a city, to spend money on provision of local services than have it dictated from Whitehall.
The way regional devolution tends to work is money is dished out but highly controlled and proscribed by Whitehall, with little flexibility for the local area.
All parties talk up localism in their GE manifestos, yet any efforts tend to be piecemeal, sporadic and confused. I don't put that entirely at the hands of Sir Humphreys, I think it's because its just something the politicians feel they have to say, but don't really give a crap about. Voters sure don't - they also talk about localism, but are just as dismissive of their local area doing anything, except when they can blame national government instead (see how people suddenly become fans of their local authority when it is proposed to be merged etc).
This government certainly don't care about local government, they've even removed the name from the relevant department.
Mr. B, opposed to devolution in Scotland and Wales, or just for England?
And that is the point. We have accepted that you cannot run Britain as a whole because our multi-national composition has those nations pulling in different directions. Hence Scotland having a parliament and Wales having a parliament and NornIron a unionist sulking shop.
The problem of national democratic representation is on its way to being resolved in those places. But not in England. No parliament for you. "And we don't need one, we have Westminster". Which IS the problem, as it drives the endless Britain is England stupidity.
Mr. Pioneers, alas, I think an English Parliament will not even be up for discussion come the next election.
We need regional parliaments. We don't need a bunch of Southerners and Mancs telling us in Yorkshire where we can spend money.
I get the fear of "breaking up England", but England as a unit is too big to be reflective of, and responsible to, people. So it does risk being a rather shouty talking shop. And shouty England is a real thing and a problem we English need to grow out of. Unfortunately, most counties are too small to do a lot of stuff.
But whilst most of the English regions draw themselves, there's a blob, roughly Reading-Oxford-Cambridge that doesn't mean much. And that blob is full of important people. So we're stuck.
Other possibility: slice off the ten largest urban areas (you could add Bath and Swindon to Bristol and Derby and Burton to Nottingham to increase their critical mass) and give them separate parliaments.
Then, have a Parliament for the rest of England, based in say Leicester.
It would still be a Parliament for around half the UK, but it would be much less overwhelming in size than a Parliament for England as a whole.
@Liz_Cheney: “I won this primary with 73% of the vote. I could easily have done the same again. The path was clear. But it would’ve required that I go along with President Trump’s lie about the 2020 election...That was a path I could not and would not take.” https://mobile.twitter.com/AccountableGOP/status/1559728488894046210
I hope that one outcome of the coming Winter Of Hell is that when we come out the other side, English voters wake up to the realities of their problems and start demanding political solutions.
They identified the right issue with Brexit - a democratic deficit - but chose the wrong target - Brussels instead of Westminster.
We have so many structural problems in the UK that can't be solved with the elect idiots / get lied to / make voters even less connected to reality / elect even bigger idiots cycle. And Keir Starmer is not the solution by himself.
Create fit for purpose structures - starting with an English parliament - and we have a chance to work these issues through. Constitutional matters can't be seen as a distraction from the day to day issues because it drives so much of them...
An English Parliament would at least potentially give the Conservatives a strong base to control much English domestic policy even if we had a UK Labour led government
Such a parliament would be proportionately elected of course. It would be created to fix the democratic deficit, not enshrine it. One of the worst examples of democratic failure in recent times was the 3.9m votes for UKIP in 2015 elected just a single MP.
You may well want to ensure that continues, in which case why not just abolish parliamentary elections and ensure your party rules without threat?
BBC3 is a middle-aged metropolitan white liberal's idea of what Da Yoof want to watch: perfect Diversity, and cringe-inducing Wokery, and, err, nothing else.
@Liz_Cheney: “I won this primary with 73% of the vote. I could easily have done the same again. The path was clear. But it would’ve required that I go along with President Trump’s lie about the 2020 election...That was a path I could not and would not take.” https://mobile.twitter.com/AccountableGOP/status/1559728488894046210
So few elected officials have been firm on this point. Most are now retired or forced out. The chances of more holding firm next time are therefore much lower I fear.
Mr. Romford, parliamentary boundaries deepen political divisions on a permanent basis as Holyrood has proven (from killing nationalism stone dead to an independence referendum in a couple of decades).
If England is carved into bits then either the 'assemblies' have power equal to Holyrood or they don't. If they do then that means income tax tinkering, differing health and transports policies, and it'll be about six minutes before demagogues in London are claiming the city should keep more of its own taxes and demagogues elsewhere are claiming they deserve their 'fair share' (per head) of spending and London get too much.
If the 'assemblies' do not have equal power then they're a waste of time and money, as opposed to permanently slicing England into pieces. Neither way is acceptable.
If Scotland deserves a Parliament, so can England. And I don't care that England has a higher population.
Which should have killed independence stone dead. The three unionist parties make a solemn pledge - The Vow - which the Tories then binned when it suited them. Instead of boosting the democratic settlement in Scotland, they destroyed it, dragging Scotland out of the EU against its expressed wishes and then denying any electoral mandate for Scotland to have any say other than to thank England for dragging it along.
Main takeaway I had was that turbo lag might return, plus the MGU-K (no more MGU-H) will provide triple the power of the H/K units today. So if that goes wonky you're ruined.
I really don't get how people not only admire and support a politician - that makes sense, though we disagree on who people admire and support, especially if they have been successful - but unironically worship them.
At least if they were the founder of some kind of political ideology it'd make more sense.
Mr. Romford, parliamentary boundaries deepen political divisions on a permanent basis as Holyrood has proven (from killing nationalism stone dead to an independence referendum in a couple of decades).
If England is carved into bits then either the 'assemblies' have power equal to Holyrood or they don't. If they do then that means income tax tinkering, differing health and transports policies, and it'll be about six minutes before demagogues in London are claiming the city should keep more of its own taxes and demagogues elsewhere are claiming they deserve their 'fair share' (per head) of spending and London get too much.
If the 'assemblies' do not have equal power then they're a waste of time and money, as opposed to permanently slicing England into pieces. Neither way is acceptable.
If Scotland deserves a Parliament, so can England. And I don't care that England has a higher population.
a) What is the demand among English voters for an English parliament?
b) Which of the parties with even a slight chance of having a pinky on the levers of power has any policy on creating an English parliament?
I never thought I'd say Scott Morrison is the new Duke of Wellington.
Former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has resisted calls to resign from parliament, after news emerged that he had secretly assumed five additional roles during his tenure.
He defended his decision - which was taken during the pandemic - as "necessary" in "extraordinary times".
Mr Morrison is currently the member of parliament for Cook.
The revelations caused uproar amongst the public and his colleagues, with one calling his behaviour "dictatorial".
Mr Morrison became joint minister for the health, finance, treasury, home affairs and resources portfolios from March 2020 and May 2021.
In a press conference on Wednesday, Mr Morrison defended his decision by saying he was "acting in the national interest in a crisis" in the event a minister was incapacitated with Covid-19.
"I believed it was necessary to have authority, to have what were effectively emergency powers, to exercise in extreme situations," he said.
He added he had never acted as minister despite being secretly sworn into those portfolios.
"I did not instruct any department that I was to have jurisdiction for carriage of any of the issues that the ministers were dealing with on a day-to-day basis," he said.
When queried about why he had not disclosed the expansion of portfolios to cabinet or to the broader public, he argued there was a risk the powers he took on could have been misconstrued.
"I think there was a great risk that ... those powers could be misinterpreted and misunderstood, which would have caused unnecessary angst in the middle of a pandemic," he said.
If it wasn't for the Duke of Wellington Napoleon would have been unstoppable in 1815
Actually, no.
He'd almost certainly have been stopped by the massive Russian and Austrian armies that were converging on his position, even if the Prussians and British/Belgian/Dutch had been locally defeated, and huge British reinforcements were also on the way too. He was outnumbered overall about 4:1.
Napoleon was trying to fight a series of defensive blows to hold onto being emperor of France again, not reconquer Europe - although that's what all the allies feared.
Waterloo was a postscript that brought a very quick end to it.
Mr. Pioneers, I have some sympathy with the EU line, although had we voted 52% to Remain there would have been sod all consideration of what Wales/England wanted (assuming both had voted to Leave).
Certain matters (giving such consideration to constituent parts of the UK, a threshold [I'd argue a narrow victory either way could be cause for a second referendum rather than disregarding the result], and so on) should have been contemplated ahead of time. That, and the weird absence of a defined Leave platform (EEA?), were strange absences.
Mr. Romford, parliamentary boundaries deepen political divisions on a permanent basis as Holyrood has proven (from killing nationalism stone dead to an independence referendum in a couple of decades).
If England is carved into bits then either the 'assemblies' have power equal to Holyrood or they don't. If they do then that means income tax tinkering, differing health and transports policies, and it'll be about six minutes before demagogues in London are claiming the city should keep more of its own taxes and demagogues elsewhere are claiming they deserve their 'fair share' (per head) of spending and London get too much.
If the 'assemblies' do not have equal power then they're a waste of time and money, as opposed to permanently slicing England into pieces. Neither way is acceptable.
If Scotland deserves a Parliament, so can England. And I don't care that England has a higher population.
a) What is the demand among English voters for an English parliament?
b) Which of the parties with even a slight chance of having a pinky on the levers of power has any policy on creating an English parliament?
a) They voted for Brexit. That is their demand - better democratic representation. "Take back control". They understood the democratic deficit, but mistook Brussels as the problem rather than Westminster
b) Individually? None. It will need to happen as a constitutional convention. Likely only to happen once something happens wrt either Ireland or Scotland which I expect before the end of this decade.
Mr. Divvie, go back a few years and marvel at how all the parties were pro-EU. And see how that turned out.
Over time, assuming Scotland remains in the UK, there will be naturally increasing divisions. There is not the same degree of desire for a Parliament as there was in Scotland, it's true, but also vehement opposition from many to the notion of cutting England to bits.
BBC3 is a middle-aged metropolitan white liberal's idea of what Da Yoof want to watch: perfect Diversity, and cringe-inducing Wokery, and, err, nothing else.
By coincidence I watched a documnentary on BBC 3 last night on crisis teams trying to stop executions in Texas. It was well done and genuinely interesting. It was, in fairness, probably the first thing I have watched on BBC3 this year but I was stuck in an hotel room.
Mr. Romford, parliamentary boundaries deepen political divisions on a permanent basis as Holyrood has proven (from killing nationalism stone dead to an independence referendum in a couple of decades).
If England is carved into bits then either the 'assemblies' have power equal to Holyrood or they don't. If they do then that means income tax tinkering, differing health and transports policies, and it'll be about six minutes before demagogues in London are claiming the city should keep more of its own taxes and demagogues elsewhere are claiming they deserve their 'fair share' (per head) of spending and London get too much.
If the 'assemblies' do not have equal power then they're a waste of time and money, as opposed to permanently slicing England into pieces. Neither way is acceptable.
If Scotland deserves a Parliament, so can England. And I don't care that England has a higher population.
a) What is the demand among English voters for an English parliament?
b) Which of the parties with even a slight chance of having a pinky on the levers of power has any policy on creating an English parliament?
This page claims pollign north of 50% in support of an English Parliament.
I don't buy it - if that were genuine, and not some kind of proxy opinion for something that sounds correct to show support for England, it would be the policy of a major party by now. This isn't divergence from public opinion like the death penalty, which was changed so long ago, devolved parliaments and constitutional questions hav ebeen live debates for the last couple of decades quite intently, one of the big two would have picked up on it by now.
I do think the Tories will go for it at some point though - especially if they lose the next election.
@Liz_Cheney: “I won this primary with 73% of the vote. I could easily have done the same again. The path was clear. But it would’ve required that I go along with President Trump’s lie about the 2020 election...That was a path I could not and would not take.” https://mobile.twitter.com/AccountableGOP/status/1559728488894046210
So few elected officials have been firm on this point. Most are now retired or forced out. The chances of more holding firm next time are therefore much lower I fear.
Even more depressing is that some who won GOP primaries for positions which certify and oversee future elections have said they are willing to overturn those if they see an “ alleged fraud “.
Basically if the GOP win there’s no fraud and if the Dems win there is .
The GOP deserve to be eviscerated and wiped out in their current form .
Mr. Romford, parliamentary boundaries deepen political divisions on a permanent basis as Holyrood has proven (from killing nationalism stone dead to an independence referendum in a couple of decades).
If England is carved into bits then either the 'assemblies' have power equal to Holyrood or they don't. If they do then that means income tax tinkering, differing health and transports policies, and it'll be about six minutes before demagogues in London are claiming the city should keep more of its own taxes and demagogues elsewhere are claiming they deserve their 'fair share' (per head) of spending and London get too much.
If the 'assemblies' do not have equal power then they're a waste of time and money, as opposed to permanently slicing England into pieces. Neither way is acceptable.
If Scotland deserves a Parliament, so can England. And I don't care that England has a higher population.
a) What is the demand among English voters for an English parliament?
b) Which of the parties with even a slight chance of having a pinky on the levers of power has any policy on creating an English parliament?
The demand for an English parliament will increase if England votes Tory and Scotland and Wales don't, leading to a non tory UK government. The gutter press will be the main cheerleaders for this, i think.
Stop taking the piss. We need base rates at 5%, at least.
You need to take this shit seriously.
I take it you have savings you'd quite like to earn more interest on but don't have a mortgage?
Interest rates at that level would push millions of people out of their homes and into bankruptcy, as they couldn't afford repayments on their mortgages.
The house price collapse it would precipitate as properties got repossessed and dumped on the market would affect your own equity, the economy, and the tax that's used to pay for your pension.
'Where next? Here it’s worth engaging with an interesting but deeply self-contradictory defence of the sector by the head of the Centre for Policy Studies, Robert Colvile. He acknowledges upfront that the “water companies are essentially contractors. They are running the water network on behalf of the state, in a fashion agreed with the state, to targets laid down by the state.”'
Mr. Romford, parliamentary boundaries deepen political divisions on a permanent basis as Holyrood has proven (from killing nationalism stone dead to an independence referendum in a couple of decades).
If England is carved into bits then either the 'assemblies' have power equal to Holyrood or they don't. If they do then that means income tax tinkering, differing health and transports policies, and it'll be about six minutes before demagogues in London are claiming the city should keep more of its own taxes and demagogues elsewhere are claiming they deserve their 'fair share' (per head) of spending and London get too much.
If the 'assemblies' do not have equal power then they're a waste of time and money, as opposed to permanently slicing England into pieces. Neither way is acceptable.
If Scotland deserves a Parliament, so can England. And I don't care that England has a higher population.
Which should have killed independence stone dead. The three unionist parties make a solemn pledge - The Vow - which the Tories then binned when it suited them. Instead of boosting the democratic settlement in Scotland, they destroyed it, dragging Scotland out of the EU against its expressed wishes and then denying any electoral mandate for Scotland to have any say other than to thank England for dragging it along.
OMG they really are Woke, and even when they are not they are like @kinabalu or @Foxy - they are too myopic and complacent to stop Wokeness, because they still naively think it is the same game of social justice that was played in the 80 and 90s, it just occasionally goes "a bit far into silliness"
Woke is really not silly. It is cultural Marxism turned into an eerie new religion. It is powerful and growing. It is destroying America from the inside out, beginning with the universities but now infesting everything over time. It is a species of rot. It will be the end of the West and the Enlightenment if it is not checked
I get that most people on here completely disagree with me, but this is my honest appraisal. I fear for us all
There is something destroying America from the inside out: Guns having more rights than women Cletus the Fetus having more rights than the mother. Until its born. Then it has no rights Women heading towards a travel ban in case they are trying to obtain an out-of-Gilead abortion Elections still legal for Demtards and non-American races but with only one polling both for half a million people who cares as their votes either won't be cast or counted Etc etc etc.
Shitkicker states in America are turning into Gilead right before our eyes. And seemingly you'd rather have that than north of the Mason-Dixon-Sanity line because "woke".
You really need to drink more.
As I said the other day, America faces a truly terrible choice between the religious freaks on the right, and the Cultural Marxists on the left
I'D RATHER NOT HAVE THAT CHOICE, PERSONALLY
But if forced, I'd go for the freaks as I think there is a better chance of a potent, credible, coherent America emerging from the inevitable rubble. It's a bit like Chile probably benefiting from Pinochet if the alternative is/was a form of Chavez
The most rightwing people I know are Venezuelans
Credible. Unless you are a woman Unless you are gay Unless you are non-white Unless you don't fly the (Confederate) flag
Nothing about the theocratic women-hating hell that is developing in southern America is credible. And as a man with your own womenfolk, I'm surprised you are cheering on the people who think that should your daughters live within their ministrations should have less rights than a rifle.
Woke is not saying that women should let the man rape them. And then deny them abortion. And then deny them rights to basic human freedoms. Yet if you listen to these fundamentalist GOPper shitkickers thats all they talk about needing to introduce.
I think the overturning of Roe v Wade is ugly and foolish at best, and appalling at worst - ie if it leads to blanket bans on all abortions across multiple states. That way lies human misery for many
However, I can see the religious reasons for opposing abortion, and I recognise that they are sincere. And often espoused by women, let it be noted. Moreover, I don't yet see evidence that this decision (much as I dislike it) is "turning America into Gilead"
It's interesting how you don't extend the same courtesy of sincerity to Islamic fundamentalists.
In most of the Middle East and North Africa abortion is already prohibited with a few exceptions
Most of the Middle East and North Africa do not have Islamic fundamentalists in power, so I’m not certain why you bring the region up.
There is of course a lot of variation across the region. But there are generally more exceptions allowed than many Republican states want. First trimester abortion is legal in Tunisia. Abortion is legal in Rojava. Saudia Arabia and Iran, the 2 countries that are ruled by Islamic fundamentalists, allow first trimester abortions to protect a woman’s mental health in some situations, as well as physical health. First trimester abortion is allowed in Iran if the foetus has a serious thalassemia (a problem in the region), for example. Exact practice varies, but it’s a more liberal arrangement than in Oklahoma. Countries like Egypt have more restrictive laws, but enforcement isn’t that strict. And then other countries, like Yemen and Libya, are more restrictive still.
So, the situation is poor in most of the Middle East and North Africa, but it’s a mixed picture and not quite as bad as in Texas, Wisconsin, South Dakota etc.
On tax cuts, it's interesting that those who argue they don't offer a fiscal stimulus are often precisely those who say extra public spending does.
They both do (or can) and both load onto the national debt if not budgeted. It's just one is a private sector stimulus, likely directed more towards consumption and property, and the latter to infrastructure projects, public services and often direct welfare payments too (a sort of negative income tax).
The important thing is that unless they lead to a structural improvement in economic efficiency, they eventually need to be paid for by rebalancing the public purse.
Raising interest rates to take money out of individual and company pockets at the same time as cutting taxes to put money back in isn’t, however, the optimum combination. Stimulus from public spending works in a different way and can be deployed counter-cyclically as per Keynes.
They both work counter-cylically. Like Alistair Darling of that little known political movement (called the Labour Party, I think?) did when he reduced VAT to 15% in the aftermath of the GFC.
You'd be right to say tax cuts were a shotgun whereas public spending is a sniper, though.
@Liz_Cheney: “I won this primary with 73% of the vote. I could easily have done the same again. The path was clear. But it would’ve required that I go along with President Trump’s lie about the 2020 election...That was a path I could not and would not take.” https://mobile.twitter.com/AccountableGOP/status/1559728488894046210
So few elected officials have been firm on this point. Most are now retired or forced out. The chances of more holding firm next time are therefore much lower I fear.
Even more depressing is that some who won GOP primaries for positions which certify and oversee future elections have said they are willing to overturn those if they see an “ alleged fraud “.
Basically if the GOP win there’s no fraud and if the Dems win there is .
The GOP deserve to be eviscerated and wiped out in their current form .
One of the more depressing and transparent efforts in 2020, and which was used as a pretext for changing rules in some places I believe, was that while virtually every challenge was dismissed as not credible or true, the fact so many people had concerns showed there was a problem.
That is, if people claim it has not been done correctly, it does not matter if they are wrong.
And with the door opened I expect this time if Trump does edge out a win (it was tight in several states last time), Democrats may well adopt similar tactics (as opposed to simply moaning a lot).
Mr. Romford, parliamentary boundaries deepen political divisions on a permanent basis as Holyrood has proven (from killing nationalism stone dead to an independence referendum in a couple of decades).
If England is carved into bits then either the 'assemblies' have power equal to Holyrood or they don't. If they do then that means income tax tinkering, differing health and transports policies, and it'll be about six minutes before demagogues in London are claiming the city should keep more of its own taxes and demagogues elsewhere are claiming they deserve their 'fair share' (per head) of spending and London get too much.
If the 'assemblies' do not have equal power then they're a waste of time and money, as opposed to permanently slicing England into pieces. Neither way is acceptable.
If Scotland deserves a Parliament, so can England. And I don't care that England has a higher population.
a) What is the demand among English voters for an English parliament?
b) Which of the parties with even a slight chance of having a pinky on the levers of power has any policy on creating an English parliament?
This page claims pollign north of 50% in support of an English Parliament.
I don't buy it - if that were genuine, and not some kind of proxy opinion for something that sounds correct to show support for England, it would be the policy of a major party by now. This isn't divergence from public opinion like the death penalty, which was changed so long ago, devolved parliaments and constitutional questions hav ebeen live debates for the last couple of decades quite intently, one of the big two would have picked up on it by now.
I do think the Tories will go for it at some point though - especially if they lose the next election.
The issue with regards to a Northern parliament or a Yorkshire parliament is where you draw the borders. Where is the southern boundary of this northern area and how do you manage the edge cases? As for Yorkshire, is that today's bits of Yorkshire, or proper Yorkshire before places like Saddleworth and York and Middlesbrough were removed from it?
All fixable, but has to be done via the consensus that this is the model to apply. As for why no major party has done so, how do they do that? Even within England there is clearly a growing north / south divide. When Labour were largely the north / cities and the Tories the south / countryside it was easy to manage - set your policies accordingly.
But both now represent both and need MPs for both. The Tories are painfully demonstrating how delivering what the north genuinely needs is unpopular in the south. So how do you propose better democratic representation for Yorkshire without proposing something similar for the home counties?
I really don't get how people not only admire and support a politician - that makes sense, though we disagree on who people admire and support, especially if they have been successful - but unironically worship them.
At least if they were the founder of some kind of political ideology it'd make more sense.
I guess you might worship the person who appointed you to the Lords, when it's obvious that no other individual would have done so ridiculous a thing.
The UK’s productivity problems are largely down to piss-poor, penny-pinching, short-termist managers, not lazy workers.
Both, it's not either or.
And bear in mind lots of those workers later become managers.
And favouring short-term goodies over longer-term strength is a human failing that the British have been very prone to for a long time. It's not easy to fix.
I never thought I'd say Scott Morrison is the new Duke of Wellington.
Former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has resisted calls to resign from parliament, after news emerged that he had secretly assumed five additional roles during his tenure.
He defended his decision - which was taken during the pandemic - as "necessary" in "extraordinary times".
Mr Morrison is currently the member of parliament for Cook.
The revelations caused uproar amongst the public and his colleagues, with one calling his behaviour "dictatorial".
Mr Morrison became joint minister for the health, finance, treasury, home affairs and resources portfolios from March 2020 and May 2021.
In a press conference on Wednesday, Mr Morrison defended his decision by saying he was "acting in the national interest in a crisis" in the event a minister was incapacitated with Covid-19.
"I believed it was necessary to have authority, to have what were effectively emergency powers, to exercise in extreme situations," he said.
He added he had never acted as minister despite being secretly sworn into those portfolios.
"I did not instruct any department that I was to have jurisdiction for carriage of any of the issues that the ministers were dealing with on a day-to-day basis," he said.
When queried about why he had not disclosed the expansion of portfolios to cabinet or to the broader public, he argued there was a risk the powers he took on could have been misconstrued.
"I think there was a great risk that ... those powers could be misinterpreted and misunderstood, which would have caused unnecessary angst in the middle of a pandemic," he said.
He's had time to come up with a reason why he had to do this secretly, and he still hasn't managed to come up with a credible one I see.
I mean 'I am arranging for contingency power arrangements in the event a minister is incapacited' would cause less angst. And that apparently he thinks he would have been incapable of preventing that from being misunderstood suggests he rates his own capabilities pretty lowly, in which case perhaps he should not have taken on more powers.
He still didn't do anything illegal, so he still won't resign from parliament
Is that your only criteria for having to resign from a job? Moral vacuum.
@Liz_Cheney: “I won this primary with 73% of the vote. I could easily have done the same again. The path was clear. But it would’ve required that I go along with President Trump’s lie about the 2020 election...That was a path I could not and would not take.” https://mobile.twitter.com/AccountableGOP/status/1559728488894046210
So few elected officials have been firm on this point. Most are now retired or forced out. The chances of more holding firm next time are therefore much lower I fear.
Cheney has made herself a martyr over Trump but that is not the whole story. I don't think she was particularly popular anyway as she apparently lives in Virginia and was mostly interested in foreign policy.
Mr. Romford, parliamentary boundaries deepen political divisions on a permanent basis as Holyrood has proven (from killing nationalism stone dead to an independence referendum in a couple of decades).
If England is carved into bits then either the 'assemblies' have power equal to Holyrood or they don't. If they do then that means income tax tinkering, differing health and transports policies, and it'll be about six minutes before demagogues in London are claiming the city should keep more of its own taxes and demagogues elsewhere are claiming they deserve their 'fair share' (per head) of spending and London get too much.
If the 'assemblies' do not have equal power then they're a waste of time and money, as opposed to permanently slicing England into pieces. Neither way is acceptable.
If Scotland deserves a Parliament, so can England. And I don't care that England has a higher population.
a) What is the demand among English voters for an English parliament?
b) Which of the parties with even a slight chance of having a pinky on the levers of power has any policy on creating an English parliament?
This page claims pollign north of 50% in support of an English Parliament.
I don't buy it - if that were genuine, and not some kind of proxy opinion for something that sounds correct to show support for England, it would be the policy of a major party by now. This isn't divergence from public opinion like the death penalty, which was changed so long ago, devolved parliaments and constitutional questions hav ebeen live debates for the last couple of decades quite intently, one of the big two would have picked up on it by now.
I do think the Tories will go for it at some point though - especially if they lose the next election.
The issue with regards to a Northern parliament or a Yorkshire parliament is where you draw the borders. Where is the southern boundary of this northern area and how do you manage the edge cases? As for Yorkshire, is that today's bits of Yorkshire, or proper Yorkshire before places like Saddleworth and York and Middlesbrough were removed from it?
All fixable, but has to be done via the consensus that this is the model to apply. As for why no major party has done so, how do they do that? Even within England there is clearly a growing north / south divide. When Labour were largely the north / cities and the Tories the south / countryside it was easy to manage - set your policies accordingly.
But both now represent both and need MPs for both. The Tories are painfully demonstrating how delivering what the north genuinely needs is unpopular in the south. So how do you propose better democratic representation for Yorkshire without proposing something similar for the home counties?
Main takeaway I had was that turbo lag might return, plus the MGU-K (no more MGU-H) will provide triple the power of the H/K units today. So if that goes wonky you're ruined.
Lag won't be a problem unless they do away with the 125krpm impeller speed limit on the cold side of the turbo. MGU-K will torque fill anyway to replace anti-lag from MGU-H. Road technology finally making its way to F1.
F2 with its big single jingle uses conventional anti lag by burning fuel in the manifold which would be an option but that's a bit not-green for F1.
I really don't get how people not only admire and support a politician - that makes sense, though we disagree on who people admire and support, especially if they have been successful - but unironically worship them.
At least if they were the founder of some kind of political ideology it'd make more sense.
I guess you might worship the person who appointed you to the Lords, when it's obvious that no other individual would have done so ridiculous a thing.
Mr. Romford, parliamentary boundaries deepen political divisions on a permanent basis as Holyrood has proven (from killing nationalism stone dead to an independence referendum in a couple of decades).
If England is carved into bits then either the 'assemblies' have power equal to Holyrood or they don't. If they do then that means income tax tinkering, differing health and transports policies, and it'll be about six minutes before demagogues in London are claiming the city should keep more of its own taxes and demagogues elsewhere are claiming they deserve their 'fair share' (per head) of spending and London get too much.
If the 'assemblies' do not have equal power then they're a waste of time and money, as opposed to permanently slicing England into pieces. Neither way is acceptable.
If Scotland deserves a Parliament, so can England. And I don't care that England has a higher population.
a) What is the demand among English voters for an English parliament?
b) Which of the parties with even a slight chance of having a pinky on the levers of power has any policy on creating an English parliament?
This page claims pollign north of 50% in support of an English Parliament.
I don't buy it - if that were genuine, and not some kind of proxy opinion for something that sounds correct to show support for England, it would be the policy of a major party by now. This isn't divergence from public opinion like the death penalty, which was changed so long ago, devolved parliaments and constitutional questions hav ebeen live debates for the last couple of decades quite intently, one of the big two would have picked up on it by now.
I do think the Tories will go for it at some point though - especially if they lose the next election.
For the time being the issue is no more than a distraction from the business of running the country. And we've already had over half a decade of that with Brexit.
Main takeaway I had was that turbo lag might return, plus the MGU-K (no more MGU-H) will provide triple the power of the H/K units today. So if that goes wonky you're ruined.
Lag won't be a problem unless they do away with the 125krpm impeller speed limit on the cold side of the turbo. MGU-K will torque fill anyway to replace anti-lag from MGU-H. Road technology finally making its way to F1.
F2 with its big single jingle uses conventional anti lag by burning fuel in the manifold which would be an option but that's a bit not-green for F1.
It’s rather annoying to see F1 take a big step backwards in thermal efficiency, on the altar of yet again trying to attract an entry from VAG.
Mr. Romford, parliamentary boundaries deepen political divisions on a permanent basis as Holyrood has proven (from killing nationalism stone dead to an independence referendum in a couple of decades).
If England is carved into bits then either the 'assemblies' have power equal to Holyrood or they don't. If they do then that means income tax tinkering, differing health and transports policies, and it'll be about six minutes before demagogues in London are claiming the city should keep more of its own taxes and demagogues elsewhere are claiming they deserve their 'fair share' (per head) of spending and London get too much.
If the 'assemblies' do not have equal power then they're a waste of time and money, as opposed to permanently slicing England into pieces. Neither way is acceptable.
If Scotland deserves a Parliament, so can England. And I don't care that England has a higher population.
Which should have killed independence stone dead. The three unionist parties make a solemn pledge - The Vow - which the Tories then binned when it suited them. Instead of boosting the democratic settlement in Scotland, they destroyed it, dragging Scotland out of the EU against its expressed wishes and then denying any electoral mandate for Scotland to have any say other than to thank England for dragging it along.
Didn't you vote Leave?
Yes, as did a minority in Scotland and in Northern Ireland. What's your point? After the referendum it has clearly played out that this English push to quit the EU was really a push to quit anything that stops them from being the stoner on the beginning of Primal Scream's Loaded. We wanna be free, to do what we wanna do.
Supposedly that was to Take Back Control for the UK from the perfidious forrin. Then suddenly it was "fuck the Northern Irish". Far from take back control, we have given part of the state away. And the funniest part of all is how ANGRY Brexit winners are - they won, yet live in constant fear that they have lost.
Like Douglas Adams' ultimate answer, Brexit makes no sense because most people don't know the question.
@Liz_Cheney: “I won this primary with 73% of the vote. I could easily have done the same again. The path was clear. But it would’ve required that I go along with President Trump’s lie about the 2020 election...That was a path I could not and would not take.” https://mobile.twitter.com/AccountableGOP/status/1559728488894046210
So few elected officials have been firm on this point. Most are now retired or forced out. The chances of more holding firm next time are therefore much lower I fear.
Cheney has made herself a martyr over Trump but that is not the whole story. I don't think she was particularly popular anyway as she apparently lives in Virginia and was mostly interested in foreign policy.
It's Wyoming, surely she'd have won regardless were it not for the Trump aspect though?
(There was a close race for that seat in 2006 though, interestingly)
I never thought I'd say Scott Morrison is the new Duke of Wellington.
Former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has resisted calls to resign from parliament, after news emerged that he had secretly assumed five additional roles during his tenure.
He defended his decision - which was taken during the pandemic - as "necessary" in "extraordinary times".
Mr Morrison is currently the member of parliament for Cook.
The revelations caused uproar amongst the public and his colleagues, with one calling his behaviour "dictatorial".
Mr Morrison became joint minister for the health, finance, treasury, home affairs and resources portfolios from March 2020 and May 2021.
In a press conference on Wednesday, Mr Morrison defended his decision by saying he was "acting in the national interest in a crisis" in the event a minister was incapacitated with Covid-19.
"I believed it was necessary to have authority, to have what were effectively emergency powers, to exercise in extreme situations," he said.
He added he had never acted as minister despite being secretly sworn into those portfolios.
"I did not instruct any department that I was to have jurisdiction for carriage of any of the issues that the ministers were dealing with on a day-to-day basis," he said.
When queried about why he had not disclosed the expansion of portfolios to cabinet or to the broader public, he argued there was a risk the powers he took on could have been misconstrued.
"I think there was a great risk that ... those powers could be misinterpreted and misunderstood, which would have caused unnecessary angst in the middle of a pandemic," he said.
If it wasn't for the Duke of Wellington Napoleon would have been unstoppable in 1815
Actually, no.
He'd almost certainly have been stopped by the massive Russian and Austrian armies that were converging on his position, even if the Prussians and British/Belgian/Dutch had been locally defeated, and huge British reinforcements were also on the way too. He was outnumbered overall about 4:1.
Napoleon was trying to fight a series of defensive blows to hold onto being emperor of France again, not reconquer Europe - although that's what all the allies feared.
Waterloo was a postscript that brought a very quick end to it.
If it weren't for Wellington, it's just about conceivable he'd have been unstoppable somewhat earlier on, I suppose.
But that would have required quite a few other counterfactuals.
Mr. Romford, parliamentary boundaries deepen political divisions on a permanent basis as Holyrood has proven (from killing nationalism stone dead to an independence referendum in a couple of decades).
If England is carved into bits then either the 'assemblies' have power equal to Holyrood or they don't. If they do then that means income tax tinkering, differing health and transports policies, and it'll be about six minutes before demagogues in London are claiming the city should keep more of its own taxes and demagogues elsewhere are claiming they deserve their 'fair share' (per head) of spending and London get too much.
If the 'assemblies' do not have equal power then they're a waste of time and money, as opposed to permanently slicing England into pieces. Neither way is acceptable.
If Scotland deserves a Parliament, so can England. And I don't care that England has a higher population.
a) What is the demand among English voters for an English parliament?
b) Which of the parties with even a slight chance of having a pinky on the levers of power has any policy on creating an English parliament?
This page claims pollign north of 50% in support of an English Parliament.
I don't buy it - if that were genuine, and not some kind of proxy opinion for something that sounds correct to show support for England, it would be the policy of a major party by now. This isn't divergence from public opinion like the death penalty, which was changed so long ago, devolved parliaments and constitutional questions hav ebeen live debates for the last couple of decades quite intently, one of the big two would have picked up on it by now.
I do think the Tories will go for it at some point though - especially if they lose the next election.
The issue with regards to a Northern parliament or a Yorkshire parliament is where you draw the borders. Where is the southern boundary of this northern area and how do you manage the edge cases? As for Yorkshire, is that today's bits of Yorkshire, or proper Yorkshire before places like Saddleworth and York and Middlesbrough were removed from it?
All fixable, but has to be done via the consensus that this is the model to apply. As for why no major party has done so, how do they do that? Even within England there is clearly a growing north / south divide. When Labour were largely the north / cities and the Tories the south / countryside it was easy to manage - set your policies accordingly.
But both now represent both and need MPs for both. The Tories are painfully demonstrating how delivering what the north genuinely needs is unpopular in the south. So how do you propose better democratic representation for Yorkshire without proposing something similar for the home counties?
Or just give more powers to city, county and unitary councils
The UK’s productivity problems are largely down to piss-poor, penny-pinching, short-termist managers, not lazy workers.
Both, it's not either or.
And bear in mind lots of those workers later become managers.
And favouring short-term goodies over longer-term strength is a human failing that the British have been very prone to for a long time. It's not easy to fix.
One day I want a party to just cut to the chase and adopt a slogan of 'Jam today'.
Mr. Romford, parliamentary boundaries deepen political divisions on a permanent basis as Holyrood has proven (from killing nationalism stone dead to an independence referendum in a couple of decades).
If England is carved into bits then either the 'assemblies' have power equal to Holyrood or they don't. If they do then that means income tax tinkering, differing health and transports policies, and it'll be about six minutes before demagogues in London are claiming the city should keep more of its own taxes and demagogues elsewhere are claiming they deserve their 'fair share' (per head) of spending and London get too much.
If the 'assemblies' do not have equal power then they're a waste of time and money, as opposed to permanently slicing England into pieces. Neither way is acceptable.
If Scotland deserves a Parliament, so can England. And I don't care that England has a higher population.
a) What is the demand among English voters for an English parliament?
b) Which of the parties with even a slight chance of having a pinky on the levers of power has any policy on creating an English parliament?
This page claims pollign north of 50% in support of an English Parliament.
I don't buy it - if that were genuine, and not some kind of proxy opinion for something that sounds correct to show support for England, it would be the policy of a major party by now. This isn't divergence from public opinion like the death penalty, which was changed so long ago, devolved parliaments and constitutional questions hav ebeen live debates for the last couple of decades quite intently, one of the big two would have picked up on it by now.
I do think the Tories will go for it at some point though - especially if they lose the next election.
The issue with regards to a Northern parliament or a Yorkshire parliament is where you draw the borders. Where is the southern boundary of this northern area and how do you manage the edge cases? As for Yorkshire, is that today's bits of Yorkshire, or proper Yorkshire before places like Saddleworth and York and Middlesbrough were removed from it?
All fixable, but has to be done via the consensus that this is the model to apply. As for why no major party has done so, how do they do that? Even within England there is clearly a growing north / south divide. When Labour were largely the north / cities and the Tories the south / countryside it was easy to manage - set your policies accordingly.
But both now represent both and need MPs for both. The Tories are painfully demonstrating how delivering what the north genuinely needs is unpopular in the south. So how do you propose better democratic representation for Yorkshire without proposing something similar for the home counties?
Or just give more powers to city, county and unitary councils
Why have they fiddled about with combined authorities etc rather than do that?
I assume you mean metropolitan boroughs and not merely any city council there, since some city councils are merely parishes.
Mr. Romford, parliamentary boundaries deepen political divisions on a permanent basis as Holyrood has proven (from killing nationalism stone dead to an independence referendum in a couple of decades).
If England is carved into bits then either the 'assemblies' have power equal to Holyrood or they don't. If they do then that means income tax tinkering, differing health and transports policies, and it'll be about six minutes before demagogues in London are claiming the city should keep more of its own taxes and demagogues elsewhere are claiming they deserve their 'fair share' (per head) of spending and London get too much.
If the 'assemblies' do not have equal power then they're a waste of time and money, as opposed to permanently slicing England into pieces. Neither way is acceptable.
If Scotland deserves a Parliament, so can England. And I don't care that England has a higher population.
a) What is the demand among English voters for an English parliament?
b) Which of the parties with even a slight chance of having a pinky on the levers of power has any policy on creating an English parliament?
This page claims pollign north of 50% in support of an English Parliament.
I don't buy it - if that were genuine, and not some kind of proxy opinion for something that sounds correct to show support for England, it would be the policy of a major party by now. This isn't divergence from public opinion like the death penalty, which was changed so long ago, devolved parliaments and constitutional questions hav ebeen live debates for the last couple of decades quite intently, one of the big two would have picked up on it by now.
I do think the Tories will go for it at some point though - especially if they lose the next election.
The issue with regards to a Northern parliament or a Yorkshire parliament is where you draw the borders. Where is the southern boundary of this northern area and how do you manage the edge cases? As for Yorkshire, is that today's bits of Yorkshire, or proper Yorkshire before places like Saddleworth and York and Middlesbrough were removed from it?
All fixable, but has to be done via the consensus that this is the model to apply. As for why no major party has done so, how do they do that? Even within England there is clearly a growing north / south divide. When Labour were largely the north / cities and the Tories the south / countryside it was easy to manage - set your policies accordingly.
But both now represent both and need MPs for both. The Tories are painfully demonstrating how delivering what the north genuinely needs is unpopular in the south. So how do you propose better democratic representation for Yorkshire without proposing something similar for the home counties?
You do the Spanish model from the post-Franco transition.
Central government creates a box of powers and an application process. The really obvious cases (Scotland or Catalonia) get the powers on the nod.
Counties and districts get together in whatever configurations they want to apply for some or all of the powers. Beyond a certain threshold of powers, they need referendum support.
The keen distinctive regions (Andalusia in Spain, Granadaland or Yorkshire in England) will apply for lots of powers quickly and get them. The less obvious cases will follow, because they won't want to be left out.
Messy and asymmetric, but if it's what people want, that's fine.
On tax cuts, it's interesting that those who argue they don't offer a fiscal stimulus are often precisely those who say extra public spending does.
They both do (or can) and both load onto the national debt if not budgeted. It's just one is a private sector stimulus, likely directed more towards consumption and property, and the latter to infrastructure projects, public services and often direct welfare payments too (a sort of negative income tax).
The important thing is that unless they lead to a structural improvement in economic efficiency, they eventually need to be paid for by rebalancing the public purse.
Raising interest rates to take money out of individual and company pockets at the same time as cutting taxes to put money back in isn’t, however, the optimum combination. Stimulus from public spending works in a different way and can be deployed counter-cyclically as per Keynes.
They both work counter-cylically. Like Alistair Darling of that little known political movement (called the Labour Party, I think?) did when he reduced VAT to 15% in the aftermath of the GFC.
You'd be right to say tax cuts were a shotgun whereas public spending is a sniper, though.
It's also possible (if not likely) that UK economic growth is supply rather than demand constrained. In that case tax cuts are a highly inefficient measure from promoting growth.
OMG they really are Woke, and even when they are not they are like @kinabalu or @Foxy - they are too myopic and complacent to stop Wokeness, because they still naively think it is the same game of social justice that was played in the 80 and 90s, it just occasionally goes "a bit far into silliness"
Woke is really not silly. It is cultural Marxism turned into an eerie new religion. It is powerful and growing. It is destroying America from the inside out, beginning with the universities but now infesting everything over time. It is a species of rot. It will be the end of the West and the Enlightenment if it is not checked
I get that most people on here completely disagree with me, but this is my honest appraisal. I fear for us all
There is something destroying America from the inside out: Guns having more rights than women Cletus the Fetus having more rights than the mother. Until its born. Then it has no rights Women heading towards a travel ban in case they are trying to obtain an out-of-Gilead abortion Elections still legal for Demtards and non-American races but with only one polling both for half a million people who cares as their votes either won't be cast or counted Etc etc etc.
Shitkicker states in America are turning into Gilead right before our eyes. And seemingly you'd rather have that than north of the Mason-Dixon-Sanity line because "woke".
You really need to drink more.
As I said the other day, America faces a truly terrible choice between the religious freaks on the right, and the Cultural Marxists on the left
I'D RATHER NOT HAVE THAT CHOICE, PERSONALLY
But if forced, I'd go for the freaks as I think there is a better chance of a potent, credible, coherent America emerging from the inevitable rubble. It's a bit like Chile probably benefiting from Pinochet if the alternative is/was a form of Chavez
The most rightwing people I know are Venezuelans
Credible. Unless you are a woman Unless you are gay Unless you are non-white Unless you don't fly the (Confederate) flag
Nothing about the theocratic women-hating hell that is developing in southern America is credible. And as a man with your own womenfolk, I'm surprised you are cheering on the people who think that should your daughters live within their ministrations should have less rights than a rifle.
Woke is not saying that women should let the man rape them. And then deny them abortion. And then deny them rights to basic human freedoms. Yet if you listen to these fundamentalist GOPper shitkickers thats all they talk about needing to introduce.
I think the overturning of Roe v Wade is ugly and foolish at best, and appalling at worst - ie if it leads to blanket bans on all abortions across multiple states. That way lies human misery for many
However, I can see the religious reasons for opposing abortion, and I recognise that they are sincere. And often espoused by women, let it be noted. Moreover, I don't yet see evidence that this decision (much as I dislike it) is "turning America into Gilead"
It's interesting how you don't extend the same courtesy of sincerity to Islamic fundamentalists.
In most of the Middle East and North Africa abortion is already prohibited with a few exceptions
Most of the Middle East and North Africa do not have Islamic fundamentalists in power, so I’m not certain why you bring the region up.
There is of course a lot of variation across the region. But there are generally more exceptions allowed than many Republican states want. First trimester abortion is legal in Tunisia. Abortion is legal in Rojava. Saudia Arabia and Iran, the 2 countries that are ruled by Islamic fundamentalists, allow first trimester abortions to protect a woman’s mental health in some situations, as well as physical health. First trimester abortion is allowed in Iran if the foetus has a serious thalassemia (a problem in the region), for example. Exact practice varies, but it’s a more liberal arrangement than in Oklahoma. Countries like Egypt have more restrictive laws, but enforcement isn’t that strict. And then other countries, like Yemen and Libya, are more restrictive still.
So, the situation is poor in most of the Middle East and North Africa, but it’s a mixed picture and not quite as bad as in Texas, Wisconsin, South Dakota etc.
In Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Libya etc abortion is only allowed to protect the life of the mother. The same as even the most hardline US state governments are proposing
@Liz_Cheney: “I won this primary with 73% of the vote. I could easily have done the same again. The path was clear. But it would’ve required that I go along with President Trump’s lie about the 2020 election...That was a path I could not and would not take.” https://mobile.twitter.com/AccountableGOP/status/1559728488894046210
So few elected officials have been firm on this point. Most are now retired or forced out. The chances of more holding firm next time are therefore much lower I fear.
Cheney has made herself a martyr over Trump but that is not the whole story. I don't think she was particularly popular anyway as she apparently lives in Virginia and was mostly interested in foreign policy.
73% in the previous primary. And it is the primary that counts as it is usually a reliably safe GOP seat. Her general policy positions do not appeal to me much but her bravery and clarity in taking on Trump through the Jan 6th committee has won her a whole host of new fans everywhere except the GOP. An independent run must be a possibility.
@Liz_Cheney: “I won this primary with 73% of the vote. I could easily have done the same again. The path was clear. But it would’ve required that I go along with President Trump’s lie about the 2020 election...That was a path I could not and would not take.” https://mobile.twitter.com/AccountableGOP/status/1559728488894046210
So few elected officials have been firm on this point. Most are now retired or forced out. The chances of more holding firm next time are therefore much lower I fear.
Cheney has made herself a martyr over Trump but that is not the whole story. I don't think she was particularly popular anyway as she apparently lives in Virginia and was mostly interested in foreign policy.
73% in the previous primary. And it is the primary that counts as it is usually a reliably safe GOP seat. Her general policy positions do not appeal to me much but her bravery and clarity in taking on Trump through the Jan 6th committee has won her a whole host of new fans everywhere except the GOP. An independent run must be a possibility.
Someone yesterday said she'd ruled out an independent run on the basis it would just undermine beating the Trumpite.
Don't know if that's true, though it suggests a lack of confidence in Democratic voters being realistically tactical in their voting. Labour or the LDs could teach them a thing or two based on recent by-elections.
The age of the enlightenment was also a time of some terrible abuses in British working practices. Four and five-year-old children were working in the mills and in the mines; working in conditions which threatened their lives.
It was. The point is, things gradually got better, both then and subsequently.
Without the Enlightenment, we'd be living in a world where about 5% of the population could vote, few would see anything problematic with child labour, and where our idea of fun would be popping down to Bedlam to torment the lunatics, visiting the local child brothel, or watching someone getting hanged, drawn and quartered.
Yes, being Woke is just the Enlightenment continuing.
Messy though. The screeching of so many foghorn entitled male white voices as they cling to privilege is quite painful on the ears.
Strange how it takes one, it’s mainly a high pitched whine for me.
Surprised you can hear anything above the endless, infantile mewling of the Scot Nits for their precious 2nd referendum, which they are never getting
Oh they are getting it. It might be 2 years or it might be 20 years, but it will happen even if it is once in a generation. However the more stubborn and offensive to Scotland the UK government is the more likely the Nats will win which is why the Tories attitude is so stupid because it drive Scotland away.
No, if you give the Nats an indyref every 5 minutes when they demand one then that is what eventually will see them get their way
20 years time isn't every 5 min!!!! All I said is a vote will happen eventually even if in 20 years time. Leon said never so your point is ridiculous. The point I am making is regardless of whether it is 2 or 20 years if you behave in a stubborn and offensive way to a nation then they will react accordingly. That is the mistake you make. By being offensive you turn off people who might support you. I do not support Scotland leaving but I can understand them wanting to when people like you are so offensive to them. Who wants to be friends with someone who hates them.
Mr. Romford, parliamentary boundaries deepen political divisions on a permanent basis as Holyrood has proven (from killing nationalism stone dead to an independence referendum in a couple of decades).
If England is carved into bits then either the 'assemblies' have power equal to Holyrood or they don't. If they do then that means income tax tinkering, differing health and transports policies, and it'll be about six minutes before demagogues in London are claiming the city should keep more of its own taxes and demagogues elsewhere are claiming they deserve their 'fair share' (per head) of spending and London get too much.
If the 'assemblies' do not have equal power then they're a waste of time and money, as opposed to permanently slicing England into pieces. Neither way is acceptable.
If Scotland deserves a Parliament, so can England. And I don't care that England has a higher population.
a) What is the demand among English voters for an English parliament?
b) Which of the parties with even a slight chance of having a pinky on the levers of power has any policy on creating an English parliament?
This page claims pollign north of 50% in support of an English Parliament.
I don't buy it - if that were genuine, and not some kind of proxy opinion for something that sounds correct to show support for England, it would be the policy of a major party by now. This isn't divergence from public opinion like the death penalty, which was changed so long ago, devolved parliaments and constitutional questions hav ebeen live debates for the last couple of decades quite intently, one of the big two would have picked up on it by now.
I do think the Tories will go for it at some point though - especially if they lose the next election.
The issue with regards to a Northern parliament or a Yorkshire parliament is where you draw the borders. Where is the southern boundary of this northern area and how do you manage the edge cases? As for Yorkshire, is that today's bits of Yorkshire, or proper Yorkshire before places like Saddleworth and York and Middlesbrough were removed from it?
All fixable, but has to be done via the consensus that this is the model to apply. As for why no major party has done so, how do they do that? Even within England there is clearly a growing north / south divide. When Labour were largely the north / cities and the Tories the south / countryside it was easy to manage - set your policies accordingly.
But both now represent both and need MPs for both. The Tories are painfully demonstrating how delivering what the north genuinely needs is unpopular in the south. So how do you propose better democratic representation for Yorkshire without proposing something similar for the home counties?
Or just give more powers to city, county and unitary councils
Why have they fiddled about with combined authorities etc rather than do that?
I assume you mean metropolitan boroughs and not merely any city council there, since some city councils are merely parishes.
What city Ccouncil is merely a parish? Almost all city councils are metropolitan boroughs, except London which is an assembly plus boroughs
I never thought I'd say Scott Morrison is the new Duke of Wellington.
Former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has resisted calls to resign from parliament, after news emerged that he had secretly assumed five additional roles during his tenure.
He defended his decision - which was taken during the pandemic - as "necessary" in "extraordinary times".
Mr Morrison is currently the member of parliament for Cook.
The revelations caused uproar amongst the public and his colleagues, with one calling his behaviour "dictatorial".
Mr Morrison became joint minister for the health, finance, treasury, home affairs and resources portfolios from March 2020 and May 2021.
In a press conference on Wednesday, Mr Morrison defended his decision by saying he was "acting in the national interest in a crisis" in the event a minister was incapacitated with Covid-19.
"I believed it was necessary to have authority, to have what were effectively emergency powers, to exercise in extreme situations," he said.
He added he had never acted as minister despite being secretly sworn into those portfolios.
"I did not instruct any department that I was to have jurisdiction for carriage of any of the issues that the ministers were dealing with on a day-to-day basis," he said.
When queried about why he had not disclosed the expansion of portfolios to cabinet or to the broader public, he argued there was a risk the powers he took on could have been misconstrued.
"I think there was a great risk that ... those powers could be misinterpreted and misunderstood, which would have caused unnecessary angst in the middle of a pandemic," he said.
If it wasn't for the Duke of Wellington Napoleon would have been unstoppable in 1815
Actually, no.
He'd almost certainly have been stopped by the massive Russian and Austrian armies that were converging on his position, even if the Prussians and British/Belgian/Dutch had been locally defeated, and huge British reinforcements were also on the way too. He was outnumbered overall about 4:1.
Napoleon was trying to fight a series of defensive blows to hold onto being emperor of France again, not reconquer Europe - although that's what all the allies feared.
Waterloo was a postscript that brought a very quick end to it.
If it weren't for Wellington, it's just about conceivable he'd have been unstoppable somewhat earlier on, I suppose.
But that would have required quite a few other counterfactuals.
As with many dictators, the person who beat Napoleon was Napoleon himself.
Mr. Divvie, go back a few years and marvel at how all the parties were pro-EU. And see how that turned out.
Over time, assuming Scotland remains in the UK, there will be naturally increasing divisions. There is not the same degree of desire for a Parliament as there was in Scotland, it's true, but also vehement opposition from many to the notion of cutting England to bits.
In Scotland all the parties were pro EU right up to the referendum where almost 2/3 of Scots voters backed remain, and it turned out unmarvellously to make not a whit of difference to Scotland's place in the Brexit process.
I'd suggest that an English parliament that resulted from a spasm of outrage at perceived devolved inequality rather than as a recognition of the settled will of English voters would not be auspicious.
Mr. Romford, parliamentary boundaries deepen political divisions on a permanent basis as Holyrood has proven (from killing nationalism stone dead to an independence referendum in a couple of decades).
If England is carved into bits then either the 'assemblies' have power equal to Holyrood or they don't. If they do then that means income tax tinkering, differing health and transports policies, and it'll be about six minutes before demagogues in London are claiming the city should keep more of its own taxes and demagogues elsewhere are claiming they deserve their 'fair share' (per head) of spending and London get too much.
If the 'assemblies' do not have equal power then they're a waste of time and money, as opposed to permanently slicing England into pieces. Neither way is acceptable.
If Scotland deserves a Parliament, so can England. And I don't care that England has a higher population.
a) What is the demand among English voters for an English parliament?
b) Which of the parties with even a slight chance of having a pinky on the levers of power has any policy on creating an English parliament?
This page claims pollign north of 50% in support of an English Parliament.
I don't buy it - if that were genuine, and not some kind of proxy opinion for something that sounds correct to show support for England, it would be the policy of a major party by now. This isn't divergence from public opinion like the death penalty, which was changed so long ago, devolved parliaments and constitutional questions hav ebeen live debates for the last couple of decades quite intently, one of the big two would have picked up on it by now.
I do think the Tories will go for it at some point though - especially if they lose the next election.
The issue with regards to a Northern parliament or a Yorkshire parliament is where you draw the borders. Where is the southern boundary of this northern area and how do you manage the edge cases? As for Yorkshire, is that today's bits of Yorkshire, or proper Yorkshire before places like Saddleworth and York and Middlesbrough were removed from it?
All fixable, but has to be done via the consensus that this is the model to apply. As for why no major party has done so, how do they do that? Even within England there is clearly a growing north / south divide. When Labour were largely the north / cities and the Tories the south / countryside it was easy to manage - set your policies accordingly.
But both now represent both and need MPs for both. The Tories are painfully demonstrating how delivering what the north genuinely needs is unpopular in the south. So how do you propose better democratic representation for Yorkshire without proposing something similar for the home counties?
Or just give more powers to city, county and unitary councils
Why have they fiddled about with combined authorities etc rather than do that?
I assume you mean metropolitan boroughs and not merely any city council there, since some city councils are merely parishes.
What city Ccouncil is merely a parish? Almost all city councils are metropolitan boroughs, except London which is an assembly plus boroughs
Salisbury for starters. You also have places larger than plenty of cities which are just parishes like Weston Super Mare Town Council.
@Liz_Cheney: “I won this primary with 73% of the vote. I could easily have done the same again. The path was clear. But it would’ve required that I go along with President Trump’s lie about the 2020 election...That was a path I could not and would not take.” https://mobile.twitter.com/AccountableGOP/status/1559728488894046210
So few elected officials have been firm on this point. Most are now retired or forced out. The chances of more holding firm next time are therefore much lower I fear.
Cheney has made herself a martyr over Trump but that is not the whole story. I don't think she was particularly popular anyway as she apparently lives in Virginia and was mostly interested in foreign policy.
73% in the previous primary. And it is the primary that counts as it is usually a reliably safe GOP seat. Her general policy positions do not appeal to me much but her bravery and clarity in taking on Trump through the Jan 6th committee has won her a whole host of new fans everywhere except the GOP. An independent run must be a possibility.
The fact that she stands out as one of the very few who have been prepared to take a stand against this slide into deep authoritarianism just shows how many Americans just don't care whether they carry on living in a free democracy or not.
It is deeply depressing and we must work to avoid this happening in UK.
Mr. Romford, parliamentary boundaries deepen political divisions on a permanent basis as Holyrood has proven (from killing nationalism stone dead to an independence referendum in a couple of decades).
If England is carved into bits then either the 'assemblies' have power equal to Holyrood or they don't. If they do then that means income tax tinkering, differing health and transports policies, and it'll be about six minutes before demagogues in London are claiming the city should keep more of its own taxes and demagogues elsewhere are claiming they deserve their 'fair share' (per head) of spending and London get too much.
If the 'assemblies' do not have equal power then they're a waste of time and money, as opposed to permanently slicing England into pieces. Neither way is acceptable.
If Scotland deserves a Parliament, so can England. And I don't care that England has a higher population.
Which should have killed independence stone dead. The three unionist parties make a solemn pledge - The Vow - which the Tories then binned when it suited them. Instead of boosting the democratic settlement in Scotland, they destroyed it, dragging Scotland out of the EU against its expressed wishes and then denying any electoral mandate for Scotland to have any say other than to thank England for dragging it along.
Mr. Romford, parliamentary boundaries deepen political divisions on a permanent basis as Holyrood has proven (from killing nationalism stone dead to an independence referendum in a couple of decades).
If England is carved into bits then either the 'assemblies' have power equal to Holyrood or they don't. If they do then that means income tax tinkering, differing health and transports policies, and it'll be about six minutes before demagogues in London are claiming the city should keep more of its own taxes and demagogues elsewhere are claiming they deserve their 'fair share' (per head) of spending and London get too much.
If the 'assemblies' do not have equal power then they're a waste of time and money, as opposed to permanently slicing England into pieces. Neither way is acceptable.
If Scotland deserves a Parliament, so can England. And I don't care that England has a higher population.
Which should have killed independence stone dead. The three unionist parties make a solemn pledge - The Vow - which the Tories then binned when it suited them. Instead of boosting the democratic settlement in Scotland, they destroyed it, dragging Scotland out of the EU against its expressed wishes and then denying any electoral mandate for Scotland to have any say other than to thank England for dragging it along.
Didn't you vote Leave?
Yes, as did a minority in Scotland and in Northern Ireland. What's your point? After the referendum it has clearly played out that this English push to quit the EU was really a push to quit anything that stops them from being the stoner on the beginning of Primal Scream's Loaded. We wanna be free, to do what we wanna do.
Supposedly that was to Take Back Control for the UK from the perfidious forrin. Then suddenly it was "fuck the Northern Irish". Far from take back control, we have given part of the state away. And the funniest part of all is how ANGRY Brexit winners are - they won, yet live in constant fear that they have lost.
Like Douglas Adams' ultimate answer, Brexit makes no sense because most people don't know the question.
Cheney has made it her mission to stop Trump so if he stands for the nomination I suspect she will go ahead and stand as an independent candidate . She only needs to take a few points in certain states and she could screw the GOP.
OMG they really are Woke, and even when they are not they are like @kinabalu or @Foxy - they are too myopic and complacent to stop Wokeness, because they still naively think it is the same game of social justice that was played in the 80 and 90s, it just occasionally goes "a bit far into silliness"
Woke is really not silly. It is cultural Marxism turned into an eerie new religion. It is powerful and growing. It is destroying America from the inside out, beginning with the universities but now infesting everything over time. It is a species of rot. It will be the end of the West and the Enlightenment if it is not checked
I get that most people on here completely disagree with me, but this is my honest appraisal. I fear for us all
There is something destroying America from the inside out: Guns having more rights than women Cletus the Fetus having more rights than the mother. Until its born. Then it has no rights Women heading towards a travel ban in case they are trying to obtain an out-of-Gilead abortion Elections still legal for Demtards and non-American races but with only one polling both for half a million people who cares as their votes either won't be cast or counted Etc etc etc.
Shitkicker states in America are turning into Gilead right before our eyes. And seemingly you'd rather have that than north of the Mason-Dixon-Sanity line because "woke".
You really need to drink more.
As I said the other day, America faces a truly terrible choice between the religious freaks on the right, and the Cultural Marxists on the left
I'D RATHER NOT HAVE THAT CHOICE, PERSONALLY
But if forced, I'd go for the freaks as I think there is a better chance of a potent, credible, coherent America emerging from the inevitable rubble. It's a bit like Chile probably benefiting from Pinochet if the alternative is/was a form of Chavez
The most rightwing people I know are Venezuelans
Credible. Unless you are a woman Unless you are gay Unless you are non-white Unless you don't fly the (Confederate) flag
Nothing about the theocratic women-hating hell that is developing in southern America is credible. And as a man with your own womenfolk, I'm surprised you are cheering on the people who think that should your daughters live within their ministrations should have less rights than a rifle.
Woke is not saying that women should let the man rape them. And then deny them abortion. And then deny them rights to basic human freedoms. Yet if you listen to these fundamentalist GOPper shitkickers thats all they talk about needing to introduce.
I think the overturning of Roe v Wade is ugly and foolish at best, and appalling at worst - ie if it leads to blanket bans on all abortions across multiple states. That way lies human misery for many
However, I can see the religious reasons for opposing abortion, and I recognise that they are sincere. And often espoused by women, let it be noted. Moreover, I don't yet see evidence that this decision (much as I dislike it) is "turning America into Gilead"
It's interesting how you don't extend the same courtesy of sincerity to Islamic fundamentalists.
In most of the Middle East and North Africa abortion is already prohibited with a few exceptions
Most of the Middle East and North Africa do not have Islamic fundamentalists in power, so I’m not certain why you bring the region up.
There is of course a lot of variation across the region. But there are generally more exceptions allowed than many Republican states want. First trimester abortion is legal in Tunisia. Abortion is legal in Rojava. Saudia Arabia and Iran, the 2 countries that are ruled by Islamic fundamentalists, allow first trimester abortions to protect a woman’s mental health in some situations, as well as physical health. First trimester abortion is allowed in Iran if the foetus has a serious thalassemia (a problem in the region), for example. Exact practice varies, but it’s a more liberal arrangement than in Oklahoma. Countries like Egypt have more restrictive laws, but enforcement isn’t that strict. And then other countries, like Yemen and Libya, are more restrictive still.
So, the situation is poor in most of the Middle East and North Africa, but it’s a mixed picture and not quite as bad as in Texas, Wisconsin, South Dakota etc.
In Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Libya etc abortion is only allowed to protect the life of the mother. The same as even the most hardline US state governments are proposing
Cheney has made it her mission to stop Trump so if he stands for the nomination I suspect she will go ahead and stand as an independent candidate . She only needs to take a few points in certain states and she could screw the GOP.
True, but would she risk it? What if some Dems or Independents trumped for her instead of the Dem?
Mr. Romford, parliamentary boundaries deepen political divisions on a permanent basis as Holyrood has proven (from killing nationalism stone dead to an independence referendum in a couple of decades).
If England is carved into bits then either the 'assemblies' have power equal to Holyrood or they don't. If they do then that means income tax tinkering, differing health and transports policies, and it'll be about six minutes before demagogues in London are claiming the city should keep more of its own taxes and demagogues elsewhere are claiming they deserve their 'fair share' (per head) of spending and London get too much.
If the 'assemblies' do not have equal power then they're a waste of time and money, as opposed to permanently slicing England into pieces. Neither way is acceptable.
If Scotland deserves a Parliament, so can England. And I don't care that England has a higher population.
Which should have killed independence stone dead. The three unionist parties make a solemn pledge - The Vow - which the Tories then binned when it suited them. Instead of boosting the democratic settlement in Scotland, they destroyed it, dragging Scotland out of the EU against its expressed wishes and then denying any electoral mandate for Scotland to have any say other than to thank England for dragging it along.
Rubbish, see the Scotland Act 2016
And compare it with the promises on the eve of the referendum. And Brexit.
Thinking more about domestic electric prices (I posted earlier a quote from Scottish power for a 1yr fix which offered leccy @79p/kWh).
At some point electric car charging is going to be uncompetitive vs ICE.
Has anyone done the maths?
Assuming;
An efficient, reasonable EV does 4.5 miles per kWh (Hyundai ionic, not Renault tizzy) Leccy @ 79p
~18p/mile
ICE;
50mpg ~11 miles per litre £1.70 per litre
~15.5p/mile
If I’ve done my maths right….? Obviously, the great thing with EV’s are they can be charged off peak, but still…
And that's how the market balances. People buy oil powered vehicles, because oil is available.
Except for the political medalling of course. That 50mpg car is costing about 7.5p/mile in fuel - the rest is tax.
With electricity at a real cost of about 33p/kwh (that's what I'm paying for business electricity at present, which is unaffected by the various machinations of the price cap etc), the EV costs about 7.3p/mile.
It's worth noting that 50mpg is quite poor for a modern ICE, it's perfectly possible to get a big diesel estate which does ~70mpg, which is around 6p/mile before tax at current diesel prices.
EVs are not cheap on energy to run - they are only cheap as a tax arbitrage whereby the government takes from the poor to give tax cuts to the rich.
Mr. Romford, parliamentary boundaries deepen political divisions on a permanent basis as Holyrood has proven (from killing nationalism stone dead to an independence referendum in a couple of decades).
If England is carved into bits then either the 'assemblies' have power equal to Holyrood or they don't. If they do then that means income tax tinkering, differing health and transports policies, and it'll be about six minutes before demagogues in London are claiming the city should keep more of its own taxes and demagogues elsewhere are claiming they deserve their 'fair share' (per head) of spending and London get too much.
If the 'assemblies' do not have equal power then they're a waste of time and money, as opposed to permanently slicing England into pieces. Neither way is acceptable.
If Scotland deserves a Parliament, so can England. And I don't care that England has a higher population.
Which should have killed independence stone dead. The three unionist parties make a solemn pledge - The Vow - which the Tories then binned when it suited them. Instead of boosting the democratic settlement in Scotland, they destroyed it, dragging Scotland out of the EU against its expressed wishes and then denying any electoral mandate for Scotland to have any say other than to thank England for dragging it along.
Didn't you vote Leave?
Yes, as did a minority in Scotland and in Northern Ireland. What's your point? After the referendum it has clearly played out that this English push to quit the EU was really a push to quit anything that stops them from being the stoner on the beginning of Primal Scream's Loaded. We wanna be free, to do what we wanna do.
Supposedly that was to Take Back Control for the UK from the perfidious forrin. Then suddenly it was "fuck the Northern Irish". Far from take back control, we have given part of the state away. And the funniest part of all is how ANGRY Brexit winners are - they won, yet live in constant fear that they have lost.
Like Douglas Adams' ultimate answer, Brexit makes no sense because most people don't know the question.
Less Loaded, more I'm Losing More than I'll Ever Have.
Thinking more about domestic electric prices (I posted earlier a quote from Scottish power for a 1yr fix which offered leccy @79p/kWh).
At some point electric car charging is going to be uncompetitive vs ICE.
Has anyone done the maths?
Assuming;
An efficient, reasonable EV does 4.5 miles per kWh (Hyundai ionic, not Renault tizzy) Leccy @ 79p
~18p/mile
ICE;
50mpg ~11 miles per litre £1.70 per litre
~15.5p/mile
If I’ve done my maths right….? Obviously, the great thing with EV’s are they can be charged off peak, but still…
And that's how the market balances. People buy oil powered vehicles, because oil is available.
Except for the political medalling of course. That 50mpg car is costing about 7.5p/mile in fuel - the rest is tax.
With electricity at a real cost of about 33p/kwh (that's what I'm paying for business electricity at present, which is unaffected by the various machinations of the price cap etc), the EV costs about 7.3p/mile.
It's worth noting that 50mpg is quite poor for a modern ICE, it's perfectly possible to get a big diesel estate which does ~70mpg, which is around 6p/mile before tax at current diesel prices.
EVs are not cheap on energy to run - they are only cheap as a tax arbitrage whereby the government takes from the poor to give tax cuts to the rich.
In the long run, though, natural gas (and sunshine and wind) are incredibly abundant, while oil is rather more scarce.
If I was still doing my old job, I'd be selling 2023/2024 electricity futures in size, because the current electricity price spike is transient.
Mr. Romford, parliamentary boundaries deepen political divisions on a permanent basis as Holyrood has proven (from killing nationalism stone dead to an independence referendum in a couple of decades).
If England is carved into bits then either the 'assemblies' have power equal to Holyrood or they don't. If they do then that means income tax tinkering, differing health and transports policies, and it'll be about six minutes before demagogues in London are claiming the city should keep more of its own taxes and demagogues elsewhere are claiming they deserve their 'fair share' (per head) of spending and London get too much.
If the 'assemblies' do not have equal power then they're a waste of time and money, as opposed to permanently slicing England into pieces. Neither way is acceptable.
If Scotland deserves a Parliament, so can England. And I don't care that England has a higher population.
Which should have killed independence stone dead. The three unionist parties make a solemn pledge - The Vow - which the Tories then binned when it suited them. Instead of boosting the democratic settlement in Scotland, they destroyed it, dragging Scotland out of the EU against its expressed wishes and then denying any electoral mandate for Scotland to have any say other than to thank England for dragging it along.
Rubbish, see the Scotland Act 2016
And compare it with the promises on the eve of the referendum. And Brexit.
It delivered on the promises of the UK government, even after the Brexit vote only 45% voted SNP at the 2019 General election no different to the 45% who voted Yes in 2014 and actually less than the 50% who voted SNP in the 2015 general election before the EU referendum
The age of the enlightenment was also a time of some terrible abuses in British working practices. Four and five-year-old children were working in the mills and in the mines; working in conditions which threatened their lives.
It was. The point is, things gradually got better, both then and subsequently.
Without the Enlightenment, we'd be living in a world where about 5% of the population could vote, few would see anything problematic with child labour, and where our idea of fun would be popping down to Bedlam to torment the lunatics, visiting the local child brothel, or watching someone getting hanged, drawn and quartered.
Yes, being Woke is just the Enlightenment continuing.
Messy though. The screeching of so many foghorn entitled male white voices as they cling to privilege is quite painful on the ears.
Strange how it takes one, it’s mainly a high pitched whine for me.
Surprised you can hear anything above the endless, infantile mewling of the Scot Nits for their precious 2nd referendum, which they are never getting
Oh they are getting it. It might be 2 years or it might be 20 years, but it will happen even if it is once in a generation. However the more stubborn and offensive to Scotland the UK government is the more likely the Nats will win which is why the Tories attitude is so stupid because it drive Scotland away.
No, if you give the Nats an indyref every 5 minutes when they demand one then that is what eventually will see them get their way
20 years time isn't every 5 min!!!! All I said is it will happen eventually even if in 20 years time. Leon said never so your point is ridiculous. The point I am making is regardless of whether it is 2 or 20 years if you behave in a stubborn and offensive way to a nation then they will react accordingly. That is the mistake you make. By being offensive you turn off people who might support you. I do not support Scotland leaving but I can understand them wanting to when people like you are so offensive to them. Who wants to be friends with someone who hates them.
I agree with this.
Britain’s relationship to Ireland could and should have been like its one with Canada or Australia.
And the main reason why it did not happen is because of Britain's stupidity to recognise a legitimate claim to democratic self-governance.
And of course, more recently, Remainers learnt this the hard way, as the same arguments apply to the calls for an EU referendum. Denied and denied. The reckoning was all the more bitter when it came.
If the Scots want a referendum, they should of course have one.
Cheney has made it her mission to stop Trump so if he stands for the nomination I suspect she will go ahead and stand as an independent candidate . She only needs to take a few points in certain states and she could screw the GOP.
True, but would she risk it? What if some Dems or Independents trumped for her instead of the Dem?
It’s possible she would take some Dem and Ind votes but her messaging will be aimed at GOP voters and she’s likely to take more of those than the former .
Mr. Romford, parliamentary boundaries deepen political divisions on a permanent basis as Holyrood has proven (from killing nationalism stone dead to an independence referendum in a couple of decades).
If England is carved into bits then either the 'assemblies' have power equal to Holyrood or they don't. If they do then that means income tax tinkering, differing health and transports policies, and it'll be about six minutes before demagogues in London are claiming the city should keep more of its own taxes and demagogues elsewhere are claiming they deserve their 'fair share' (per head) of spending and London get too much.
If the 'assemblies' do not have equal power then they're a waste of time and money, as opposed to permanently slicing England into pieces. Neither way is acceptable.
If Scotland deserves a Parliament, so can England. And I don't care that England has a higher population.
Which should have killed independence stone dead. The three unionist parties make a solemn pledge - The Vow - which the Tories then binned when it suited them. Instead of boosting the democratic settlement in Scotland, they destroyed it, dragging Scotland out of the EU against its expressed wishes and then denying any electoral mandate for Scotland to have any say other than to thank England for dragging it along.
Rubbish, see the Scotland Act 2016
'About 120 amendments and new clauses were lodged on the bill by opposition parties but these were rejected by the Commons.'
Mr. Romford, parliamentary boundaries deepen political divisions on a permanent basis as Holyrood has proven (from killing nationalism stone dead to an independence referendum in a couple of decades).
If England is carved into bits then either the 'assemblies' have power equal to Holyrood or they don't. If they do then that means income tax tinkering, differing health and transports policies, and it'll be about six minutes before demagogues in London are claiming the city should keep more of its own taxes and demagogues elsewhere are claiming they deserve their 'fair share' (per head) of spending and London get too much.
If the 'assemblies' do not have equal power then they're a waste of time and money, as opposed to permanently slicing England into pieces. Neither way is acceptable.
If Scotland deserves a Parliament, so can England. And I don't care that England has a higher population.
a) What is the demand among English voters for an English parliament?
b) Which of the parties with even a slight chance of having a pinky on the levers of power has any policy on creating an English parliament?
This page claims pollign north of 50% in support of an English Parliament.
I don't buy it - if that were genuine, and not some kind of proxy opinion for something that sounds correct to show support for England, it would be the policy of a major party by now. This isn't divergence from public opinion like the death penalty, which was changed so long ago, devolved parliaments and constitutional questions hav ebeen live debates for the last couple of decades quite intently, one of the big two would have picked up on it by now.
I do think the Tories will go for it at some point though - especially if they lose the next election.
The issue with regards to a Northern parliament or a Yorkshire parliament is where you draw the borders. Where is the southern boundary of this northern area and how do you manage the edge cases? As for Yorkshire, is that today's bits of Yorkshire, or proper Yorkshire before places like Saddleworth and York and Middlesbrough were removed from it?
All fixable, but has to be done via the consensus that this is the model to apply. As for why no major party has done so, how do they do that? Even within England there is clearly a growing north / south divide. When Labour were largely the north / cities and the Tories the south / countryside it was easy to manage - set your policies accordingly.
But both now represent both and need MPs for both. The Tories are painfully demonstrating how delivering what the north genuinely needs is unpopular in the south. So how do you propose better democratic representation for Yorkshire without proposing something similar for the home counties?
Or just give more powers to city, county and unitary councils
Why have they fiddled about with combined authorities etc rather than do that?
I assume you mean metropolitan boroughs and not merely any city council there, since some city councils are merely parishes.
What city Ccouncil is merely a parish? Almost all city councils are metropolitan boroughs, except London which is an assembly plus boroughs
Salisbury for starters. You also have places larger than plenty of cities which are just parishes like Weston Super Mare Town Council.
Salisbury is only a city because it has a cathedral, its population of only 45,000 is well below the standard 100,000 population now accepted to be needed for city status
Mr. Romford, parliamentary boundaries deepen political divisions on a permanent basis as Holyrood has proven (from killing nationalism stone dead to an independence referendum in a couple of decades).
If England is carved into bits then either the 'assemblies' have power equal to Holyrood or they don't. If they do then that means income tax tinkering, differing health and transports policies, and it'll be about six minutes before demagogues in London are claiming the city should keep more of its own taxes and demagogues elsewhere are claiming they deserve their 'fair share' (per head) of spending and London get too much.
If the 'assemblies' do not have equal power then they're a waste of time and money, as opposed to permanently slicing England into pieces. Neither way is acceptable.
If Scotland deserves a Parliament, so can England. And I don't care that England has a higher population.
Which should have killed independence stone dead. The three unionist parties make a solemn pledge - The Vow - which the Tories then binned when it suited them. Instead of boosting the democratic settlement in Scotland, they destroyed it, dragging Scotland out of the EU against its expressed wishes and then denying any electoral mandate for Scotland to have any say other than to thank England for dragging it along.
Rubbish, see the Scotland Act 2016
And compare it with the promises on the eve of the referendum. And Brexit.
It delivered on the promises of the UK government, even after the Brexit vote only 45% voted SNP at the 2019 General election no different to the 45% who voted Yes in 2014 and actually less than the 50% who voted SNP in the 2015 general election before the EU referendum
That is about as relevant and coherent a response as if it were made in response to a post on F1 racing.
Thinking more about domestic electric prices (I posted earlier a quote from Scottish power for a 1yr fix which offered leccy @79p/kWh).
At some point electric car charging is going to be uncompetitive vs ICE.
Has anyone done the maths?
Assuming;
An efficient, reasonable EV does 4.5 miles per kWh (Hyundai ionic, not Renault tizzy) Leccy @ 79p
~18p/mile
ICE;
50mpg ~11 miles per litre £1.70 per litre
~15.5p/mile
If I’ve done my maths right….? Obviously, the great thing with EV’s are they can be charged off peak, but still…
And that's how the market balances. People buy oil powered vehicles, because oil is available.
Except for the political medalling of course. That 50mpg car is costing about 7.5p/mile in fuel - the rest is tax.
With electricity at a real cost of about 33p/kwh (that's what I'm paying for business electricity at present, which is unaffected by the various machinations of the price cap etc), the EV costs about 7.3p/mile.
It's worth noting that 50mpg is quite poor for a modern ICE, it's perfectly possible to get a big diesel estate which does ~70mpg, which is around 6p/mile before tax at current diesel prices.
EVs are not cheap on energy to run - they are only cheap as a tax arbitrage whereby the government takes from the poor to give tax cuts to the rich.
In the long run, though, natural gas (and sunshine and wind) are incredibly abundant, while oil is rather more scarce.
If I was still doing my old job, I'd be selling 2023/2024 electricity futures in size, because the current electricity price spike is transient.
Mr. Romford, parliamentary boundaries deepen political divisions on a permanent basis as Holyrood has proven (from killing nationalism stone dead to an independence referendum in a couple of decades).
If England is carved into bits then either the 'assemblies' have power equal to Holyrood or they don't. If they do then that means income tax tinkering, differing health and transports policies, and it'll be about six minutes before demagogues in London are claiming the city should keep more of its own taxes and demagogues elsewhere are claiming they deserve their 'fair share' (per head) of spending and London get too much.
If the 'assemblies' do not have equal power then they're a waste of time and money, as opposed to permanently slicing England into pieces. Neither way is acceptable.
If Scotland deserves a Parliament, so can England. And I don't care that England has a higher population.
a) What is the demand among English voters for an English parliament?
b) Which of the parties with even a slight chance of having a pinky on the levers of power has any policy on creating an English parliament?
This page claims pollign north of 50% in support of an English Parliament.
I don't buy it - if that were genuine, and not some kind of proxy opinion for something that sounds correct to show support for England, it would be the policy of a major party by now. This isn't divergence from public opinion like the death penalty, which was changed so long ago, devolved parliaments and constitutional questions hav ebeen live debates for the last couple of decades quite intently, one of the big two would have picked up on it by now.
I do think the Tories will go for it at some point though - especially if they lose the next election.
The issue with regards to a Northern parliament or a Yorkshire parliament is where you draw the borders. Where is the southern boundary of this northern area and how do you manage the edge cases? As for Yorkshire, is that today's bits of Yorkshire, or proper Yorkshire before places like Saddleworth and York and Middlesbrough were removed from it?
All fixable, but has to be done via the consensus that this is the model to apply. As for why no major party has done so, how do they do that? Even within England there is clearly a growing north / south divide. When Labour were largely the north / cities and the Tories the south / countryside it was easy to manage - set your policies accordingly.
But both now represent both and need MPs for both. The Tories are painfully demonstrating how delivering what the north genuinely needs is unpopular in the south. So how do you propose better democratic representation for Yorkshire without proposing something similar for the home counties?
Or just give more powers to city, county and unitary councils
Why have they fiddled about with combined authorities etc rather than do that?
I assume you mean metropolitan boroughs and not merely any city council there, since some city councils are merely parishes.
What city Ccouncil is merely a parish? Almost all city councils are metropolitan boroughs, except London which is an assembly plus boroughs
Salisbury for starters. You also have places larger than plenty of cities which are just parishes like Weston Super Mare Town Council.
Salisbury is only a city because it has a cathedral, its population of only 45,000 is well below the standard 100,000 population now accepted to be needed for city status
I thought that the C of E was such an integral part of the English State that the very fact of having a cathedral is undoubtedly all you need to be a city. I mean, we can't have people like you destroying the old certainties of Royal control of the approved sect and claiming that Salisbury isn't a city.
Mr. Romford, parliamentary boundaries deepen political divisions on a permanent basis as Holyrood has proven (from killing nationalism stone dead to an independence referendum in a couple of decades).
If England is carved into bits then either the 'assemblies' have power equal to Holyrood or they don't. If they do then that means income tax tinkering, differing health and transports policies, and it'll be about six minutes before demagogues in London are claiming the city should keep more of its own taxes and demagogues elsewhere are claiming they deserve their 'fair share' (per head) of spending and London get too much.
If the 'assemblies' do not have equal power then they're a waste of time and money, as opposed to permanently slicing England into pieces. Neither way is acceptable.
If Scotland deserves a Parliament, so can England. And I don't care that England has a higher population.
Which should have killed independence stone dead. The three unionist parties make a solemn pledge - The Vow - which the Tories then binned when it suited them. Instead of boosting the democratic settlement in Scotland, they destroyed it, dragging Scotland out of the EU against its expressed wishes and then denying any electoral mandate for Scotland to have any say other than to thank England for dragging it along.
Rubbish, see the Scotland Act 2016
And compare it with the promises on the eve of the referendum. And Brexit.
It delivered on the promises of the UK government, even after the Brexit vote only 45% voted SNP at the 2019 General election no different to the 45% who voted Yes in 2014 and actually less than the 50% who voted SNP in the 2015 general election before the EU referendum
That is about as relevant and coherent a response as if it were made in response to a post on F1 racing.
No it is relevant, the SNP are astonishingly polling LESS in most UK general election polls after Brexit than the 50% they got in Scotland at the 2015 UK general election BEFORE Brexit
Mr. Romford, parliamentary boundaries deepen political divisions on a permanent basis as Holyrood has proven (from killing nationalism stone dead to an independence referendum in a couple of decades).
If England is carved into bits then either the 'assemblies' have power equal to Holyrood or they don't. If they do then that means income tax tinkering, differing health and transports policies, and it'll be about six minutes before demagogues in London are claiming the city should keep more of its own taxes and demagogues elsewhere are claiming they deserve their 'fair share' (per head) of spending and London get too much.
If the 'assemblies' do not have equal power then they're a waste of time and money, as opposed to permanently slicing England into pieces. Neither way is acceptable.
If Scotland deserves a Parliament, so can England. And I don't care that England has a higher population.
a) What is the demand among English voters for an English parliament?
b) Which of the parties with even a slight chance of having a pinky on the levers of power has any policy on creating an English parliament?
This page claims pollign north of 50% in support of an English Parliament.
I don't buy it - if that were genuine, and not some kind of proxy opinion for something that sounds correct to show support for England, it would be the policy of a major party by now. This isn't divergence from public opinion like the death penalty, which was changed so long ago, devolved parliaments and constitutional questions hav ebeen live debates for the last couple of decades quite intently, one of the big two would have picked up on it by now.
I do think the Tories will go for it at some point though - especially if they lose the next election.
The issue with regards to a Northern parliament or a Yorkshire parliament is where you draw the borders. Where is the southern boundary of this northern area and how do you manage the edge cases? As for Yorkshire, is that today's bits of Yorkshire, or proper Yorkshire before places like Saddleworth and York and Middlesbrough were removed from it?
All fixable, but has to be done via the consensus that this is the model to apply. As for why no major party has done so, how do they do that? Even within England there is clearly a growing north / south divide. When Labour were largely the north / cities and the Tories the south / countryside it was easy to manage - set your policies accordingly.
But both now represent both and need MPs for both. The Tories are painfully demonstrating how delivering what the north genuinely needs is unpopular in the south. So how do you propose better democratic representation for Yorkshire without proposing something similar for the home counties?
Or just give more powers to city, county and unitary councils
Why have they fiddled about with combined authorities etc rather than do that?
I assume you mean metropolitan boroughs and not merely any city council there, since some city councils are merely parishes.
"City" is just an honorary title, but does not imply any particular powers. It is just like "duke" really, applied to people. Some people like having it, but it does not mean anything much. Young HY is confusing some of us a bit.
Mr. Romford, parliamentary boundaries deepen political divisions on a permanent basis as Holyrood has proven (from killing nationalism stone dead to an independence referendum in a couple of decades).
If England is carved into bits then either the 'assemblies' have power equal to Holyrood or they don't. If they do then that means income tax tinkering, differing health and transports policies, and it'll be about six minutes before demagogues in London are claiming the city should keep more of its own taxes and demagogues elsewhere are claiming they deserve their 'fair share' (per head) of spending and London get too much.
If the 'assemblies' do not have equal power then they're a waste of time and money, as opposed to permanently slicing England into pieces. Neither way is acceptable.
If Scotland deserves a Parliament, so can England. And I don't care that England has a higher population.
Which should have killed independence stone dead. The three unionist parties make a solemn pledge - The Vow - which the Tories then binned when it suited them. Instead of boosting the democratic settlement in Scotland, they destroyed it, dragging Scotland out of the EU against its expressed wishes and then denying any electoral mandate for Scotland to have any say other than to thank England for dragging it along.
Rubbish, see the Scotland Act 2016
And compare it with the promises on the eve of the referendum. And Brexit.
It delivered on the promises of the UK government, even after the Brexit vote only 45% voted SNP at the 2019 General election no different to the 45% who voted Yes in 2014 and actually less than the 50% who voted SNP in the 2015 general election before the EU referendum
That is about as relevant and coherent a response as if it were made in response to a post on F1 racing.
No it is relevant, the SNP are astonishingly polling LESS in most UK general polls after Brexit than the 50% they got in Scotland at the 2015 UK general election BEFORE Brexit
They have a much greater percentage of seats in Scotland than the Conservatives do in England.
Do polls justify government? If so, your party should have resigned months ago.
You're a subversive extremist who is trying to destroy the British Constitution (if you can find it).
Mr. Romford, parliamentary boundaries deepen political divisions on a permanent basis as Holyrood has proven (from killing nationalism stone dead to an independence referendum in a couple of decades).
If England is carved into bits then either the 'assemblies' have power equal to Holyrood or they don't. If they do then that means income tax tinkering, differing health and transports policies, and it'll be about six minutes before demagogues in London are claiming the city should keep more of its own taxes and demagogues elsewhere are claiming they deserve their 'fair share' (per head) of spending and London get too much.
If the 'assemblies' do not have equal power then they're a waste of time and money, as opposed to permanently slicing England into pieces. Neither way is acceptable.
If Scotland deserves a Parliament, so can England. And I don't care that England has a higher population.
a) What is the demand among English voters for an English parliament?
b) Which of the parties with even a slight chance of having a pinky on the levers of power has any policy on creating an English parliament?
This page claims pollign north of 50% in support of an English Parliament.
I don't buy it - if that were genuine, and not some kind of proxy opinion for something that sounds correct to show support for England, it would be the policy of a major party by now. This isn't divergence from public opinion like the death penalty, which was changed so long ago, devolved parliaments and constitutional questions hav ebeen live debates for the last couple of decades quite intently, one of the big two would have picked up on it by now.
I do think the Tories will go for it at some point though - especially if they lose the next election.
The issue with regards to a Northern parliament or a Yorkshire parliament is where you draw the borders. Where is the southern boundary of this northern area and how do you manage the edge cases? As for Yorkshire, is that today's bits of Yorkshire, or proper Yorkshire before places like Saddleworth and York and Middlesbrough were removed from it?
All fixable, but has to be done via the consensus that this is the model to apply. As for why no major party has done so, how do they do that? Even within England there is clearly a growing north / south divide. When Labour were largely the north / cities and the Tories the south / countryside it was easy to manage - set your policies accordingly.
But both now represent both and need MPs for both. The Tories are painfully demonstrating how delivering what the north genuinely needs is unpopular in the south. So how do you propose better democratic representation for Yorkshire without proposing something similar for the home counties?
Or just give more powers to city, county and unitary councils
Why have they fiddled about with combined authorities etc rather than do that?
I assume you mean metropolitan boroughs and not merely any city council there, since some city councils are merely parishes.
What city Ccouncil is merely a parish? Almost all city councils are metropolitan boroughs, except London which is an assembly plus boroughs
Salisbury for starters. You also have places larger than plenty of cities which are just parishes like Weston Super Mare Town Council.
Salisbury is only a city because it has a cathedral, its population of only 45,000 is well below the standard 100,000 population now accepted to be needed for city status
I thought that the C of E was such an integral part of the English State that the very fact of having a cathedral is undoubtedly all you need to be a city. I mean, we can't have people like you destroying the old certainties of Royal control of the approved sect and claiming that Salisbury isn't a city.
It was in the Medieval period and in Scotland and Wales too hence most areas with a cathedral are already a city anyway. Now the general criteria is city status is only granted to urban areas with a population over 100 000
Thinking more about domestic electric prices (I posted earlier a quote from Scottish power for a 1yr fix which offered leccy @79p/kWh).
At some point electric car charging is going to be uncompetitive vs ICE.
Has anyone done the maths?
Assuming;
An efficient, reasonable EV does 4.5 miles per kWh (Hyundai ionic, not Renault tizzy) Leccy @ 79p
~18p/mile
ICE;
50mpg ~11 miles per litre £1.70 per litre
~15.5p/mile
If I’ve done my maths right….? Obviously, the great thing with EV’s are they can be charged off peak, but still…
And that's how the market balances. People buy oil powered vehicles, because oil is available.
Except for the political medalling of course. That 50mpg car is costing about 7.5p/mile in fuel - the rest is tax.
With electricity at a real cost of about 33p/kwh (that's what I'm paying for business electricity at present, which is unaffected by the various machinations of the price cap etc), the EV costs about 7.3p/mile.
It's worth noting that 50mpg is quite poor for a modern ICE, it's perfectly possible to get a big diesel estate which does ~70mpg, which is around 6p/mile before tax at current diesel prices.
EVs are not cheap on energy to run - they are only cheap as a tax arbitrage whereby the government takes from the poor to give tax cuts to the rich.
In the long run, though, natural gas (and sunshine and wind) are incredibly abundant, while oil is rather more scarce.
If I was still doing my old job, I'd be selling 2023/2024 electricity futures in size, because the current electricity price spike is transient.
Mr. Romford, parliamentary boundaries deepen political divisions on a permanent basis as Holyrood has proven (from killing nationalism stone dead to an independence referendum in a couple of decades).
If England is carved into bits then either the 'assemblies' have power equal to Holyrood or they don't. If they do then that means income tax tinkering, differing health and transports policies, and it'll be about six minutes before demagogues in London are claiming the city should keep more of its own taxes and demagogues elsewhere are claiming they deserve their 'fair share' (per head) of spending and London get too much.
If the 'assemblies' do not have equal power then they're a waste of time and money, as opposed to permanently slicing England into pieces. Neither way is acceptable.
If Scotland deserves a Parliament, so can England. And I don't care that England has a higher population.
a) What is the demand among English voters for an English parliament?
b) Which of the parties with even a slight chance of having a pinky on the levers of power has any policy on creating an English parliament?
This page claims pollign north of 50% in support of an English Parliament.
I don't buy it - if that were genuine, and not some kind of proxy opinion for something that sounds correct to show support for England, it would be the policy of a major party by now. This isn't divergence from public opinion like the death penalty, which was changed so long ago, devolved parliaments and constitutional questions hav ebeen live debates for the last couple of decades quite intently, one of the big two would have picked up on it by now.
I do think the Tories will go for it at some point though - especially if they lose the next election.
The issue with regards to a Northern parliament or a Yorkshire parliament is where you draw the borders. Where is the southern boundary of this northern area and how do you manage the edge cases? As for Yorkshire, is that today's bits of Yorkshire, or proper Yorkshire before places like Saddleworth and York and Middlesbrough were removed from it?
All fixable, but has to be done via the consensus that this is the model to apply. As for why no major party has done so, how do they do that? Even within England there is clearly a growing north / south divide. When Labour were largely the north / cities and the Tories the south / countryside it was easy to manage - set your policies accordingly.
But both now represent both and need MPs for both. The Tories are painfully demonstrating how delivering what the north genuinely needs is unpopular in the south. So how do you propose better democratic representation for Yorkshire without proposing something similar for the home counties?
Or just give more powers to city, county and unitary councils
Why have they fiddled about with combined authorities etc rather than do that?
I assume you mean metropolitan boroughs and not merely any city council there, since some city councils are merely parishes.
What city Ccouncil is merely a parish? Almost all city councils are metropolitan boroughs, except London which is an assembly plus boroughs
Salisbury for starters. You also have places larger than plenty of cities which are just parishes like Weston Super Mare Town Council.
Salisbury is only a city because it has a cathedral, its population of only 45,000 is well below the standard 100,000 population now accepted to be needed for city status
I thought that the C of E was such an integral part of the English State that the very fact of having a cathedral is undoubtedly all you need to be a city. I mean, we can't have people like you destroying the old certainties of Royal control of the approved sect and claiming that Salisbury isn't a city.
It was in the Medieval period and in Scotland and Wales too but every area with a cathedral is already a city anyway. So now the general criteria is city status is only granted to urban areas with a population over 100 000
IN other words, we all have to put up with mediaeval English customs in the government of the UK, derived from the unwarranted supremacy of the C of E and the failure to disestablish it.
Number plates for cyclists is the worst idea I've ever heard in my life.
Apparently Grant Shapps is behind it.
It's a great idea, and the insurance!
Next time one of the ******** runs a red, a fine and points on their corresponding car driving licence (or if they don't have one, a double fine). It's the least they deserve. Take that you wanton and furious cyclists!
Mr. Romford, parliamentary boundaries deepen political divisions on a permanent basis as Holyrood has proven (from killing nationalism stone dead to an independence referendum in a couple of decades).
If England is carved into bits then either the 'assemblies' have power equal to Holyrood or they don't. If they do then that means income tax tinkering, differing health and transports policies, and it'll be about six minutes before demagogues in London are claiming the city should keep more of its own taxes and demagogues elsewhere are claiming they deserve their 'fair share' (per head) of spending and London get too much.
If the 'assemblies' do not have equal power then they're a waste of time and money, as opposed to permanently slicing England into pieces. Neither way is acceptable.
If Scotland deserves a Parliament, so can England. And I don't care that England has a higher population.
Which should have killed independence stone dead. The three unionist parties make a solemn pledge - The Vow - which the Tories then binned when it suited them. Instead of boosting the democratic settlement in Scotland, they destroyed it, dragging Scotland out of the EU against its expressed wishes and then denying any electoral mandate for Scotland to have any say other than to thank England for dragging it along.
Rubbish, see the Scotland Act 2016
And compare it with the promises on the eve of the referendum. And Brexit.
It delivered on the promises of the UK government, even after the Brexit vote only 45% voted SNP at the 2019 General election no different to the 45% who voted Yes in 2014 and actually less than the 50% who voted SNP in the 2015 general election before the EU referendum
That is about as relevant and coherent a response as if it were made in response to a post on F1 racing.
No it is relevant, the SNP are astonishingly polling LESS in most UK general polls after Brexit than the 50% they got in Scotland at the 2015 UK general election BEFORE Brexit
They have a much greater percentage of seats in Scotland than the Conservatives do in England.
Do polls justify government? If so, your party should have resigned months ago.
You're a subversive extremist who is trying to destroy the British Constitution (if you can find it).
So what, still less than 50% of Scots voted for them. The UK government has final say on the Union and the UK government is quite right to refuse the indyref2 demanded by a party not voted for by most Scots even after the Brexit vote
Main takeaway I had was that turbo lag might return, plus the MGU-K (no more MGU-H) will provide triple the power of the H/K units today. So if that goes wonky you're ruined.
Lag won't be a problem unless they do away with the 125krpm impeller speed limit on the cold side of the turbo. MGU-K will torque fill anyway to replace anti-lag from MGU-H. Road technology finally making its way to F1.
F2 with its big single jingle uses conventional anti lag by burning fuel in the manifold which would be an option but that's a bit not-green for F1.
It’s rather annoying to see F1 take a big step backwards in thermal efficiency, on the altar of yet again trying to attract an entry from VAG.
Alfa and Mercedes will probably exit F1 by 2030 as those brands will be 100% BEV then so they've got to do something. Audi is a good fit for F1 but I'm not sure what Porsche gets out of it. The brand can't go much more upmarket and Porschexperten tend to be a bit sniffy about F1 as it is the Coronation Street of motorsport.
Mr. Romford, parliamentary boundaries deepen political divisions on a permanent basis as Holyrood has proven (from killing nationalism stone dead to an independence referendum in a couple of decades).
If England is carved into bits then either the 'assemblies' have power equal to Holyrood or they don't. If they do then that means income tax tinkering, differing health and transports policies, and it'll be about six minutes before demagogues in London are claiming the city should keep more of its own taxes and demagogues elsewhere are claiming they deserve their 'fair share' (per head) of spending and London get too much.
If the 'assemblies' do not have equal power then they're a waste of time and money, as opposed to permanently slicing England into pieces. Neither way is acceptable.
If Scotland deserves a Parliament, so can England. And I don't care that England has a higher population.
a) What is the demand among English voters for an English parliament?
b) Which of the parties with even a slight chance of having a pinky on the levers of power has any policy on creating an English parliament?
This page claims pollign north of 50% in support of an English Parliament.
I don't buy it - if that were genuine, and not some kind of proxy opinion for something that sounds correct to show support for England, it would be the policy of a major party by now. This isn't divergence from public opinion like the death penalty, which was changed so long ago, devolved parliaments and constitutional questions hav ebeen live debates for the last couple of decades quite intently, one of the big two would have picked up on it by now.
I do think the Tories will go for it at some point though - especially if they lose the next election.
The issue with regards to a Northern parliament or a Yorkshire parliament is where you draw the borders. Where is the southern boundary of this northern area and how do you manage the edge cases? As for Yorkshire, is that today's bits of Yorkshire, or proper Yorkshire before places like Saddleworth and York and Middlesbrough were removed from it?
All fixable, but has to be done via the consensus that this is the model to apply. As for why no major party has done so, how do they do that? Even within England there is clearly a growing north / south divide. When Labour were largely the north / cities and the Tories the south / countryside it was easy to manage - set your policies accordingly.
But both now represent both and need MPs for both. The Tories are painfully demonstrating how delivering what the north genuinely needs is unpopular in the south. So how do you propose better democratic representation for Yorkshire without proposing something similar for the home counties?
Or just give more powers to city, county and unitary councils
Why have they fiddled about with combined authorities etc rather than do that?
I assume you mean metropolitan boroughs and not merely any city council there, since some city councils are merely parishes.
What city Ccouncil is merely a parish? Almost all city councils are metropolitan boroughs, except London which is an assembly plus boroughs
Salisbury for starters. You also have places larger than plenty of cities which are just parishes like Weston Super Mare Town Council.
Salisbury is only a city because it has a cathedral, its population of only 45,000 is well below the standard 100,000 population now accepted to be needed for city status
You've tried this one on before - there is no official requirement for a cathedral or to be over 100,000 to be a city (though the cathedral aspect does appear to have correlation with those which have parish councils, as I see wiki says Ripon and Wells are also like that)
I was only teasing you HYUFD, I knew what you meant when you said City Council and in most cases there would be no distinction, but that's no excuse to pretend 'now accepted to be needed' is an actual requirement - there's more than a dozen places larger which are not cities, there are also 'Cathedral Towns', and some of the places just this year awarded city status are smaller than 100,000 (most are larger, but not all) - Dunfermline, Wrexham.
So even you cannot believe it is a requirement when recent confirmations have not met this 'now accepted' rule which you apply but not Her Majesty or the government apparently - perhaps you should tell the Queen to withdraw city status for Inverness. Why are you able to follow this 'accepted' rule but they do not?
And leaving that all aside, and all this being in good fun, you asked which City Council was merely a parish, and I provided you an example, of which there are several. You've then replied 'It's only a city because X' - but that doesn't matter since the point is proven that some cities are indeed just parish councils, even if it was just because of historical reasons.
I know you will come back and say they are not cities in the sense big metropolitan boroughs are, which is true, but they are still cities and that was the sole point being made - that some city councils are parish councils. Not many, but some.
Comments
Far better for Yorkshire, or a city, to spend money on provision of local services than have it dictated from Whitehall.
What's different is I don't think it would be needed. In Britain the Prime Minister has the power to run departments directly anyway in an emergency, without any changes in them, because the Prime Minister is the Head of the Cabinet. Technically, in Australia Ministers answer to the Governor-General so the Prime Minister can't directly interfere in a department s/he is not a member of.
It was actually a sensible precaution to ensure continuity of government from that point of view, but the way he's done it is incredibly stupid and counterproductive.
If England is carved into bits then either the 'assemblies' have power equal to Holyrood or they don't. If they do then that means income tax tinkering, differing health and transports policies, and it'll be about six minutes before demagogues in London are claiming the city should keep more of its own taxes and demagogues elsewhere are claiming they deserve their 'fair share' (per head) of spending and London get too much.
If the 'assemblies' do not have equal power then they're a waste of time and money, as opposed to permanently slicing England into pieces. Neither way is acceptable.
If Scotland deserves a Parliament, so can England. And I don't care that England has a higher population.
All parties talk up localism in their GE manifestos, yet any efforts tend to be piecemeal, sporadic and confused. I don't put that entirely at the hands of Sir Humphreys, I think it's because its just something the politicians feel they have to say, but don't really give a crap about. Voters sure don't - they also talk about localism, but are just as dismissive of their local area doing anything, except when they can blame national government instead (see how people suddenly become fans of their local authority when it is proposed to be merged etc).
This government certainly don't care about local government, they've even removed the name from the relevant department.
The problem of national democratic representation is on its way to being resolved in those places. But not in England. No parliament for you. "And we don't need one, we have Westminster". Which IS the problem, as it drives the endless Britain is England stupidity.
Then, have a Parliament for the rest of England, based in say Leicester.
It would still be a Parliament for around half the UK, but it would be much less overwhelming in size than a Parliament for England as a whole.
https://mobile.twitter.com/AccountableGOP/status/1559728488894046210
You may well want to ensure that continues, in which case why not just abolish parliamentary elections and ensure your party rules without threat?
https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article.more-efficient-less-fuel-and-carbon-net-zero-7-things-you-need-to-know-about.ZhtzvU3cPCv8QO7jtFxQR.html
Main takeaway I had was that turbo lag might return, plus the MGU-K (no more MGU-H) will provide triple the power of the H/K units today. So if that goes wonky you're ruined.
I really don't get how people not only admire and support a politician - that makes sense, though we disagree on who people admire and support, especially if they have been successful - but unironically worship them.
At least if they were the founder of some kind of political ideology it'd make more sense.
b) Which of the parties with even a slight chance of having a pinky on the levers of power has any policy on creating an English parliament?
He'd almost certainly have been stopped by the massive Russian and Austrian armies that were converging on his position, even if the Prussians and British/Belgian/Dutch had been locally defeated, and huge British reinforcements were also on the way too. He was outnumbered overall about 4:1.
Napoleon was trying to fight a series of defensive blows to hold onto being emperor of France again, not reconquer Europe - although that's what all the allies feared.
Waterloo was a postscript that brought a very quick end to it.
Certain matters (giving such consideration to constituent parts of the UK, a threshold [I'd argue a narrow victory either way could be cause for a second referendum rather than disregarding the result], and so on) should have been contemplated ahead of time. That, and the weird absence of a defined Leave platform (EEA?), were strange absences.
And bear in mind lots of those workers later become managers.
b) Individually? None. It will need to happen as a constitutional convention. Likely only to happen once something happens wrt either Ireland or Scotland which I expect before the end of this decade.
Over time, assuming Scotland remains in the UK, there will be naturally increasing divisions. There is not the same degree of desire for a Parliament as there was in Scotland, it's true, but also vehement opposition from many to the notion of cutting England to bits.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devolved_English_parliament#Opinion_polls
I don't buy it - if that were genuine, and not some kind of proxy opinion for something that sounds correct to show support for England, it would be the policy of a major party by now. This isn't divergence from public opinion like the death penalty, which was changed so long ago, devolved parliaments and constitutional questions hav ebeen live debates for the last couple of decades quite intently, one of the big two would have picked up on it by now.
I do think the Tories will go for it at some point though - especially if they lose the next election.
Basically if the GOP win there’s no fraud and if the Dems win there is .
The GOP deserve to be eviscerated and wiped out in their current form .
Interest rates at that level would push millions of people out of their homes and into bankruptcy, as they couldn't afford repayments on their mortgages.
The house price collapse it would precipitate as properties got repossessed and dumped on the market would affect your own equity, the economy, and
the tax that's used to pay for your pension.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/16/i-worked-on-privatisation-england-water-1989-failed-regime
'Where next? Here it’s worth engaging with an interesting but deeply self-contradictory defence of the sector by the head of the Centre for Policy Studies, Robert Colvile. He acknowledges upfront that the “water companies are essentially contractors. They are running the water network on behalf of the state, in a fashion agreed with the state, to targets laid down by the state.”'
There is of course a lot of variation across the region. But there are generally more exceptions allowed than many Republican states want. First trimester abortion is legal in Tunisia. Abortion is legal in Rojava. Saudia Arabia and Iran, the 2 countries that are ruled by Islamic fundamentalists, allow first trimester abortions to protect a woman’s mental health in some situations, as well as physical health. First trimester abortion is allowed in Iran if the foetus has a serious thalassemia (a problem in the region), for example. Exact practice varies, but it’s a more liberal arrangement than in Oklahoma. Countries like Egypt have more restrictive laws, but enforcement isn’t that strict. And then other countries, like Yemen and Libya, are more restrictive still.
So, the situation is poor in most of the Middle East and North Africa, but it’s a mixed picture and not quite as bad as in Texas, Wisconsin, South Dakota etc.
You'd be right to say tax cuts were a shotgun whereas public spending is a sniper, though.
That is, if people claim it has not been done correctly, it does not matter if they are wrong.
And with the door opened I expect this time if Trump does edge out a win (it was tight in several states last time), Democrats may well adopt similar tactics (as opposed to simply moaning a lot).
All fixable, but has to be done via the consensus that this is the model to apply. As for why no major party has done so, how do they do that? Even within England there is clearly a growing north / south divide. When Labour were largely the north / cities and the Tories the south / countryside it was easy to manage - set your policies accordingly.
But both now represent both and need MPs for both. The Tories are painfully demonstrating how delivering what the north genuinely needs is unpopular in the south. So how do you propose better democratic representation for Yorkshire without proposing something similar for the home counties?
F2 with its big single jingle uses conventional anti lag by burning fuel in the manifold which would be an option but that's a bit not-green for F1.
And we've already had over half a decade of that with Brexit.
Supposedly that was to Take Back Control for the UK from the perfidious forrin. Then suddenly it was "fuck the Northern Irish". Far from take back control, we have given part of the state away. And the funniest part of all is how ANGRY Brexit winners are - they won, yet live in constant fear that they have lost.
Like Douglas Adams' ultimate answer, Brexit makes no sense because most people don't know the question.
(There was a close race for that seat in 2006 though, interestingly)
But that would have required quite a few other counterfactuals.
I assume you mean metropolitan boroughs and not merely any city council there, since some city councils are merely parishes.
Central government creates a box of powers and an application process. The really obvious cases (Scotland or Catalonia) get the powers on the nod.
Counties and districts get together in whatever configurations they want to apply for some or all of the powers. Beyond a certain threshold of powers, they need referendum support.
The keen distinctive regions (Andalusia in Spain, Granadaland or Yorkshire in England) will apply for lots of powers quickly and get them. The less obvious cases will follow, because they won't want to be left out.
Messy and asymmetric, but if it's what people want, that's fine.
In that case tax cuts are a highly inefficient measure from promoting growth.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_law
Don't know if that's true, though it suggests a lack of confidence in Democratic voters being realistically tactical in their voting. Labour or the LDs could teach them a thing or two based on recent by-elections.
I'd suggest that an English parliament that resulted from a spasm of outrage at perceived devolved inequality rather than as a recognition of the settled will of English voters would not be auspicious.
It is deeply depressing and we must work to avoid this happening in UK.
That 50mpg car is costing about 7.5p/mile in fuel - the rest is tax.
With electricity at a real cost of about 33p/kwh (that's what I'm paying for business electricity at present, which is unaffected by the various machinations of the price cap etc), the EV costs about 7.3p/mile.
It's worth noting that 50mpg is quite poor for a modern ICE, it's perfectly possible to get a big diesel estate which does ~70mpg, which is around 6p/mile before tax at current diesel prices.
EVs are not cheap on energy to run - they are only cheap as a tax arbitrage whereby the government takes from the poor to give tax cuts to the rich.
If I was still doing my old job, I'd be selling 2023/2024 electricity futures in size, because the current electricity price spike is transient.
Britain’s relationship to Ireland could and should have been like its one with Canada or Australia.
And the main reason why it did not happen is because of Britain's stupidity to recognise a legitimate claim to democratic self-governance.
And of course, more recently, Remainers learnt this the hard way, as the same arguments apply to the calls for an EU referendum. Denied and denied. The reckoning was all the more bitter when it came.
If the Scots want a referendum, they should of course have one.
Do polls justify government? If so, your party should have resigned months ago.
You're a subversive extremist who is trying to destroy the British Constitution (if you can find it).
I would recommend reading Matt Simmonds Twilight in the Desert.
Next time one of the ******** runs a red, a fine and points on their corresponding car driving licence (or if they don't have one, a double fine). It's the least they deserve. Take that you wanton and furious cyclists!
I was only teasing you HYUFD, I knew what you meant when you said City Council and in most cases there would be no distinction, but that's no excuse to pretend 'now accepted to be needed' is an actual requirement - there's more than a dozen places larger which are not cities, there are also 'Cathedral Towns', and some of the places just this year awarded city status are smaller than 100,000 (most are larger, but not all) - Dunfermline, Wrexham.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_status_in_the_United_Kingdom#England
So even you cannot believe it is a requirement when recent confirmations have not met this 'now accepted' rule which you apply but not Her Majesty or the government apparently - perhaps you should tell the Queen to withdraw city status for Inverness. Why are you able to follow this 'accepted' rule but they do not?
And leaving that all aside, and all this being in good fun, you asked which City Council was merely a parish, and I provided you an example, of which there are several. You've then replied 'It's only a city because X' - but that doesn't matter since the point is proven that some cities are indeed just parish councils, even if it was just because of historical reasons.
I know you will come back and say they are not cities in the sense big metropolitan boroughs are, which is true, but they are still cities and that was the sole point being made - that some city councils are parish councils. Not many, but some.