The death penalty is probably more trouble than it’s worth.
But, I have no moral objection to it. The world is a better place with people like Julius Streicher, Amon Goeth, Hans Frank, and Lavrentiy Beria permanently removed from it.
What about all the people we've killed incorrectly? What about their lives, do they not matter?
It depends what you’re executing people for. The guilt of those I mentioned was manifest.
I think its use is entirely legitimate during, and in the immediate aftermath of, war.
How can anyone with a brain support the death penalty?
The Police and the CPS get it wrong, if they get it wrong the person is already dead. It doesn't make any sense to have it from that point of view. It doesn't act as a deterrent, see the USA.
I’ve actually come 180 degrees on this. I used to be a total liberal and I firmly believed the death penalty should be reserved for absolutely the worst cases: traitors, child killers, police slayers, nameless itinerants, and obviously foreign stealers of penny loaves etc
Now I would cast the net more widely. We have to get tough
Quite.
Pavement parkers. Litterers. People who flush wet wipes. Drivers who don't give way to pedestrians at side roads. Hillwalkers who listen to music out loud (indeed, anyone who does this).
- Wearing a loud shirt in a built up area - Being in possession of an offensive wife
Little old ladies who take too long at checkouts - chatting and fumbling away with their purse.
No! you say
But that's the trouble ... where do you draw the line?
I oppose the death penalty primarily on the miscarriage of justice grounds. I recognise many other people support it. Shouldn't that opinion be represented in Parliament?
Yes, sure. But like with so many issues strongly held opinions over the death penalty generate heat rather than light because supporters of the death penalty endlessly go on about the rather obvious case for it, while ignoring the weakest elements of their case.
Death penalty supporters tend to be found among those who don't realise that no argument is stronger than its weakest links, and that it is there, not the obvious strengths, that the argument needs to be made.
I oppose the death penalty primarily on the miscarriage of justice grounds. I recognise many other people support it. Shouldn't that opinion be represented in Parliament?
Seems to be in HMG, who have been issuing a reverse ferret over the Party Chair's comments. But as the Graun feed says -
"As Tory deputy chair, Anderson is not a member of the government, and he is certainly not in charge of penal policy, and so in one sense his views don’t matter. But that does not mean they are not important. Rishi Sunak did not appoint him despite his hardline and illiberal views on crime, welfare, immigration etc. He appointed him because of them. Anderson is supposed to show working class Ukip and Brexit party voters that their views are represented in the Tory party.
But if, as soon as Anderson does something likely to appeal to this constituency, government colleagues say they don’t agree, then at some point the man in the Ashfield shopping centre might feel he’s being strung along."
Being strung along still better than being strung up, which could happen if it turned out he wasn't being strung along.
Mm. Something else just up on the Graun feed - Mr Sunak being asked about it.
'Asked why he did not support the death penalty, he declined to make a moral argument against it. Instead, according to the PA report, he implied that it was not necessary. He said the government had “tightened up sentencing laws for the most violent criminals, they spend longer in prison”.'
The Ukrainians have reported nearly 3,000 Russian deaths over the past three days. There is also video reportedly of destroyed/abandoned armored equipment from Russia's 155th Naval Infantry Brigade on the Vuhledar front. It shows 31 armored vehicles, including ~ 15 tanks (including T-72B3 and a T-80BVM) with the remainder BMP, MT-LB, and others.
How can anyone with a brain support the death penalty?
The Police and the CPS get it wrong, if they get it wrong the person is already dead. It doesn't make any sense to have it from that point of view. It doesn't act as a deterrent, see the USA.
I’ve actually come 180 degrees on this. I used to be a total liberal and I firmly believed the death penalty should be reserved for absolutely the worst cases: traitors, child killers, police slayers, nameless itinerants, and obviously foreign stealers of penny loaves etc
Now I would cast the net more widely. We have to get tough
Why?
Are murder rates increasing?
Épater les bourgeois. The basis of much of Leon's output.
How can anyone with a brain support the death penalty?
The Police and the CPS get it wrong, if they get it wrong the person is already dead. It doesn't make any sense to have it from that point of view. It doesn't act as a deterrent, see the USA.
I’ve actually come 180 degrees on this. I used to be a total liberal and I firmly believed the death penalty should be reserved for absolutely the worst cases: traitors, child killers, police slayers, nameless itinerants, and obviously foreign stealers of penny loaves etc
Now I would cast the net more widely. We have to get tough
If this country followed others or was still following Victorian laws you would have been hung decades ago - so I would be very careful over what you wish for...
A free one-way ocean cruise and an activity holiday clearing the Australian bush, in practice, was quite common.
I oppose the death penalty primarily on the miscarriage of justice grounds. I recognise many other people support it. Shouldn't that opinion be represented in Parliament?
Yes, sure. But like with so many issues strongly held opinions over the death penalty generate heat rather than light because supporters of the death penalty endlessly go on about the rather obvious case for it, while ignoring the weakest elements of their case.
Death penalty supporters tend to be found among those who don't realise that no argument is stronger than its weakest links, and that it is there, not the obvious strengths, that the argument needs to be made.
Fair enough. I can't get too excited about death penalty supporters because under our current system it's never coming back.
"Video reportedly of destroyed/abandoned armored equipment from Russia's 155th Naval Infantry Brigade on the Vuhledar front. It shows 31 armored vehicles, including ~ 15 tanks (including T-72B3 and a T-80BVM) with the remainder BMP, MT-LB, and others."
How can anyone with a brain support the death penalty?
The Police and the CPS get it wrong, if they get it wrong the person is already dead. It doesn't make any sense to have it from that point of view. It doesn't act as a deterrent, see the USA.
I’ve actually come 180 degrees on this. I used to be a total liberal and I firmly believed the death penalty should be reserved for absolutely the worst cases: traitors, child killers, police slayers, nameless itinerants, and obviously foreign stealers of penny loaves etc
Now I would cast the net more widely. We have to get tough
I reckon there’d be some MPs and voters in favour of executing drug users.
A bit of tough love to win the war on drugs.
It would have the effect of depleting the number of posters on here, but perhaps worth a try.
And depleting the number of MPs I'd have thought.
On the upside, there would be lots of premonition opportunities for those geeks journalists who actually know something about a subject, but can't go to press conferences, because that needs a proper generalist who can ask The Critical Question.
My current TL:DR is that he was an excellent and attentive local councillor, based on people I know who lived in his ward when he was a councillor. And I think he is perhaps trying to treat his constituency like a bigger council ward - TBF that is a very well know strategy. He's not very interested in what the dinner party or professional left in London think, with their navel gazing theology about how they are still the real working class despite their professions or the wealth they have made from unearned property gains.
I think that the Conservative leadership have made him Deputy Chairman as a foil to Greg Hands as the Times suggests, and also to shore up the Red Wall vote against voters drifting to Reform UK and similar parties. There are usually a number of Reform UK types all over Anderson's social media, often from distant parts of the country. I think the red meat in the rhetoric tells us what CCO think will shore up their position.
I think what's left of Labour representation in Ashfield - 2 Councillors from 33 where they had 22 from 2015 to 2019 (that's the Zadrozny effect) - are from the left side of the party. One of them is the Keir Morrison guy who photobombed Ed Milliband with a "Trade Unionists will Dance on Thatcher's Grave" teeshirt.
On the things he says, I think there are some cockups (eg when Michael Crick caught him - I think a lot of politicians would do the same), some shooting from the hip (eg 'put disruptive tenants in tents and make them grow potatoes'), some are stuff that I find unacceptable (eg death penalty), some which are good (the inexpensive meals and cooking lessons are excellent, and now the whole media has followed), and some which are embroidered anecdotes that Anderson-hating peeps keep repeating to each other (eg scab Anderson at the miners' strike - he was 17 at the time FFS, the rocks across the traveller encampment).
How can anyone with a brain support the death penalty?
The Police and the CPS get it wrong, if they get it wrong the person is already dead. It doesn't make any sense to have it from that point of view. It doesn't act as a deterrent, see the USA.
I’ve actually come 180 degrees on this. I used to be a total liberal and I firmly believed the death penalty should be reserved for absolutely the worst cases: traitors, child killers, police slayers, nameless itinerants, and obviously foreign stealers of penny loaves etc
Now I would cast the net more widely. We have to get tough
Quite.
Pavement parkers. Litterers. People who flush wet wipes. Drivers who don't give way to pedestrians at side roads. Hillwalkers who listen to music out loud (indeed, anyone who does this).
People who have a ground height letter box with heavy duty brushes which is down a long pathway and behind two gates.
Summary execution on the village green.
People who deliver leaflets despite me having a ground height letter box with heavy duty brushes which is down a long pathway and behind two gates
How can anyone with a brain support the death penalty?
The Police and the CPS get it wrong, if they get it wrong the person is already dead. It doesn't make any sense to have it from that point of view. It doesn't act as a deterrent, see the USA.
I’ve actually come 180 degrees on this. I used to be a total liberal and I firmly believed the death penalty should be reserved for absolutely the worst cases: traitors, child killers, police slayers, nameless itinerants, and obviously foreign stealers of penny loaves etc
Now I would cast the net more widely. We have to get tough
Quite.
Pavement parkers. Litterers. People who flush wet wipes. Drivers who don't give way to pedestrians at side roads. Hillwalkers who listen to music out loud (indeed, anyone who does this).
People who have a ground height letter box with heavy duty brushes which is down a long pathway and behind two gates.
Summary execution on the village green.
People who deliver leaflets despite me having a ground height letter box with heavy duty brushes which is down a long pathway and behind two gates
Side by side on the same gallows?
Good opportunity to talk things through for both sides to gain forgiveness from their victim for their crimes? Good idea.
As long as the leafletter didn't use it as an opportunity to hand over some campaign literature.
How can anyone with a brain support the death penalty?
The Police and the CPS get it wrong, if they get it wrong the person is already dead. It doesn't make any sense to have it from that point of view. It doesn't act as a deterrent, see the USA.
I’ve actually come 180 degrees on this. I used to be a total liberal and I firmly believed the death penalty should be reserved for absolutely the worst cases: traitors, child killers, police slayers, nameless itinerants, and obviously foreign stealers of penny loaves etc
Now I would cast the net more widely. We have to get tough
Quite.
Pavement parkers. Litterers. People who flush wet wipes. Drivers who don't give way to pedestrians at side roads. Hillwalkers who listen to music out loud (indeed, anyone who does this).
People who have a ground height letter box with heavy duty brushes which is down a long pathway and behind two gates.
Summary execution on the village green.
People who deliver leaflets despite me having a ground height letter box with heavy duty brushes which is down a long pathway and behind two gates
Side by side on the same gallows?
Good opportunity to talk things through for both sides to gain forgiveness from their victim for their crimes? Good idea.
As long as the leafletter didn't use it as an opportunity to hand over some campaign literature.
How can anyone with a brain support the death penalty?
The Police and the CPS get it wrong, if they get it wrong the person is already dead. It doesn't make any sense to have it from that point of view. It doesn't act as a deterrent, see the USA.
I’ve actually come 180 degrees on this. I used to be a total liberal and I firmly believed the death penalty should be reserved for absolutely the worst cases: traitors, child killers, police slayers, nameless itinerants, and obviously foreign stealers of penny loaves etc
Now I would cast the net more widely. We have to get tough
Quite.
Pavement parkers. Litterers. People who flush wet wipes. Drivers who don't give way to pedestrians at side roads. Hillwalkers who listen to music out loud (indeed, anyone who does this).
People who have a ground height letter box with heavy duty brushes which is down a long pathway and behind two gates.
Summary execution on the village green.
People who deliver leaflets despite me having a ground height letter box with heavy duty brushes which is down a long pathway and behind two gates
Side by side on the same gallows?
Good opportunity to talk things through for both sides to gain forgiveness from their victim for their crimes? Good idea.
As long as the leafletter didn't use it as an opportunity to hand over some campaign literature.
TBF people with two gates and a long pathway should put a letterbox on the outside gate...
I oppose the death penalty primarily on the miscarriage of justice grounds. I recognise many other people support it. Shouldn't that opinion be represented in Parliament?
Yes, sure. But like with so many issues strongly held opinions over the death penalty generate heat rather than light because supporters of the death penalty endlessly go on about the rather obvious case for it, while ignoring the weakest elements of their case.
Death penalty supporters tend to be found among those who don't realise that no argument is stronger than its weakest links, and that it is there, not the obvious strengths, that the argument needs to be made.
Fair enough. I can't get too excited about death penalty supporters because under our current system it's never coming back.
Agreed. But it would be nice if public debate about tricky issues consisted of more than the assertion of the very obvious strengths of a case while obscuring or denying the weakest points.
Death penalty. Abortion. Assisted dying. Brexit. Scottish independence. Boat people. Migration. Rail worker strikes. NHS funding. All these and more would be assisted by the principle.
I oppose the death penalty primarily on the miscarriage of justice grounds. I recognise many other people support it. Shouldn't that opinion be represented in Parliament?
Yes, sure. But like with so many issues strongly held opinions over the death penalty generate heat rather than light because supporters of the death penalty endlessly go on about the rather obvious case for it, while ignoring the weakest elements of their case.
Death penalty supporters tend to be found among those who don't realise that no argument is stronger than its weakest links, and that it is there, not the obvious strengths, that the argument needs to be made.
Fair enough. I can't get too excited about death penalty supporters because under our current system it's never coming back.
I agree. It isn't. For me an illustration of where representative democracy (as opposed to direct) earns its keep.
All our relatives are apparently safe. Some who live 100 miles from the epicentre have got a damaged window, but a few other buildings in their town collapsed. They say the shaking lasted for a minute, like hammers were hitting under their house.
But a friend of Mrs J has childhood friends who she Whatsapps every few days. The friend has heard nothing from them since the earthquake, and she learnt last night they died.
We hear of these tragedies every few years; earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods. It's easy for us, living in our relatively stable country, to underestimate the utter, sheer horror of these tragedies.
How can anyone with a brain support the death penalty?
The Police and the CPS get it wrong, if they get it wrong the person is already dead. It doesn't make any sense to have it from that point of view. It doesn't act as a deterrent, see the USA.
I’ve actually come 180 degrees on this. I used to be a total liberal and I firmly believed the death penalty should be reserved for absolutely the worst cases: traitors, child killers, police slayers, nameless itinerants, and obviously foreign stealers of penny loaves etc
Now I would cast the net more widely. We have to get tough
Quite.
Pavement parkers. Litterers. People who flush wet wipes. Drivers who don't give way to pedestrians at side roads. Hillwalkers who listen to music out loud (indeed, anyone who does this).
There are a good deal more than that, starting with drivers who mislead (being polite) the DVLA about their eyesight to keep their driving licences rather than moving house to somewhere sensible 10 years earlier, those who decide they are capable of driving after a 12 hours shirt, and so on.
I'm in the clear. In the hills I tend to sing not listen to music.
I oppose the death penalty primarily on the miscarriage of justice grounds. I recognise many other people support it. Shouldn't that opinion be represented in Parliament?
Seems to be in HMG, who have been issuing a reverse ferret over the Party Chair's comments. But as the Graun feed says -
"As Tory deputy chair, Anderson is not a member of the government, and he is certainly not in charge of penal policy, and so in one sense his views don’t matter. But that does not mean they are not important. Rishi Sunak did not appoint him despite his hardline and illiberal views on crime, welfare, immigration etc. He appointed him because of them. Anderson is supposed to show working class Ukip and Brexit party voters that their views are represented in the Tory party.
But if, as soon as Anderson does something likely to appeal to this constituency, government colleagues say they don’t agree, then at some point the man in the Ashfield shopping centre might feel he’s being strung along."
Being strung along still better than being strung up, which could happen if it turned out he wasn't being strung along.
Mm. Something else just up on the Graun feed - Mr Sunak being asked about it.
'Asked why he did not support the death penalty, he declined to make a moral argument against it. Instead, according to the PA report, he implied that it was not necessary. He said the government had “tightened up sentencing laws for the most violent criminals, they spend longer in prison”.'
Probably a reasonably political response.
Everyone knows* the death penalty isn't coming back, it's parliamentary consensus, so there's no need for vote for someone who strongly believes it to be wrong, but appearing ambivalent might save some votes from going to a nutty pro-death party.
*Of course, everyone knew we'd never leave the EU, it was parliamentary consensus, so there was no need to vote for pro-EU candidates, either.
How can anyone with a brain support the death penalty?
The Police and the CPS get it wrong, if they get it wrong the person is already dead. It doesn't make any sense to have it from that point of view. It doesn't act as a deterrent, see the USA.
So Lee Anderson is a moron.
Does the argument against it rest on the possibility of miscarriages of justice?
Not exclusively.
I feel the government shouldn't execute its citizens when they are already in custody and not a clear and present risk to the population.
My current TL:DR is that he was an excellent and attentive local councillor, based on people I know who lived in his ward when he was a councillor. And I think he is perhaps trying to treat his constituency like a bigger council ward - TBF that is a very well know strategy. He's not very interested in what the dinner party or professional left in London think, with their navel gazing theology about how they are still the real working class despite their professions or the wealth they have made from unearned property gains.
I think that the Conservative leadership have made him Deputy Chairman as a foil to Greg Hands as the Times suggests, and also to shore up the Red Wall vote against voters drifting to Reform UK and similar parties. There are usually a number of Reform UK types all over Anderson's social media, often from distant parts of the country. I think the red meat in the rhetoric tells us what CCO think will shore up their position.
I think what's left of Labour representation in Ashfield - 2 Councillors from 33 where they had 22 from 2015 to 2019 (that's the Zadrozny effect) - are from the left side of the party. One of them is the Keir Morrison guy who photobombed Ed Milliband with a "Trade Unionists will Dance on Thatcher's Grave" teeshirt.
On the things he says, I think there are some cockups (eg when Michael Crick caught him - I think a lot of politicians would do the same), some shooting from the hip (eg 'put disruptive tenants in tents and make them grow potatoes'), some are stuff that I find unacceptable (eg death penalty), some which are good (the inexpensive meals and cooking lessons are excellent, and now the whole media has followed), and some which are embroidered anecdotes that Anderson-hating peeps keep repeating to each other (eg scab Anderson at the miners' strike - he was 17 at the time FFS, the rocks across the traveller encampment).
His getting in a JCB and putting rocks across the entrance had the desired effect - the travellers couldn't access it and the council finally got off its arse and erected the barrier they were supposed to have put up.
Lee is also a great proponent of the NHS. His wife was taken to hospital five times and sent home five times - the double lung transplant she required because of her cystic fibrosis finally happened on the sixth attempt. It was a great success.
How can anyone with a brain support the death penalty?
The Police and the CPS get it wrong, if they get it wrong the person is already dead. It doesn't make any sense to have it from that point of view. It doesn't act as a deterrent, see the USA.
I’ve actually come 180 degrees on this. I used to be a total liberal and I firmly believed the death penalty should be reserved for absolutely the worst cases: traitors, child killers, police slayers, nameless itinerants, and obviously foreign stealers of penny loaves etc
Now I would cast the net more widely. We have to get tough
Quite.
Pavement parkers. Litterers. People who flush wet wipes. Drivers who don't give way to pedestrians at side roads. Hillwalkers who listen to music out loud (indeed, anyone who does this).
- Wearing a loud shirt in a built up area - Being in possession of an offensive wife
Little old ladies who take too long at checkouts - chatting and fumbling away with their purse.
No! you say
But that's the trouble ... where do you draw the line?
This one is regional and geographic. As a Londoner, born in Hackney, obviously LOLs who fumble should be hung, drawn and quartered. As a small town northerner, where a busy supermarket has as many as 18 people in it at a time, the little old lady fumbling conversationalist who has lost her keys and counts in groats has an honoured place in the pantheon.
I oppose the death penalty primarily on the miscarriage of justice grounds. I recognise many other people support it. Shouldn't that opinion be represented in Parliament?
Yes, sure. But like with so many issues strongly held opinions over the death penalty generate heat rather than light because supporters of the death penalty endlessly go on about the rather obvious case for it, while ignoring the weakest elements of their case.
Death penalty supporters tend to be found among those who don't realise that no argument is stronger than its weakest links, and that it is there, not the obvious strengths, that the argument needs to be made.
Fair enough. I can't get too excited about death penalty supporters because under our current system it's never coming back.
I agree. It isn't. For me an illustration of where representative democracy (as opposed to direct) earns its keep.
The trickier bit is when the Burkean representative democracy does something one strongly disagrees with. Or is that invariably populism at its dirty work?
How can anyone with a brain support the death penalty?
The Police and the CPS get it wrong, if they get it wrong the person is already dead. It doesn't make any sense to have it from that point of view. It doesn't act as a deterrent, see the USA.
Only for serial killers and terrorists who kill multiple people more than once
Bloody hell. Somebody who kills multiple people more than once needs psychiatric help, not execution. Completely unproductive waste of time - once they're dead, they're dead.
Really? It would take seconds to croak Ian Huntley Vs decades of psychotherapy failing to turn him into a marginally less horrible person so where is the waste of time!
As a matter of interest, Al, where exactly in Hackney?
I was produced in Hackney Hospital, 25/9/48. (I recently discovered a letter from my Dad to my Mum which was written on the day I was born. It was a difficult birth. You might have guessed.)
I lived in Bartrip St until I was 13. It doesn't exist any more, but it was at the junction of Benn St and Bushberry Rd which are both still there, as is the chippy on Wick Rd. (It was crap then and still is.)
As a matter of interest, Al, where exactly in Hackney?
I was produced in Hackney Hospital, 25/9/48. (I recently discovered a letter from my Dad to my Mum which was written on the day I was born. It was a difficult birth. You might have guessed.)
I lived in Bartrip St until I was 13. It doesn't exist any more, but it was at the junction of Benn St and Bushberry Rd which are both there, as is the chippy on Wick Rd. (It was crap then and still is.)
Then the borough of Stoke Newington, now in Hackney, in a since closed hospital.
How can anyone with a brain support the death penalty?
The Police and the CPS get it wrong, if they get it wrong the person is already dead. It doesn't make any sense to have it from that point of view. It doesn't act as a deterrent, see the USA.
So Lee Anderson is a moron.
Does the argument against it rest on the possibility of miscarriages of justice?
Not exclusively.
I feel the government shouldn't execute its citizens when they are already in custody and not a clear and present risk to the population.
Yes, that's my position.
It's just more welfare via the back door. The cost of imprisonment should be fixed at 100k p.a. rising annually with rpi, and people should be kept alive as long as they can keep paying.
As a matter of interest, Al, where exactly in Hackney?
I was produced in Hackney Hospital, 25/9/48. (I recently discovered a letter from my Dad to my Mum which was written on the day I was born. It was a difficult birth. You might have guessed.)
I lived in Bartrip St until I was 13. It doesn't exist any more, but it was at the junction of Benn St and Bushberry Rd which are both there, as is the chippy on Wick Rd. (It was crap then and still is.)
Then the borough of Stoke Newington, now in Hackney, in a since closed hospital.
Parents lived in 174 Albion Rd N17. Know it? They were bombed out during the war but it was rebuilt. Worth a mint now.
My current TL:DR is that he was an excellent and attentive local councillor, based on people I know who lived in his ward when he was a councillor. And I think he is perhaps trying to treat his constituency like a bigger council ward - TBF that is a very well know strategy. He's not very interested in what the dinner party or professional left in London think, with their navel gazing theology about how they are still the real working class despite their professions or the wealth they have made from unearned property gains.
I think that the Conservative leadership have made him Deputy Chairman as a foil to Greg Hands as the Times suggests, and also to shore up the Red Wall vote against voters drifting to Reform UK and similar parties. There are usually a number of Reform UK types all over Anderson's social media, often from distant parts of the country. I think the red meat in the rhetoric tells us what CCO think will shore up their position.
I think what's left of Labour representation in Ashfield - 2 Councillors from 33 where they had 22 from 2015 to 2019 (that's the Zadrozny effect) - are from the left side of the party. One of them is the Keir Morrison guy who photobombed Ed Milliband with a "Trade Unionists will Dance on Thatcher's Grave" teeshirt.
On the things he says, I think there are some cockups (eg when Michael Crick caught him - I think a lot of politicians would do the same), some shooting from the hip (eg 'put disruptive tenants in tents and make them grow potatoes'), some are stuff that I find unacceptable (eg death penalty), some which are good (the inexpensive meals and cooking lessons are excellent, and now the whole media has followed), and some which are embroidered anecdotes that Anderson-hating peeps keep repeating to each other (eg scab Anderson at the miners' strike - he was 17 at the time FFS, the rocks across the traveller encampment).
His getting in a JCB and putting rocks across the entrance had the desired effect - the travellers couldn't access it and the council finally got off its arse and erected the barrier they were supposed to have put up.
Lee is also a great proponent of the NHS. His wife was taken to hospital five times and sent home five times - the double lung transplant she required because of her cystic fibrosis finally happened on the sixth attempt. It was a great success.
The slightly longer version of the rocks (see local paper) is that it was the same group that had broken in twice - including through a barrier installed to keep them out. The County Council cleaned up and did not block the entrance at the same time and left it vulnerable, so Anderson put the rocks there.
For a reason best known to themselves, the local Labour Party disciplined him, and there was a bit of paper from the Council telling him to move them. No idea where it went after that.
It is now a faked-up anecdote about racism that the lobotomised left repeat to each other to convince themselves how evil Anderson has become. No idea why they do it - there's plenty to go at without needing to invent things.
Inventing things (or repeating general Tropes about Tories and applying them wrongly to Anderson) is imo why Jack Monroe went so quiet so quickly on her libel action - there'd be a mother of a counterclaim, and her lawyers told her to STFU. Plus the slight problem around her poverty-narrative when her supporters discovered just how much wealth is in her immediate family.
The basic problem is that Lee Anderson can get the swivel-eyed loons all excited but Sunak can only disappoint them. There are no votes for the Tories in that. Only more ammunition for Reform.
Tory deputy chair’s death penalty views do not represent government, says Rishi Sunak – UK politics live
Thus the BBC. There is a slightly odd feature to this play acting. Most of us think, with reason, that the next election is lost for the Tories. The whole point of Sunak is that he is not Truss, Boris, May, JRM, Jezza, Laura Pidcock, Farage, Lord Frost, Abbott or any of the multitude of unsatisfactory people who could be PM at this moment in a counterfactual world.
He is, SFAICS, not mad, wholly lacking in judgement, especially extreme or by current standards particularly untruthful.
He has four jobs: don't trash the country further; restore a modicum of dignity; lose with grace; and get to a position where the Tories could one day be the alternative to Labour.
The appointment of Lee Anderson does not fit this picture. So what is he up to?
My current TL:DR is that he was an excellent and attentive local councillor, based on people I know who lived in his ward when he was a councillor. And I think he is perhaps trying to treat his constituency like a bigger council ward - TBF that is a very well know strategy. He's not very interested in what the dinner party or professional left in London think, with their navel gazing theology about how they are still the real working class despite their professions or the wealth they have made from unearned property gains.
I think that the Conservative leadership have made him Deputy Chairman as a foil to Greg Hands as the Times suggests, and also to shore up the Red Wall vote against voters drifting to Reform UK and similar parties. There are usually a number of Reform UK types all over Anderson's social media, often from distant parts of the country. I think the red meat in the rhetoric tells us what CCO think will shore up their position.
I think what's left of Labour representation in Ashfield - 2 Councillors from 33 where they had 22 from 2015 to 2019 (that's the Zadrozny effect) - are from the left side of the party. One of them is the Keir Morrison guy who photobombed Ed Milliband with a "Trade Unionists will Dance on Thatcher's Grave" teeshirt.
On the things he says, I think there are some cockups (eg when Michael Crick caught him - I think a lot of politicians would do the same), some shooting from the hip (eg 'put disruptive tenants in tents and make them grow potatoes'), some are stuff that I find unacceptable (eg death penalty), some which are good (the inexpensive meals and cooking lessons are excellent, and now the whole media has followed), and some which are embroidered anecdotes that Anderson-hating peeps keep repeating to each other (eg scab Anderson at the miners' strike - he was 17 at the time FFS, the rocks across the traveller encampment).
His getting in a JCB and putting rocks across the entrance had the desired effect - the travellers couldn't access it and the council finally got off its arse and erected the barrier they were supposed to have put up.
Lee is also a great proponent of the NHS. His wife was taken to hospital five times and sent home five times - the double lung transplant she required because of her cystic fibrosis finally happened on the sixth attempt. It was a great success.
The slightly longer version of the rocks (see local paper) is that it was the same group that had broken in twice - including through a barrier installed to keep them out. The County Council cleaned up and did not block the entrance at the same time and left it vulnerable, so Anderson put the rocks there.
For a reason best known to themselves, the local Labour Party disciplined him, and there was a bit of paper from the Council telling him to move them. No idea where it went after that.
It is now a faked-up anecdote about racism that the lobotomised left repeat to each other to convince themselves how evil Anderson has become.
No idea why they do it - there's plenty to go at without needing to invent things. Inventing things (or repeating general Tropes about Tories and applying them wrongly to Anderson is imo why Jack Monroe went so quiet so quickly on her libel action - there'd be a mother of a counterclaim, and her lawyers told her to STFU. Plus the slight problem around her poverty-narrative when her supporters discovered just how much wealth is in her immediate family.
You misunderstand the performative theatre regarding the traveller issue.
What is supposed to happen is
1) Travellers occupy site 2) Council gets all kinds of court orders 3) Legal challenges to court orders 4) Police say they can't enforce 5) Things like the barrier are tried 6) The barrier is broken/circumvented 7) Police shrug again 8) Council explains to residents that everything legal has been tried.
This means that the travellers get to use the site, the Council gets to look progressive towards travellers AND trying to meet residents concerns.
My current TL:DR is that he was an excellent and attentive local councillor, based on people I know who lived in his ward when he was a councillor. And I think he is perhaps trying to treat his constituency like a bigger council ward - TBF that is a very well know strategy. He's not very interested in what the dinner party or professional left in London think, with their navel gazing theology about how they are still the real working class despite their professions or the wealth they have made from unearned property gains.
I think that the Conservative leadership have made him Deputy Chairman as a foil to Greg Hands as the Times suggests, and also to shore up the Red Wall vote against voters drifting to Reform UK and similar parties. There are usually a number of Reform UK types all over Anderson's social media, often from distant parts of the country. I think the red meat in the rhetoric tells us what CCO think will shore up their position.
I think what's left of Labour representation in Ashfield - 2 Councillors from 33 where they had 22 from 2015 to 2019 (that's the Zadrozny effect) - are from the left side of the party. One of them is the Keir Morrison guy who photobombed Ed Milliband with a "Trade Unionists will Dance on Thatcher's Grave" teeshirt.
On the things he says, I think there are some cockups (eg when Michael Crick caught him - I think a lot of politicians would do the same), some shooting from the hip (eg 'put disruptive tenants in tents and make them grow potatoes'), some are stuff that I find unacceptable (eg death penalty), some which are good (the inexpensive meals and cooking lessons are excellent, and now the whole media has followed), and some which are embroidered anecdotes that Anderson-hating peeps keep repeating to each other (eg scab Anderson at the miners' strike - he was 17 at the time FFS, the rocks across the traveller encampment).
His getting in a JCB and putting rocks across the entrance had the desired effect - the travellers couldn't access it and the council finally got off its arse and erected the barrier they were supposed to have put up.
Lee is also a great proponent of the NHS. His wife was taken to hospital five times and sent home five times - the double lung transplant she required because of her cystic fibrosis finally happened on the sixth attempt. It was a great success.
The slightly longer version of the rocks (see local paper) is that it was the same group that had broken in twice - including through a barrier installed to keep them out. The County Council cleaned up and did not block the entrance at the same time and left it vulnerable, so Anderson put the rocks there.
For a reason best known to themselves, the local Labour Party disciplined him, and there was a bit of paper from the Council telling him to move them. No idea where it went after that.
It is now a faked-up anecdote about racism that the lobotomised left repeat to each other to convince themselves how evil Anderson has become.
No idea why they do it - there's plenty to go at without needing to invent things. Inventing things (or repeating general Tropes about Tories and applying them wrongly to Anderson is imo why Jack Monroe went so quiet so quickly on her libel action - there'd be a mother of a counterclaim, and her lawyers told her to STFU. Plus the slight problem around her poverty-narrative when her supporters discovered just how much wealth is in her immediate family.
You misunderstand the performative theatre regarding the traveller issue.
What is supposed to happen is
1) Travellers occupy site 2) Council gets all kinds of court orders 3) Legal challenges to court orders 4) Police say they can't enforce 5) Things like the barrier are tried 6) The barrier is broken/circumvented 7) Police shrug again 8) Council explains to residents that everything legal has been tried.
This means that the travellers get to use the site, the Council gets to look progressive towards travellers AND trying to meet residents concerns.
How can anyone with a brain support the death penalty?
The Police and the CPS get it wrong, if they get it wrong the person is already dead. It doesn't make any sense to have it from that point of view. It doesn't act as a deterrent, see the USA.
So Lee Anderson is a moron.
Does the argument against it rest on the possibility of miscarriages of justice?
Not exclusively.
I feel the government shouldn't execute its citizens when they are already in custody and not a clear and present risk to the population.
Yes, that's my position.
It's just more welfare via the back door. The cost of imprisonment should be fixed at 100k p.a. rising annually with rpi, and people should be kept alive as long as they can keep paying.
Charge them for the bullets? And the family, if the prisoner doesn't have the money?
My current TL:DR is that he was an excellent and attentive local councillor, based on people I know who lived in his ward when he was a councillor. And I think he is perhaps trying to treat his constituency like a bigger council ward - TBF that is a very well know strategy. He's not very interested in what the dinner party or professional left in London think, with their navel gazing theology about how they are still the real working class despite their professions or the wealth they have made from unearned property gains.
I think that the Conservative leadership have made him Deputy Chairman as a foil to Greg Hands as the Times suggests, and also to shore up the Red Wall vote against voters drifting to Reform UK and similar parties. There are usually a number of Reform UK types all over Anderson's social media, often from distant parts of the country. I think the red meat in the rhetoric tells us what CCO think will shore up their position.
I think what's left of Labour representation in Ashfield - 2 Councillors from 33 where they had 22 from 2015 to 2019 (that's the Zadrozny effect) - are from the left side of the party. One of them is the Keir Morrison guy who photobombed Ed Milliband with a "Trade Unionists will Dance on Thatcher's Grave" teeshirt.
On the things he says, I think there are some cockups (eg when Michael Crick caught him - I think a lot of politicians would do the same), some shooting from the hip (eg 'put disruptive tenants in tents and make them grow potatoes'), some are stuff that I find unacceptable (eg death penalty), some which are good (the inexpensive meals and cooking lessons are excellent, and now the whole media has followed), and some which are embroidered anecdotes that Anderson-hating peeps keep repeating to each other (eg scab Anderson at the miners' strike - he was 17 at the time FFS, the rocks across the traveller encampment).
I think Anderson has a very good chance of being re-elected for all the reasons you lay out. But I don't see how he helps the Tories beyond that. He will say a lot of stuff that the PM will have to refute - see the death penalty, for example - and what the people Anderson appeals to will see is a Tory party betraying them by not standing up for their values. Beyond Ashfield, that's a net negative, not a positive.
The basic problem is that Lee Anderson can get the swivel-eyed loons all excited but Sunak can only disappoint them. There are no votes for the Tories in that. Only more ammunition for Reform.
Anderson is the Conservative Deputy chairman not the Reform Deputy chairman and his backing for the death penalty is already a top story on the BBC news website.
Most 2019 Conservative voters back the death penalty and that is where there has been leakage to RefUK Rishi has seen
Tory deputy chair’s death penalty views do not represent government, says Rishi Sunak – UK politics live
Thus the BBC. There is a slightly odd feature to this play acting. Most of us think, with reason, that the next election is lost for the Tories. The whole point of Sunak is that he is not Truss, Boris, May, JRM, Jezza, Laura Pidcock, Farage, Lord Frost, Abbott or any of the multitude of unsatisfactory people who could be PM at this moment in a counterfactual world.
He is, SFAICS, not mad, wholly lacking in judgement, especially extreme or by current standards particularly untruthful.
He has four jobs: don't trash the country further; restore a modicum of dignity; lose with grace; and get to a position where the Tories could one day be the alternative to Labour.
The appointment of Lee Anderson does not fit this picture. So what is he up to?
It is increasingly hard to escape the conclusion that Sunak is basically very, very bad at politics.
Nah, it's got all the right French colours on the tail, so why bother?
You’d have thought the French would have sent a plane, if they’d realised the British were going to lend theirs to the Big Z!
Zelensky: Emmanuel, I need a plane Macron: I can't give you planes unless the US agrees Zelensky: [Sighs] Hey, Boris, can you swing me a lift to Paris?
My current TL:DR is that he was an excellent and attentive local councillor, based on people I know who lived in his ward when he was a councillor. And I think he is perhaps trying to treat his constituency like a bigger council ward - TBF that is a very well know strategy. He's not very interested in what the dinner party or professional left in London think, with their navel gazing theology about how they are still the real working class despite their professions or the wealth they have made from unearned property gains.
I think that the Conservative leadership have made him Deputy Chairman as a foil to Greg Hands as the Times suggests, and also to shore up the Red Wall vote against voters drifting to Reform UK and similar parties. There are usually a number of Reform UK types all over Anderson's social media, often from distant parts of the country. I think the red meat in the rhetoric tells us what CCO think will shore up their position.
I think what's left of Labour representation in Ashfield - 2 Councillors from 33 where they had 22 from 2015 to 2019 (that's the Zadrozny effect) - are from the left side of the party. One of them is the Keir Morrison guy who photobombed Ed Milliband with a "Trade Unionists will Dance on Thatcher's Grave" teeshirt.
On the things he says, I think there are some cockups (eg when Michael Crick caught him - I think a lot of politicians would do the same), some shooting from the hip (eg 'put disruptive tenants in tents and make them grow potatoes'), some are stuff that I find unacceptable (eg death penalty), some which are good (the inexpensive meals and cooking lessons are excellent, and now the whole media has followed), and some which are embroidered anecdotes that Anderson-hating peeps keep repeating to each other (eg scab Anderson at the miners' strike - he was 17 at the time FFS, the rocks across the traveller encampment).
His getting in a JCB and putting rocks across the entrance had the desired effect - the travellers couldn't access it and the council finally got off its arse and erected the barrier they were supposed to have put up.
Lee is also a great proponent of the NHS. His wife was taken to hospital five times and sent home five times - the double lung transplant she required because of her cystic fibrosis finally happened on the sixth attempt. It was a great success.
The slightly longer version of the rocks (see local paper) is that it was the same group that had broken in twice - including through a barrier installed to keep them out. The County Council cleaned up and did not block the entrance at the same time and left it vulnerable, so Anderson put the rocks there.
For a reason best known to themselves, the local Labour Party disciplined him, and there was a bit of paper from the Council telling him to move them. No idea where it went after that.
It is now a faked-up anecdote about racism that the lobotomised left repeat to each other to convince themselves how evil Anderson has become.
No idea why they do it - there's plenty to go at without needing to invent things. Inventing things (or repeating general Tropes about Tories and applying them wrongly to Anderson is imo why Jack Monroe went so quiet so quickly on her libel action - there'd be a mother of a counterclaim, and her lawyers told her to STFU. Plus the slight problem around her poverty-narrative when her supporters discovered just how much wealth is in her immediate family.
You misunderstand the performative theatre regarding the traveller issue.
What is supposed to happen is
1) Travellers occupy site 2) Council gets all kinds of court orders 3) Legal challenges to court orders 4) Police say they can't enforce 5) Things like the barrier are tried 6) The barrier is broken/circumvented 7) Police shrug again 8) Council explains to residents that everything legal has been tried.
This means that the travellers get to use the site, the Council gets to look progressive towards travellers AND trying to meet residents concerns.
The boulder thing Broke The Narrative.
I know of a good one; travellers parked on an area of grass accessed by a cycle path. After much cost, they are evicted. The parish council put a post up in the middle of the cycle path to stop anyone driving up it (yes, in the middle...) But as they need access themselves, the post is removable. All the padlocks securing the posts use the same key, so the staff can easily remove them, but they did not have a spare padlock. So it remained unlocked. And a week or so later, another group of travellers go onto the land.
Instead of securing it with a temporary padlock, they simply left it unsecured (after all, the travellers did not remove the unsecured post. Oh no. Some kids must have down that...)
How can anyone with a brain support the death penalty?
The Police and the CPS get it wrong, if they get it wrong the person is already dead. It doesn't make any sense to have it from that point of view. It doesn't act as a deterrent, see the USA.
So Lee Anderson is a moron.
Does the argument against it rest on the possibility of miscarriages of justice?
Not exclusively.
I feel the government shouldn't execute its citizens when they are already in custody and not a clear and present risk to the population.
Yes, that's my position.
It's just more welfare via the back door. The cost of imprisonment should be fixed at 100k p.a. rising annually with rpi, and people should be kept alive as long as they can keep paying.
It's justifiable when there's a clear and present danger to innocent life.
I have an issue with retribution killings and I think the stress it places on lawyers, the executioner, the family of the victim and even the criminal at times isn't civilised.
A life sentence is more meaningful if it sacrifices the rest of your days and to be compelled to life them in remorse.
My current TL:DR is that he was an excellent and attentive local councillor, based on people I know who lived in his ward when he was a councillor. And I think he is perhaps trying to treat his constituency like a bigger council ward - TBF that is a very well know strategy. He's not very interested in what the dinner party or professional left in London think, with their navel gazing theology about how they are still the real working class despite their professions or the wealth they have made from unearned property gains.
I think that the Conservative leadership have made him Deputy Chairman as a foil to Greg Hands as the Times suggests, and also to shore up the Red Wall vote against voters drifting to Reform UK and similar parties. There are usually a number of Reform UK types all over Anderson's social media, often from distant parts of the country. I think the red meat in the rhetoric tells us what CCO think will shore up their position.
I think what's left of Labour representation in Ashfield - 2 Councillors from 33 where they had 22 from 2015 to 2019 (that's the Zadrozny effect) - are from the left side of the party. One of them is the Keir Morrison guy who photobombed Ed Milliband with a "Trade Unionists will Dance on Thatcher's Grave" teeshirt.
On the things he says, I think there are some cockups (eg when Michael Crick caught him - I think a lot of politicians would do the same), some shooting from the hip (eg 'put disruptive tenants in tents and make them grow potatoes'), some are stuff that I find unacceptable (eg death penalty), some which are good (the inexpensive meals and cooking lessons are excellent, and now the whole media has followed), and some which are embroidered anecdotes that Anderson-hating peeps keep repeating to each other (eg scab Anderson at the miners' strike - he was 17 at the time FFS, the rocks across the traveller encampment).
His getting in a JCB and putting rocks across the entrance had the desired effect - the travellers couldn't access it and the council finally got off its arse and erected the barrier they were supposed to have put up.
Lee is also a great proponent of the NHS. His wife was taken to hospital five times and sent home five times - the double lung transplant she required because of her cystic fibrosis finally happened on the sixth attempt. It was a great success.
The slightly longer version of the rocks (see local paper) is that it was the same group that had broken in twice - including through a barrier installed to keep them out. The County Council cleaned up and did not block the entrance at the same time and left it vulnerable, so Anderson put the rocks there.
For a reason best known to themselves, the local Labour Party disciplined him, and there was a bit of paper from the Council telling him to move them. No idea where it went after that.
It is now a faked-up anecdote about racism that the lobotomised left repeat to each other to convince themselves how evil Anderson has become.
No idea why they do it - there's plenty to go at without needing to invent things. Inventing things (or repeating general Tropes about Tories and applying them wrongly to Anderson is imo why Jack Monroe went so quiet so quickly on her libel action - there'd be a mother of a counterclaim, and her lawyers told her to STFU. Plus the slight problem around her poverty-narrative when her supporters discovered just how much wealth is in her immediate family.
The only people here referring to the ‘faked-up anecdotes’ are the surprisingly high number of Lee Anderson fanbois. Afaics most folk are sticking with the plenty to go at without needing to invent things stuff, eg him being a liar and pals with racists & antisemites, and him being as dumb as one of his gypsy repelling rocks.
As a matter of interest, Al, where exactly in Hackney?
I was produced in Hackney Hospital, 25/9/48. (I recently discovered a letter from my Dad to my Mum which was written on the day I was born. It was a difficult birth. You might have guessed.)
I lived in Bartrip St until I was 13. It doesn't exist any more, but it was at the junction of Benn St and Bushberry Rd which are both there, as is the chippy on Wick Rd. (It was crap then and still is.)
Then the borough of Stoke Newington, now in Hackney, in a since closed hospital.
Parents lived in 174 Albion Rd N17. Know it? They were bombed out during the war but it was rebuilt. Worth a mint now.
Tory deputy chair’s death penalty views do not represent government, says Rishi Sunak – UK politics live
Thus the BBC. There is a slightly odd feature to this play acting. Most of us think, with reason, that the next election is lost for the Tories. The whole point of Sunak is that he is not Truss, Boris, May, JRM, Jezza, Laura Pidcock, Farage, Lord Frost, Abbott or any of the multitude of unsatisfactory people who could be PM at this moment in a counterfactual world.
He is, SFAICS, not mad, wholly lacking in judgement, especially extreme or by current standards particularly untruthful.
He has four jobs: don't trash the country further; restore a modicum of dignity; lose with grace; and get to a position where the Tories could one day be the alternative to Labour.
The appointment of Lee Anderson does not fit this picture. So what is he up to?
It’s a common thing though, isn’t it. Appoint someone who appeals to the more worked-up grassroots while keeping them away from actual policy making.
Plus Sunak has some quite authoritarian and traditionally right wing views. Not a Cameroonian social liberal. He has Braverman in the home office already and professional cold-starer Raab in justice.
The basic problem is that Lee Anderson can get the swivel-eyed loons all excited but Sunak can only disappoint them. There are no votes for the Tories in that. Only more ammunition for Reform.
I don't agree with Lee Anderson on everything but I'm not sure I have a problem with him being represented in the party.
He represents a point of view that is worth airing and debating (as we are doing today) and I don't see that as a bad thing.
Tory deputy chair’s death penalty views do not represent government, says Rishi Sunak – UK politics live
Thus the BBC. There is a slightly odd feature to this play acting. Most of us think, with reason, that the next election is lost for the Tories. The whole point of Sunak is that he is not Truss, Boris, May, JRM, Jezza, Laura Pidcock, Farage, Lord Frost, Abbott or any of the multitude of unsatisfactory people who could be PM at this moment in a counterfactual world.
He is, SFAICS, not mad, wholly lacking in judgement, especially extreme or by current standards particularly untruthful.
He has four jobs: don't trash the country further; restore a modicum of dignity; lose with grace; and get to a position where the Tories could one day be the alternative to Labour.
The appointment of Lee Anderson does not fit this picture. So what is he up to?
It’s a common thing though, isn’t it. Appoint someone who appeals to the more worked-up grassroots while keeping them away from actual policy making.
My current TL:DR is that he was an excellent and attentive local councillor, based on people I know who lived in his ward when he was a councillor. And I think he is perhaps trying to treat his constituency like a bigger council ward - TBF that is a very well know strategy. He's not very interested in what the dinner party or professional left in London think, with their navel gazing theology about how they are still the real working class despite their professions or the wealth they have made from unearned property gains.
I think that the Conservative leadership have made him Deputy Chairman as a foil to Greg Hands as the Times suggests, and also to shore up the Red Wall vote against voters drifting to Reform UK and similar parties. There are usually a number of Reform UK types all over Anderson's social media, often from distant parts of the country. I think the red meat in the rhetoric tells us what CCO think will shore up their position.
I think what's left of Labour representation in Ashfield - 2 Councillors from 33 where they had 22 from 2015 to 2019 (that's the Zadrozny effect) - are from the left side of the party. One of them is the Keir Morrison guy who photobombed Ed Milliband with a "Trade Unionists will Dance on Thatcher's Grave" teeshirt.
On the things he says, I think there are some cockups (eg when Michael Crick caught him - I think a lot of politicians would do the same), some shooting from the hip (eg 'put disruptive tenants in tents and make them grow potatoes'), some are stuff that I find unacceptable (eg death penalty), some which are good (the inexpensive meals and cooking lessons are excellent, and now the whole media has followed), and some which are embroidered anecdotes that Anderson-hating peeps keep repeating to each other (eg scab Anderson at the miners' strike - he was 17 at the time FFS, the rocks across the traveller encampment).
His getting in a JCB and putting rocks across the entrance had the desired effect - the travellers couldn't access it and the council finally got off its arse and erected the barrier they were supposed to have put up.
Lee is also a great proponent of the NHS. His wife was taken to hospital five times and sent home five times - the double lung transplant she required because of her cystic fibrosis finally happened on the sixth attempt. It was a great success.
The slightly longer version of the rocks (see local paper) is that it was the same group that had broken in twice - including through a barrier installed to keep them out. The County Council cleaned up and did not block the entrance at the same time and left it vulnerable, so Anderson put the rocks there.
For a reason best known to themselves, the local Labour Party disciplined him, and there was a bit of paper from the Council telling him to move them. No idea where it went after that.
It is now a faked-up anecdote about racism that the lobotomised left repeat to each other to convince themselves how evil Anderson has become.
No idea why they do it - there's plenty to go at without needing to invent things. Inventing things (or repeating general Tropes about Tories and applying them wrongly to Anderson is imo why Jack Monroe went so quiet so quickly on her libel action - there'd be a mother of a counterclaim, and her lawyers told her to STFU. Plus the slight problem around her poverty-narrative when her supporters discovered just how much wealth is in her immediate family.
You misunderstand the performative theatre regarding the traveller issue.
What is supposed to happen is
1) Travellers occupy site 2) Council gets all kinds of court orders 3) Legal challenges to court orders 4) Police say they can't enforce 5) Things like the barrier are tried 6) The barrier is broken/circumvented 7) Police shrug again 8) Council explains to residents that everything legal has been tried.
This means that the travellers get to use the site, the Council gets to look progressive towards travellers AND trying to meet residents concerns.
The boulder thing Broke The Narrative.
I know of a good one; travellers parked on an area of grass accessed by a cycle path. After much cost, they are evicted. The parish council put a post up in the middle of the cycle path to stop anyone driving up it (yes, in the middle...) But as they need access themselves, the post is removable. All the padlocks securing the posts use the same key, so the staff can easily remove them, but they did not have a spare padlock. So it remained unlocked. And a week or so later, another group of travellers go onto the land.
Instead of securing it with a temporary padlock, they simply left it unsecured (after all, the travellers did not remove the unsecured post. Oh no. Some kids must have down that...)
Many years ago, travellers squatted some land being used by my riding instructor* for keeping her horses.
After much damage** etc, they vacated the site, abandoning a pregnant horse in distress. Breach birth etc. She rescued the horse and got a vet to save the foal.
As expected, they came back to demand the horse and foal. She told them to efff off, otherwise she would call the RSPCA on them. She did offer to sell them the horse and foal for the vets fees, though.
*Ridiculously ancient. She recalled an airship going overhead. After some questioning, worked out it was R101. **Literally destroyed the light sheds used to shelter the horses.
As a matter of interest, Al, where exactly in Hackney?
I was produced in Hackney Hospital, 25/9/48. (I recently discovered a letter from my Dad to my Mum which was written on the day I was born. It was a difficult birth. You might have guessed.)
I lived in Bartrip St until I was 13. It doesn't exist any more, but it was at the junction of Benn St and Bushberry Rd which are both there, as is the chippy on Wick Rd. (It was crap then and still is.)
Then the borough of Stoke Newington, now in Hackney, in a since closed hospital.
Parents lived in 174 Albion Rd N17. Know it? They were bombed out during the war but it was rebuilt. Worth a mint now.
Spurs territory I suspect. Not known.
Do you mind. Gunners if you please. White Hart Lane definitely off the map.
The basic problem is that Lee Anderson can get the swivel-eyed loons all excited but Sunak can only disappoint them. There are no votes for the Tories in that. Only more ammunition for Reform.
I don't agree with Lee Anderson on everything but I'm not sure I have a problem with him being represented in the party.
He represents a point of view that is worth airing and debating (as we are doing today) and I don't see that as a bad thing.
It's what parliament is for.
That is exactly the argument some Labour MPs made when they voted for Corbyn
The basic problem is that Lee Anderson can get the swivel-eyed loons all excited but Sunak can only disappoint them. There are no votes for the Tories in that. Only more ammunition for Reform.
I don't agree with Lee Anderson on everything but I'm not sure I have a problem with him being represented in the party.
He represents a point of view that is worth airing and debating (as we are doing today) and I don't see that as a bad thing.
It's what parliament is for.
That is exactly the argument some Labour MPs made when they voted for Corbyn
To be party leader, not exactly the same thing really!
Tory deputy chair’s death penalty views do not represent government, says Rishi Sunak – UK politics live
Thus the BBC. There is a slightly odd feature to this play acting. Most of us think, with reason, that the next election is lost for the Tories. The whole point of Sunak is that he is not Truss, Boris, May, JRM, Jezza, Laura Pidcock, Farage, Lord Frost, Abbott or any of the multitude of unsatisfactory people who could be PM at this moment in a counterfactual world.
He is, SFAICS, not mad, wholly lacking in judgement, especially extreme or by current standards particularly untruthful.
He has four jobs: don't trash the country further; restore a modicum of dignity; lose with grace; and get to a position where the Tories could one day be the alternative to Labour.
The appointment of Lee Anderson does not fit this picture. So what is he up to?
It is increasingly hard to escape the conclusion that Sunak is basically very, very bad at politics.
Not really. I think he's handled Sturgeongate and the NI protocol superbly, and both have strengthened the Union.
My current TL:DR is that he was an excellent and attentive local councillor, based on people I know who lived in his ward when he was a councillor. And I think he is perhaps trying to treat his constituency like a bigger council ward - TBF that is a very well know strategy. He's not very interested in what the dinner party or professional left in London think, with their navel gazing theology about how they are still the real working class despite their professions or the wealth they have made from unearned property gains.
I think that the Conservative leadership have made him Deputy Chairman as a foil to Greg Hands as the Times suggests, and also to shore up the Red Wall vote against voters drifting to Reform UK and similar parties. There are usually a number of Reform UK types all over Anderson's social media, often from distant parts of the country. I think the red meat in the rhetoric tells us what CCO think will shore up their position.
I think what's left of Labour representation in Ashfield - 2 Councillors from 33 where they had 22 from 2015 to 2019 (that's the Zadrozny effect) - are from the left side of the party. One of them is the Keir Morrison guy who photobombed Ed Milliband with a "Trade Unionists will Dance on Thatcher's Grave" teeshirt.
On the things he says, I think there are some cockups (eg when Michael Crick caught him - I think a lot of politicians would do the same), some shooting from the hip (eg 'put disruptive tenants in tents and make them grow potatoes'), some are stuff that I find unacceptable (eg death penalty), some which are good (the inexpensive meals and cooking lessons are excellent, and now the whole media has followed), and some which are embroidered anecdotes that Anderson-hating peeps keep repeating to each other (eg scab Anderson at the miners' strike - he was 17 at the time FFS, the rocks across the traveller encampment).
I think Anderson has a very good chance of being re-elected for all the reasons you lay out. But I don't see how he helps the Tories beyond that. He will say a lot of stuff that the PM will have to refute - see the death penalty, for example - and what the people Anderson appeals to will see is a Tory party betraying them by not standing up for their values. Beyond Ashfield, that's a net negative, not a positive.
I can't tell the balance. Depends how much of an impact it has across the Red Wall, vs the prospect of shoring up the vote in other groups. I'd say whatever it is it will be a secondary factor after the war, the economy, energy prices, felt-incomes, the NHS and so on, and the time for those to feed through to perceptions. IMO there isn't time.
I'm not even going to try and call the next result in Ashfield - with the local Notts "asinine" politics. I might be inclined to vote with 3 bellends on the ballot paper. I thought Z would take it last time.
I think that the Conservatives need some time in opposition.
"Video reportedly of destroyed/abandoned armored equipment from Russia's 155th Naval Infantry Brigade on the Vuhledar front. It shows 31 armored vehicles, including ~ 15 tanks (including T-72B3 and a T-80BVM) with the remainder BMP, MT-LB, and others."
That's got to hurt. Allegedly it is (or was) one of Russia's better units.
The Ukranian estimate for Russian tank losses, is now just about equal to its estimate for the number of tanks in Russia at the start of the war - 3,300.
Oryx have 1688 (of which destroyed: 1000, damaged: 79, abandoned: 65, captured: 544).
Russia must be scraping the bottom of the tank boneyard at the moment, trying to find anything they can make serviceable. There’s thousands more scrapped tanks out there, but most are from the Soviet-Afghan war, old T-62s. They haven’t been making a lot of new ones, and perhaps they’ve been able to repair a few that were thought killed in battle.
Imagine how the Russian troops and tank battalions, in their half-century-old relics, are going to feel when modern NATO tanks start turning up on the other side?
How can anyone with a brain support the death penalty?
The Police and the CPS get it wrong, if they get it wrong the person is already dead. It doesn't make any sense to have it from that point of view. It doesn't act as a deterrent, see the USA.
So Lee Anderson is a moron.
Does the argument against it rest on the possibility of miscarriages of justice?
Not exclusively.
I feel the government shouldn't execute its citizens when they are already in custody and not a clear and present risk to the population.
Yes, that's my position.
It's just more welfare via the back door. The cost of imprisonment should be fixed at 100k p.a. rising annually with rpi, and people should be kept alive as long as they can keep paying.
Perhaps reintroduce the workhouse? Or just make prisons a profit centre and execute the bottom 10% of non-payers each year?
Tory deputy chair’s death penalty views do not represent government, says Rishi Sunak – UK politics live
Thus the BBC. There is a slightly odd feature to this play acting. Most of us think, with reason, that the next election is lost for the Tories. The whole point of Sunak is that he is not Truss, Boris, May, JRM, Jezza, Laura Pidcock, Farage, Lord Frost, Abbott or any of the multitude of unsatisfactory people who could be PM at this moment in a counterfactual world.
He is, SFAICS, not mad, wholly lacking in judgement, especially extreme or by current standards particularly untruthful.
He has four jobs: don't trash the country further; restore a modicum of dignity; lose with grace; and get to a position where the Tories could one day be the alternative to Labour.
The appointment of Lee Anderson does not fit this picture. So what is he up to?
It’s a common thing though, isn’t it. Appoint someone who appeals to the more worked-up grassroots while keeping them away from actual policy making.
It's different to the Osborne approach when he was in office which was to appoint someone to actively insult the members, in the odd hope this would attract more soft LD and Labour support, *and* not only keep then away from actual policy making but to pursue ones they didn't much like.
Tory deputy chair’s death penalty views do not represent government, says Rishi Sunak – UK politics live
Thus the BBC. There is a slightly odd feature to this play acting. Most of us think, with reason, that the next election is lost for the Tories. The whole point of Sunak is that he is not Truss, Boris, May, JRM, Jezza, Laura Pidcock, Farage, Lord Frost, Abbott or any of the multitude of unsatisfactory people who could be PM at this moment in a counterfactual world.
He is, SFAICS, not mad, wholly lacking in judgement, especially extreme or by current standards particularly untruthful.
He has four jobs: don't trash the country further; restore a modicum of dignity; lose with grace; and get to a position where the Tories could one day be the alternative to Labour.
The appointment of Lee Anderson does not fit this picture. So what is he up to?
It is increasingly hard to escape the conclusion that Sunak is basically very, very bad at politics.
He is also weak. In part this comes from presiding over a tired and divided party that is ready for opposition. In part it comes from the knowledge that you weren’t the members’ first choice for the job. In part I think it’s just his manner, upbringing and style. He is too far removed from the man on the street to work out how these things will play.
I would much rather have him in charge than the frightfully incompetent Truss and sleazy BoJo*, but all he’s doing is reinforcing the fact that the Tories are ready to be kicked out. He doesn’t have the skills to save them in any meaningful way.
*and I do not rule out a BoJo comeback pre-election, sadly
Tory deputy chair’s death penalty views do not represent government, says Rishi Sunak – UK politics live
Thus the BBC. There is a slightly odd feature to this play acting. Most of us think, with reason, that the next election is lost for the Tories. The whole point of Sunak is that he is not Truss, Boris, May, JRM, Jezza, Laura Pidcock, Farage, Lord Frost, Abbott or any of the multitude of unsatisfactory people who could be PM at this moment in a counterfactual world.
He is, SFAICS, not mad, wholly lacking in judgement, especially extreme or by current standards particularly untruthful.
He has four jobs: don't trash the country further; restore a modicum of dignity; lose with grace; and get to a position where the Tories could one day be the alternative to Labour.
The appointment of Lee Anderson does not fit this picture. So what is he up to?
It is increasingly hard to escape the conclusion that Sunak is basically very, very bad at politics.
Funny he seems to have progressed so far in that field, then.
Lee "String 'em up and use their children as field labourers" Anderson looks like an ideal choice to fire up the membership, make them forget their party leader isn't white, and successfully solicit donations from "Enoch was right" white trash estate agents and property speculators etc. down at the golf club or in the trade association.
What is he up to? Aiming to be the leader of a reasonably resilient oppostion isn't the answer. "Win the next election" is more like it.
The basic problem is that Lee Anderson can get the swivel-eyed loons all excited but Sunak can only disappoint them. There are no votes for the Tories in that. Only more ammunition for Reform.
Anderson is the Conservative Deputy chairman not the Reform Deputy chairman and his backing for the death penalty is already a top story on the BBC news website.
Most 2019 Conservative voters back the death penalty and that is where there has been leakage to RefUK Rishi has seen
The basic problem is that Lee Anderson can get the swivel-eyed loons all excited but Sunak can only disappoint them. There are no votes for the Tories in that. Only more ammunition for Reform.
I don't agree with Lee Anderson on everything but I'm not sure I have a problem with him being represented in the party.
He represents a point of view that is worth airing and debating (as we are doing today) and I don't see that as a bad thing.
It's what parliament is for.
That is exactly the argument some Labour MPs made when they voted for Corbyn
To be party leader, not exactly the same thing really!
He is climbing up the greasy pole. Seven years ago, Sunak was a brand new MP, today he is PM. Who is to say where Lee Anderson will be in a couple of years?
"Video reportedly of destroyed/abandoned armored equipment from Russia's 155th Naval Infantry Brigade on the Vuhledar front. It shows 31 armored vehicles, including ~ 15 tanks (including T-72B3 and a T-80BVM) with the remainder BMP, MT-LB, and others."
That's got to hurt. Allegedly it is (or was) one of Russia's better units.
The Ukranian estimate for Russian tank losses, is now just about equal to its estimate for the number of tanks in Russia at the start of the war - 3,300.
Oryx have 1688 (of which destroyed: 1000, damaged: 79, abandoned: 65, captured: 544).
Russia must be scraping the bottom of the tank boneyard at the moment, trying to find anything they can make serviceable. There’s thousands more scrapped tanks out there, but most are from the Soviet-Afghan war, old T-62s. They haven’t been making a lot of new ones, and perhaps they’ve been able to repair a few that were thought killed in battle.
Imagine how the Russian troops and tank battalions, in their half-century-old relics, are going to feel when modern NATO tanks start turning up on the other side?
T-62, Chieftain, Challenger 1
British tank design went down a slightly different path than most. The Russians wen to light MBTs rapidly. British designers remember the Tigers and went with the Conqueror heavy tank to go with the lighter Centurion. Then the L7 105mm gun came out and meant that a Centurion could do both jobs.
The Chieftain was born at a time when some thought that armour was finished - HEAT and finned dart projectiles were seemingly unstoppable. So some designers went ultra light, with little armour. Chieftain went massively the other way - almost back to Conqueror style.
Challenger was an upgrade on that.
As awareness of the effectiveness of modern, complex armour spread, other NATO countries moved in the same direction. Very heavily armoured tanks - M1 etc...
My current TL:DR is that he was an excellent and attentive local councillor, based on people I know who lived in his ward when he was a councillor. And I think he is perhaps trying to treat his constituency like a bigger council ward - TBF that is a very well know strategy. He's not very interested in what the dinner party or professional left in London think, with their navel gazing theology about how they are still the real working class despite their professions or the wealth they have made from unearned property gains.
I think that the Conservative leadership have made him Deputy Chairman as a foil to Greg Hands as the Times suggests, and also to shore up the Red Wall vote against voters drifting to Reform UK and similar parties. There are usually a number of Reform UK types all over Anderson's social media, often from distant parts of the country. I think the red meat in the rhetoric tells us what CCO think will shore up their position.
I think what's left of Labour representation in Ashfield - 2 Councillors from 33 where they had 22 from 2015 to 2019 (that's the Zadrozny effect) - are from the left side of the party. One of them is the Keir Morrison guy who photobombed Ed Milliband with a "Trade Unionists will Dance on Thatcher's Grave" teeshirt.
On the things he says, I think there are some cockups (eg when Michael Crick caught him - I think a lot of politicians would do the same), some shooting from the hip (eg 'put disruptive tenants in tents and make them grow potatoes'), some are stuff that I find unacceptable (eg death penalty), some which are good (the inexpensive meals and cooking lessons are excellent, and now the whole media has followed), and some which are embroidered anecdotes that Anderson-hating peeps keep repeating to each other (eg scab Anderson at the miners' strike - he was 17 at the time FFS, the rocks across the traveller encampment).
His getting in a JCB and putting rocks across the entrance had the desired effect - the travellers couldn't access it and the council finally got off its arse and erected the barrier they were supposed to have put up.
Lee is also a great proponent of the NHS. His wife was taken to hospital five times and sent home five times - the double lung transplant she required because of her cystic fibrosis finally happened on the sixth attempt. It was a great success.
The slightly longer version of the rocks (see local paper) is that it was the same group that had broken in twice - including through a barrier installed to keep them out. The County Council cleaned up and did not block the entrance at the same time and left it vulnerable, so Anderson put the rocks there.
For a reason best known to themselves, the local Labour Party disciplined him, and there was a bit of paper from the Council telling him to move them. No idea where it went after that.
It is now a faked-up anecdote about racism that the lobotomised left repeat to each other to convince themselves how evil Anderson has become.
No idea why they do it - there's plenty to go at without needing to invent things. Inventing things (or repeating general Tropes about Tories and applying them wrongly to Anderson is imo why Jack Monroe went so quiet so quickly on her libel action - there'd be a mother of a counterclaim, and her lawyers told her to STFU. Plus the slight problem around her poverty-narrative when her supporters discovered just how much wealth is in her immediate family.
The only people here referring to the ‘faked-up anecdotes’ are the surprisingly high number of Lee Anderson fanbois. Afaics most folk are sticking with the plenty to go at without needing to invent things stuff, eg him being a liar and pals with racists & antisemites, and him being as dumb as one of his gypsy repelling rocks.
I commented on faked-up anecdotes because that is what I see being repeated widely. On the JCB/rocks one, try the accounts in the local paper, for example.
The basic problem is that Lee Anderson can get the swivel-eyed loons all excited but Sunak can only disappoint them. There are no votes for the Tories in that. Only more ammunition for Reform.
I don't agree with Lee Anderson on everything but I'm not sure I have a problem with him being represented in the party.
He represents a point of view that is worth airing and debating (as we are doing today) and I don't see that as a bad thing.
It's what parliament is for.
That is exactly the argument some Labour MPs made when they voted for Corbyn
To be party leader, not exactly the same thing really!
He is climbing up the greasy pole. Seven years ago, Sunak was a brand new MP, today he is PM. Who is to say where Lee Anderson will be in a couple of years?
And if Tory MPs nominate him to be party leader, then you can criticise them for that.
Tory deputy chair’s death penalty views do not represent government, says Rishi Sunak – UK politics live
Thus the BBC. There is a slightly odd feature to this play acting. Most of us think, with reason, that the next election is lost for the Tories. The whole point of Sunak is that he is not Truss, Boris, May, JRM, Jezza, Laura Pidcock, Farage, Lord Frost, Abbott or any of the multitude of unsatisfactory people who could be PM at this moment in a counterfactual world.
He is, SFAICS, not mad, wholly lacking in judgement, especially extreme or by current standards particularly untruthful.
He has four jobs: don't trash the country further; restore a modicum of dignity; lose with grace; and get to a position where the Tories could one day be the alternative to Labour.
The appointment of Lee Anderson does not fit this picture. So what is he up to?
It is increasingly hard to escape the conclusion that Sunak is basically very, very bad at politics.
Funny he seems to have progressed so far in that field, then.
Lee "String 'em up and use their children as field labourers" Anderson looks like an ideal choice to fire up the membership, make them forget their party leader isn't white, and successfully solicit donations from "Enoch was right" white trash estate agents and property speculators etc. down at the golf club or in the trade association.
What is he up to? Aiming to be the leader of a reasonably resilient oppostion isn't the answer. "Win the next election" is more like it.
The membership is not the country. Just ask the Labour party!
The basic problem is that Lee Anderson can get the swivel-eyed loons all excited but Sunak can only disappoint them. There are no votes for the Tories in that. Only more ammunition for Reform.
I don't agree with Lee Anderson on everything but I'm not sure I have a problem with him being represented in the party.
He represents a point of view that is worth airing and debating (as we are doing today) and I don't see that as a bad thing.
It's what parliament is for.
That is exactly the argument some Labour MPs made when they voted for Corbyn
To be party leader, not exactly the same thing really!
He is climbing up the greasy pole. Seven years ago, Sunak was a brand new MP, today he is PM. Who is to say where Lee Anderson will be in a couple of years?
How can anyone with a brain support the death penalty?
The Police and the CPS get it wrong, if they get it wrong the person is already dead. It doesn't make any sense to have it from that point of view. It doesn't act as a deterrent, see the USA.
So Lee Anderson is a moron.
Does the argument against it rest on the possibility of miscarriages of justice?
Not exclusively.
I feel the government shouldn't execute its citizens when they are already in custody and not a clear and present risk to the population.
Yes, that's my position.
It's just more welfare via the back door. The cost of imprisonment should be fixed at 100k p.a. rising annually with rpi, and people should be kept alive as long as they can keep paying.
Perhaps reintroduce the workhouse? Or just make prisons a profit centre and execute the bottom 10% of non-payers each year?
FFS...
Don't be so Victorian. Use a modern approach.
Convert prisoners lives into OTC derivatives and trade them.
EDIT: we have an EU endorsed solution on the labour front.
OK this food is incredible. Asia is leaving the West behind
Maybe. I wouldn't swap for my lunchtime bacon buttie....
Mate. You would
The chef here is the first Indian woman EVER to win a Michelin star. Given the barriers to female success in Asia she’s got to be effing brilliant. And she is. She trained under Gordon Ramsay and did 2 years at Noma. This food is something else. She’s taken all she’s learned and married it to Mumbai and Kerala. It is phenomenal
I oppose the death penalty primarily on the miscarriage of justice grounds. I recognise many other people support it. Shouldn't that opinion be represented in Parliament?
Yes, sure. But like with so many issues strongly held opinions over the death penalty generate heat rather than light because supporters of the death penalty endlessly go on about the rather obvious case for it, while ignoring the weakest elements of their case.
Death penalty supporters tend to be found among those who don't realise that no argument is stronger than its weakest links, and that it is there, not the obvious strengths, that the argument needs to be made.
Fair enough. I can't get too excited about death penalty supporters because under our current system it's never coming back.
I agree. It isn't. For me an illustration of where representative democracy (as opposed to direct) earns its keep.
The trickier bit is when the Burkean representative democracy does something one strongly disagrees with. Or is that invariably populism at its dirty work?
You know what I mean though - the public have urges that need to be managed and this is part of the job of an MP. Represent the best part of each of your constituents, manage the other bits.
The basic problem is that Lee Anderson can get the swivel-eyed loons all excited but Sunak can only disappoint them. There are no votes for the Tories in that. Only more ammunition for Reform.
I don't agree with Lee Anderson on everything but I'm not sure I have a problem with him being represented in the party.
He represents a point of view that is worth airing and debating (as we are doing today) and I don't see that as a bad thing.
It's what parliament is for.
That is exactly the argument some Labour MPs made when they voted for Corbyn
To be party leader, not exactly the same thing really!
He is climbing up the greasy pole. Seven years ago, Sunak was a brand new MP, today he is PM. Who is to say where Lee Anderson will be in a couple of years?
How can anyone with a brain support the death penalty?
The Police and the CPS get it wrong, if they get it wrong the person is already dead. It doesn't make any sense to have it from that point of view. It doesn't act as a deterrent, see the USA.
So Lee Anderson is a moron.
Does the argument against it rest on the possibility of miscarriages of justice?
Not exclusively.
I feel the government shouldn't execute its citizens when they are already in custody and not a clear and present risk to the population.
Yes, that's my position.
It's just more welfare via the back door. The cost of imprisonment should be fixed at 100k p.a. rising annually with rpi, and people should be kept alive as long as they can keep paying.
Perhaps reintroduce the workhouse? Or just make prisons a profit centre and execute the bottom 10% of non-payers each year?
FFS...
Don't be so Victorian. Use a modern approach.
Convert prisoners lives into OTC derivatives and trade them.
EDIT: we have an EU endorsed solution on the labour front.
I thought Tuesday was Soylent Green day, not Thursday?
Tory deputy chair’s death penalty views do not represent government, says Rishi Sunak – UK politics live
Thus the BBC. There is a slightly odd feature to this play acting. Most of us think, with reason, that the next election is lost for the Tories. The whole point of Sunak is that he is not Truss, Boris, May, JRM, Jezza, Laura Pidcock, Farage, Lord Frost, Abbott or any of the multitude of unsatisfactory people who could be PM at this moment in a counterfactual world.
He is, SFAICS, not mad, wholly lacking in judgement, especially extreme or by current standards particularly untruthful.
He has four jobs: don't trash the country further; restore a modicum of dignity; lose with grace; and get to a position where the Tories could one day be the alternative to Labour.
The appointment of Lee Anderson does not fit this picture. So what is he up to?
It is increasingly hard to escape the conclusion that Sunak is basically very, very bad at politics.
Funny he seems to have progressed so far in that field, then.
Lee "String 'em up and use their children as field labourers" Anderson looks like an ideal choice to fire up the membership, make them forget their party leader isn't white, and successfully solicit donations from "Enoch was right" white trash estate agents and property speculators etc. down at the golf club or in the trade association.
What is he up to? Aiming to be the leader of a reasonably resilient oppostion isn't the answer. "Win the next election" is more like it.
The membership is not the country. Just ask the Labour party!
I think the appointment is to shore up a flank, as I said.
I see it at best for Sunak as being a second order effect, and the first order effects are not his to influence:
"In spite of all their friends could say, On a winter’s morn, on a stormy day, In a Sieve they went to sea! And when the Sieve turned round and round, And every one cried, ‘You’ll all be drowned!’ They called aloud, ‘Our Sieve ain’t big, But we don’t care a button! we don’t care a fig! In a Sieve we’ll go to sea!’ Far and few, far and few, Are the lands where the Jumblies live; Their heads are green, and their hands are blue, And they went to sea in a Sieve."
How can anyone with a brain support the death penalty?
The Police and the CPS get it wrong, if they get it wrong the person is already dead. It doesn't make any sense to have it from that point of view. It doesn't act as a deterrent, see the USA.
So Lee Anderson is a moron.
I agree with you politically 100%, but two tips:
* it's not the police or CPS who decide either guilt or sentence * Lee Anderson is an obnoxious c***, not a moron - he seems to be doing all right for himself, and he correctly jumped ship to the party where being such a massively obnoxious c*** is considered an asset.
It could be my memory playing tricks but I don't remember the Tory Party having so many of these ghastly low-rent Lee Anderson characters in the ascendency back in the day. Is it something to do with Brexit?
Tory deputy chair’s death penalty views do not represent government, says Rishi Sunak – UK politics live
Thus the BBC. There is a slightly odd feature to this play acting. Most of us think, with reason, that the next election is lost for the Tories. The whole point of Sunak is that he is not Truss, Boris, May, JRM, Jezza, Laura Pidcock, Farage, Lord Frost, Abbott or any of the multitude of unsatisfactory people who could be PM at this moment in a counterfactual world.
He is, SFAICS, not mad, wholly lacking in judgement, especially extreme or by current standards particularly untruthful.
He has four jobs: don't trash the country further; restore a modicum of dignity; lose with grace; and get to a position where the Tories could one day be the alternative to Labour.
The appointment of Lee Anderson does not fit this picture. So what is he up to?
It is increasingly hard to escape the conclusion that Sunak is basically very, very bad at politics.
Not really. I think he's handled Sturgeongate and the NI protocol superbly, and both have strengthened the Union.
It could be my memory playing tricks but I don't remember the Tory Party having so many of these ghastly low-rent Lee Anderson characters in the ascendency back in the day. Is it something to do with Brexit?
You must remember Terry Dicks, Dave Evans, and Peter Bruinvels, surely?
I do think the calibre of Conservative MPs has declined, in general, in my lifetime, although that's true of Labour MPs as well. (Since, most of the Parliamentary Liberal Party of the 1970's ought to have been put in prison, one can say that their calibre has improved a bit).
Nah, it's got all the right French colours on the tail, so why bother?
You’d have thought the French would have sent a plane, if they’d realised the British were going to lend theirs to the Big Z!
The TV reporter did mention “avion Britanniqure” several times! I noticed in Brussels he got the full welcome on the tarmac when he showed up with Macron in his (smaller!) jet. I think there’s been quite a lot of behind the scenes scrambling going on after London’s show yesterday.
"Video reportedly of destroyed/abandoned armored equipment from Russia's 155th Naval Infantry Brigade on the Vuhledar front. It shows 31 armored vehicles, including ~ 15 tanks (including T-72B3 and a T-80BVM) with the remainder BMP, MT-LB, and others."
That's got to hurt. Allegedly it is (or was) one of Russia's better units.
The Ukranian estimate for Russian tank losses, is now just about equal to its estimate for the number of tanks in Russia at the start of the war - 3,300.
Oryx have 1688 (of which destroyed: 1000, damaged: 79, abandoned: 65, captured: 544).
Russia must be scraping the bottom of the tank boneyard at the moment, trying to find anything they can make serviceable. There’s thousands more scrapped tanks out there, but most are from the Soviet-Afghan war, old T-62s. They haven’t been making a lot of new ones, and perhaps they’ve been able to repair a few that were thought killed in battle.
Imagine how the Russian troops and tank battalions, in their half-century-old relics, are going to feel when modern NATO tanks start turning up on the other side?
T-62, Chieftain, Challenger 1
British tank design went down a slightly different path than most. The Russians wen to light MBTs rapidly. British designers remember the Tigers and went with the Conqueror heavy tank to go with the lighter Centurion. Then the L7 105mm gun came out and meant that a Centurion could do both jobs.
The Chieftain was born at a time when some thought that armour was finished - HEAT and finned dart projectiles were seemingly unstoppable. So some designers went ultra light, with little armour. Chieftain went massively the other way - almost back to Conqueror style.
Challenger was an upgrade on that.
As awareness of the effectiveness of modern, complex armour spread, other NATO countries moved in the same direction. Very heavily armoured tanks - M1 etc...
Do we have a new tank in the pipeline to replace challenger 2?
How can anyone with a brain support the death penalty?
The Police and the CPS get it wrong, if they get it wrong the person is already dead. It doesn't make any sense to have it from that point of view.
Lord Denning perfectly expressed the far right view on hanging (it's almost always hanging in particular) when he said that if the Birmingham Six had been hanged "we" wouldn't have had all those bothersome campaigns to get them released, and "the whole community" (of obnoxious c***s, presumably) would have been "satisfied" (his word).
Margaret Thatcher called Denning "probably the greatest English judge of modern times".
Tories love all the "make people hang at the end of a rope until they die and then their tongues loll out and they cream their pants and all the social workers and people who don't salute the king and don't own businesses can FOAD" stuff.
It's not because of stupidity, Horse - it's because of extreme unpleasantness and inhumanity.
How can anyone with a brain support the death penalty?
The Police and the CPS get it wrong, if they get it wrong the person is already dead. It doesn't make any sense to have it from that point of view. It doesn't act as a deterrent, see the USA.
So Lee Anderson is a moron.
Does the argument against it rest on the possibility of miscarriages of justice?
Not exclusively.
I feel the government shouldn't execute its citizens when they are already in custody and not a clear and present risk to the population.
Yes, that's my position.
It's just more welfare via the back door. The cost of imprisonment should be fixed at 100k p.a. rising annually with rpi, and people should be kept alive as long as they can keep paying.
Perhaps reintroduce the workhouse? Or just make prisons a profit centre and execute the bottom 10% of non-payers each year?
FFS...
Don't be so Victorian. Use a modern approach.
Convert prisoners lives into OTC derivatives and trade them.
EDIT: we have an EU endorsed solution on the labour front.
I thought Tuesday was Soylent Green day, not Thursday?
Comments
I think its use is entirely legitimate during, and in the immediate aftermath of, war.
No! you say
But that's the trouble ... where do you draw the line?
Death penalty supporters tend to be found among those who don't realise that no argument is stronger than its weakest links, and that it is there, not the obvious strengths, that the argument needs to be made.
'Asked why he did not support the death penalty, he declined to make a moral argument against it. Instead, according to the PA report, he implied that it was not necessary. He said the government had “tightened up sentencing laws for the most violent criminals, they spend longer in prison”.'
The basis of much of Leon's output.
{Runs away, laughing like a maniac}
"Video reportedly of destroyed/abandoned armored equipment from Russia's 155th Naval Infantry Brigade on the Vuhledar front. It shows 31 armored vehicles, including ~ 15 tanks (including T-72B3 and a T-80BVM) with the remainder BMP, MT-LB, and others."
https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1623636828795424771
That's got to hurt. Allegedly it is (or was) one of Russia's better units.
"How do you feel?"
My current TL:DR is that he was an excellent and attentive local councillor, based on people I know who lived in his ward when he was a councillor. And I think he is perhaps trying to treat his constituency like a bigger council ward - TBF that is a very well know strategy. He's not very interested in what the dinner party or professional left in London think, with their navel gazing theology about how they are still the real working class despite their professions or the wealth they have made from unearned property gains.
I think that the Conservative leadership have made him Deputy Chairman as a foil to Greg Hands as the Times suggests, and also to shore up the Red Wall vote against voters drifting to Reform UK and similar parties. There are usually a number of Reform UK types all over Anderson's social media, often from distant parts of the country. I think the red meat in the rhetoric tells us what CCO think will shore up their position.
I think what's left of Labour representation in Ashfield - 2 Councillors from 33 where they had 22 from 2015 to 2019 (that's the Zadrozny effect) - are from the left side of the party. One of them is the Keir Morrison guy who photobombed Ed Milliband with a "Trade Unionists will Dance on Thatcher's Grave" teeshirt.
On the things he says, I think there are some cockups (eg when Michael Crick caught him - I think a lot of politicians would do the same), some shooting from the hip (eg 'put disruptive tenants in tents and make them grow potatoes'), some are stuff that I find unacceptable (eg death penalty), some which are good (the inexpensive meals and cooking lessons are excellent, and now the whole media has followed), and some which are embroidered anecdotes that Anderson-hating peeps keep repeating to each other (eg scab Anderson at the miners' strike - he was 17 at the time FFS, the rocks across the traveller encampment).
As long as the leafletter didn't use it as an opportunity to hand over some campaign literature.
Tough On The Causes of Crime.
Death penalty. Abortion. Assisted dying. Brexit. Scottish independence. Boat people. Migration. Rail worker strikes. NHS funding. All these and more would be assisted by the principle.
All our relatives are apparently safe. Some who live 100 miles from the epicentre have got a damaged window, but a few other buildings in their town collapsed. They say the shaking lasted for a minute, like hammers were hitting under their house.
But a friend of Mrs J has childhood friends who she Whatsapps every few days. The friend has heard nothing from them since the earthquake, and she learnt last night they died.
We hear of these tragedies every few years; earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods. It's easy for us, living in our relatively stable country, to underestimate the utter, sheer horror of these tragedies.
I'm in the clear. In the hills I tend to sing not listen to music.
Everyone knows* the death penalty isn't coming back, it's parliamentary consensus, so there's no need for vote for someone who strongly believes it to be wrong, but appearing ambivalent might save some votes from going to a nutty pro-death party.
*Of course, everyone knew we'd never leave the EU, it was parliamentary consensus, so there was no need to vote for pro-EU candidates, either.
It’s all free because Gazette yada yada
THIRTEEN
Lee is also a great proponent of the NHS. His wife was taken to hospital five times and sent home five times - the double lung transplant she required because of her cystic fibrosis finally happened on the sixth attempt. It was a great success.
Justice is hard.
I think virtually every poster on here has got it wrong at times, sometimes badly.
It's a lesson when it happens to you.
As a matter of interest, Al, where exactly in Hackney?
I was produced in Hackney Hospital, 25/9/48. (I recently discovered a letter from my Dad to my Mum which was written on the day I was born. It was a difficult birth. You might have guessed.)
I lived in Bartrip St until I was 13. It doesn't exist any more, but it was at the junction of Benn St and Bushberry Rd which are both still there, as is the chippy on Wick Rd. (It was crap then and still is.)
But you guessed that
For a reason best known to themselves, the local Labour Party disciplined him, and there was a bit of paper from the Council telling him to move them. No idea where it went after that.
It is now a faked-up anecdote about racism that the lobotomised left repeat to each other to convince themselves how evil Anderson has become. No idea why they do it - there's plenty to go at without needing to invent things.
Inventing things (or repeating general Tropes about Tories and applying them wrongly to Anderson) is imo why Jack Monroe went so quiet so quickly on her libel action - there'd be a mother of a counterclaim, and her lawyers told her to STFU. Plus the slight problem around her poverty-narrative when her supporters discovered just how much wealth is in her immediate family.
Thus the BBC. There is a slightly odd feature to this play acting. Most of us think, with reason, that the next election is lost for the Tories. The whole point of Sunak is that he is not Truss, Boris, May, JRM, Jezza, Laura Pidcock, Farage, Lord Frost, Abbott or any of the multitude of unsatisfactory people who could be PM at this moment in a counterfactual world.
He is, SFAICS, not mad, wholly lacking in judgement, especially extreme or by current standards particularly untruthful.
He has four jobs: don't trash the country further; restore a modicum of dignity; lose with grace; and get to a position where the Tories could one day be the alternative to Labour.
The appointment of Lee Anderson does not fit this picture. So what is he up to?
What is supposed to happen is
1) Travellers occupy site
2) Council gets all kinds of court orders
3) Legal challenges to court orders
4) Police say they can't enforce
5) Things like the barrier are tried
6) The barrier is broken/circumvented
7) Police shrug again
8) Council explains to residents that everything legal has been tried.
This means that the travellers get to use the site, the Council gets to look progressive towards travellers AND trying to meet residents concerns.
The boulder thing Broke The Narrative.
Most 2019 Conservative voters back the death penalty and that is where there has been leakage to RefUK Rishi has seen
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2022/03/30/britons-dont-tend-support-death-penalty-until-you-
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-64580487
Macron: I can't give you planes unless the US agrees
Zelensky: [Sighs] Hey, Boris, can you swing me a lift to Paris?
Instead of securing it with a temporary padlock, they simply left it unsecured (after all, the travellers did not remove the unsecured post. Oh no. Some kids must have down that...)
I have an issue with retribution killings and I think the stress it places on lawyers, the executioner, the family of the victim and even the criminal at times isn't civilised.
A life sentence is more meaningful if it sacrifices the rest of your days and to be compelled to life them in remorse.
Plus Sunak has some quite authoritarian and traditionally right wing views. Not a Cameroonian social liberal. He has Braverman in the home office already and professional cold-starer Raab in justice.
He represents a point of view that is worth airing and debating (as we are doing today) and I don't see that as a bad thing.
It's what parliament is for.
After much damage** etc, they vacated the site, abandoning a pregnant horse in distress. Breach birth etc. She rescued the horse and got a vet to save the foal.
As expected, they came back to demand the horse and foal. She told them to efff off, otherwise she would call the RSPCA on them. She did offer to sell them the horse and foal for the vets fees, though.
*Ridiculously ancient. She recalled an airship going overhead. After some questioning, worked out it was R101.
**Literally destroyed the light sheds used to shelter the horses.
I'm not even going to try and call the next result in Ashfield - with the local Notts "asinine" politics. I might be inclined to vote with 3 bellends on the ballot paper. I thought Z would take it last time.
I think that the Conservatives need some time in opposition.
Oryx have 1688 (of which destroyed: 1000, damaged: 79, abandoned: 65, captured: 544).
Russia must be scraping the bottom of the tank boneyard at the moment, trying to find anything they can make serviceable. There’s thousands more scrapped tanks out there, but most are from the Soviet-Afghan war, old T-62s. They haven’t been making a lot of new ones, and perhaps they’ve been able to repair a few that were thought killed in battle.
Imagine how the Russian troops and tank battalions, in their half-century-old relics, are going to feel when modern NATO tanks start turning up on the other side?
FFS...
Caught up with him in the end.
I would much rather have him in charge than the frightfully incompetent Truss and sleazy BoJo*, but all he’s doing is reinforcing the fact that the Tories are ready to be kicked out. He doesn’t have the skills to save them in any meaningful way.
*and I do not rule out a BoJo comeback pre-election, sadly
Lee "String 'em up and use their children as field labourers" Anderson looks like an ideal choice to fire up the membership, make them forget their party leader isn't white, and successfully solicit donations from "Enoch was right" white trash estate agents and property speculators etc. down at the golf club or in the trade association.
What is he up to? Aiming to be the leader of a reasonably resilient oppostion isn't the answer. "Win the next election" is more like it.
British tank design went down a slightly different path than most. The Russians wen to light MBTs rapidly. British designers remember the Tigers and went with the Conqueror heavy tank to go with the lighter Centurion. Then the L7 105mm gun came out and meant that a Centurion could do both jobs.
The Chieftain was born at a time when some thought that armour was finished - HEAT and finned dart projectiles were seemingly unstoppable. So some designers went ultra light, with little armour. Chieftain went massively the other way - almost back to Conqueror style.
Challenger was an upgrade on that.
As awareness of the effectiveness of modern, complex armour spread, other NATO countries moved in the same direction. Very heavily armoured tanks - M1 etc...
As for "fanbois" - lol.
Convert prisoners lives into OTC derivatives and trade them.
EDIT: we have an EU endorsed solution on the labour front.
So Synod has now endorsed blessings of homosexual marriages in Church of England churches and an apology to the LGBT community
https://twitter.com/synod/status/1623661033310064641?t=kZYxDeK-UoltuHRaSGKKGA&s=19
The chef here is the first Indian woman EVER to win a Michelin star. Given the barriers to female success in Asia she’s got to be effing brilliant. And she is. She trained under Gordon Ramsay and did 2 years at Noma. This food is something else. She’s taken all she’s learned and married it to Mumbai and Kerala. It is phenomenal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garima_Arora
I see it at best for Sunak as being a second order effect, and the first order effects are not his to influence:
"In spite of all their friends could say,
On a winter’s morn, on a stormy day,
In a Sieve they went to sea!
And when the Sieve turned round and round,
And every one cried, ‘You’ll all be drowned!’
They called aloud, ‘Our Sieve ain’t big,
But we don’t care a button! we don’t care a fig!
In a Sieve we’ll go to sea!’
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve."
* it's not the police or CPS who decide either guilt or sentence
* Lee Anderson is an obnoxious c***, not a moron - he seems to be doing all right for himself, and he correctly jumped ship to the party where being such a massively obnoxious c*** is considered an asset.
I do think the calibre of Conservative MPs has declined, in general, in my lifetime, although that's true of Labour MPs as well. (Since, most of the Parliamentary Liberal Party of the 1970's ought to have been put in prison, one can say that their calibre has improved a bit).
Fuck tho this food is brilliant. And I HATE tasting menus
Margaret Thatcher called Denning "probably the greatest English judge of modern times".
Tories love all the "make people hang at the end of a rope until they die and then their tongues loll out and they cream their pants and all the social workers and people who don't salute the king and don't own businesses can FOAD" stuff.
It's not because of stupidity, Horse - it's because of extreme unpleasantness and inhumanity.