I think it was perfectly sensible of the Home Secretary to request a review of the terms under which the police deploy firearms so they can be sure on what grounds they can be used.
Unless and until Brand is charged of any offences there should also be some limits on what the media can report on the matter
Isn't it the other way around?
If charges are filed then the matter becomes sub judice and reporting restrictions apply, but currently its only subject to libel laws, not judicial ones, is it not?
Now the police investigation is under way, not if that is prejudiced and any subsequent trial
It has been repeatedly pointed out to you that you have not understood the law correctly which is, essentially, that contempt becomes a live issue on arrest, which has not happened.
I just suggest, for the sake of your own dignity, that you educate yourself, rather than continuing to bluster.
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Pretending he won in 2020, when he actually lost by 7 million votes?
Biden 81 million Trump 74 million
He didn't win by the rules of the competition. Nothing else matters.
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Pretending he won in 2020, when he actually lost by 7 million votes?
Biden 81 million Trump 74 million
What did Hillary do? Or Al Gore?
Disputing elections looks like a fine old Yankee tradition, to me
And Trump didn't tell social media to close down globally-important news stories
Taking cases to the courts to resolve disputes is a fine old Yankee tradition absolutely.
Riling up a mob to invade Congress to overturn the result having lost both the elections and the court cases is not.
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
No other President in American history has tried to interfere with the process of approving the outcome of an election and he did so by encouraging a mob to invade Congress and threaten the participants, including his own VP, who was threatened with lynching.
He is a unique disgrace and that behaviour really should have been the end of his career. Hopefully, it was.
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Pretending he won in 2020, when he actually lost by 7 million votes?
Biden 81 million Trump 74 million
What did Hillary do? Or Al Gore?
Disputing elections looks like a fine old Yankee tradition, to me
And Trump didn't tell social media to close down globally-important news stories
They both accepted the result. Gore went to court with a view to securing a further recount in Florida, but that was denied and, when it was, he accepted Bush was the legitimate President. Indeed, he attended Bush's inauguration as outgoing Veep.
You are attempting to draw an entirely bogus analogy.
In Scotland problems also accumulate in the Criminal Justice System. GeoAmay are supposed to provide transportation for those who are in custody to get them to court and also to provide security for those appearing in the court. The current situation is disastrous. The Sheriff Principals have now provided that courts must finish dealing with custodies by 7pm on a Monday and 6pm every other night unless the accused, the summons and a representative are all present before that cut off in which case the court can be dealt with.
Everyone is extremely unhappy with GeoAmay but the reality is that no one else seems to want the contract which they probably under bid for and carries huge amounts of unpaid responsibility and PR risk.
What this utter shambles suggests to me is that it just might not be the case that the utter chaos south of the border is entirely the fault of incompetent ministers or even corrupt and self serving police officers. We need to look much more realistically at what we do and why we do it.
We have gone from a situation which positively encouraged the hiding of contrary evidence to a point where the disclosure provisions require hundreds of pages for relatively simple crimes which need to be read, discussed with the accused and just might form the basis of some contrived defence. I think that we have gone too far. We seem to increase the length of served sentences to reflect public anger without regard to the consequences for our prison service or those who work in it. We lock up more than anyone else in Europe: is it working? We have lots of prosecutions of single complainer rapes which allegedly occurred within a relationship in the knowledge that the conviction rate for such charges is pitiful. Why do we do this? Who does it help?
The infantile way our politics and our media discuss these things make sensible discussions almost impossible. The police are indeed blameworthy but they operate in a system that just doesn't work for anyone, the victims, the accused, the participants and the public. No one is getting what they want out of this.
This deserves a lot more likes than it got.
Aren't you in charge of likes? Can't you just fiddle the votes somehow and give him a bonus 50 likes?
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Pretending he won in 2020, when he actually lost by 7 million votes?
Biden 81 million Trump 74 million
What did Hillary do? Or Al Gore?
Disputing elections looks like a fine old Yankee tradition, to me
And Trump didn't tell social media to close down globally-important news stories
They both accepted the result. Gore went to court with a view to securing a further recount in Florida, but that was denied and, when it was, he accepted Bush was the legitimate President. Indeed, he attended Bush's inauguration as outgoing Veep.
You are attempting to draw an entirely bogus analogy.
Indeed, while Trump was so petty he didn't even attend Biden's inauguration as outgoing POTUS.
In Scotland problems also accumulate in the Criminal Justice System. GeoAmay are supposed to provide transportation for those who are in custody to get them to court and also to provide security for those appearing in the court. The current situation is disastrous. The Sheriff Principals have now provided that courts must finish dealing with custodies by 7pm on a Monday and 6pm every other night unless the accused, the summons and a representative are all present before that cut off in which case the court can be dealt with.
Everyone is extremely unhappy with GeoAmay but the reality is that no one else seems to want the contract which they probably under bid for and carries huge amounts of unpaid responsibility and PR risk.
What this utter shambles suggests to me is that it just might not be the case that the utter chaos south of the border is entirely the fault of incompetent ministers or even corrupt and self serving police officers. We need to look much more realistically at what we do and why we do it.
We have gone from a situation which positively encouraged the hiding of contrary evidence to a point where the disclosure provisions require hundreds of pages for relatively simple crimes which need to be read, discussed with the accused and just might form the basis of some contrived defence. I think that we have gone too far. We seem to increase the length of served sentences to reflect public anger without regard to the consequences for our prison service or those who work in it. We lock up more than anyone else in Europe: is it working? We have lots of prosecutions of single complainer rapes which allegedly occurred within a relationship in the knowledge that the conviction rate for such charges is pitiful. Why do we do this? Who does it help?
The infantile way our politics and our media discuss these things make sensible discussions almost impossible. The police are indeed blameworthy but they operate in a system that just doesn't work for anyone, the victims, the accused, the participants and the public. No one is getting what they want out of this.
Thanks for posting this @DavidL . I think the problem with this is that most questions of crime and punishment invoke a reaction of disgust which is amplified by social media and against which it is impossible to provide a compelling counter narrative. People try, admirably - even the occasional politician - but it never really works. What the people seem to want is a massive jail population in third world style conditions, perhaps self funded by some form of slave labour amongst prisoners. We seem to move further towards this with every new policy announcement on the subject of criminal justice, today being no exception.
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Here's a dozen reasons to be going on with, in no particular order:
1. His refusal to accept the democratic process in 2020. 2. His attempt to insight insurrection following the 2020 election. 3. His complete disregard for the US constitution. 4. His cosying up to the most dangerous man in the world. 5. His willingness to sell Ukraine down the river. 6. His undermining of the global influence and leadership of the West. 7. His scamming exploitation of every possible opportunity for self-enrichment. 8. His threat to the national security of the US and its Western allies. 9. His blindness to the threat of global warming. 10. His threats to lock up his political opponents. 11. His pandering subservience to foreign strongmen Erdoğan and Kim Jong Un. 12. His lack of leadership during the Covid crisis which led to the unnecessary deaths of many of his countrymen.
In Scotland problems also accumulate in the Criminal Justice System. GeoAmay are supposed to provide transportation for those who are in custody to get them to court and also to provide security for those appearing in the court. The current situation is disastrous. The Sheriff Principals have now provided that courts must finish dealing with custodies by 7pm on a Monday and 6pm every other night unless the accused, the summons and a representative are all present before that cut off in which case the court can be dealt with.
Everyone is extremely unhappy with GeoAmay but the reality is that no one else seems to want the contract which they probably under bid for and carries huge amounts of unpaid responsibility and PR risk.
What this utter shambles suggests to me is that it just might not be the case that the utter chaos south of the border is entirely the fault of incompetent ministers or even corrupt and self serving police officers. We need to look much more realistically at what we do and why we do it.
We have gone from a situation which positively encouraged the hiding of contrary evidence to a point where the disclosure provisions require hundreds of pages for relatively simple crimes which need to be read, discussed with the accused and just might form the basis of some contrived defence. I think that we have gone too far. We seem to increase the length of served sentences to reflect public anger without regard to the consequences for our prison service or those who work in it. We lock up more than anyone else in Europe: is it working? We have lots of prosecutions of single complainer rapes which allegedly occurred within a relationship in the knowledge that the conviction rate for such charges is pitiful. Why do we do this? Who does it help?
The infantile way our politics and our media discuss these things make sensible discussions almost impossible. The police are indeed blameworthy but they operate in a system that just doesn't work for anyone, the victims, the accused, the participants and the public. No one is getting what they want out of this.
This deserves a lot more likes than it got.
Aren't you in charge of likes? Can't you just fiddle the votes somehow and give him a bonus 50 likes?
Given the state of the average RCS post dishing out one like is about as far as he can get without raising suspicions.
Edit, edit! Ok I have to admit that RCS is amongst the posters that I would spend time to read.
Interesting historical note, Trump's breaking of tradition by not attending his successors inauguration broke an uninterrupted tradition going back 152 years.
The last POTUS before Trump not to attend his successors inauguration after an election is the historical POTUS that Trump seems most like and the only historical POTUS worse than Trump in my eyes, President Andrew Johnson.
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Pretending he won in 2020, when he actually lost by 7 million votes?
Biden 81 million Trump 74 million
What did Hillary do? Or Al Gore?
Disputing elections looks like a fine old Yankee tradition, to me
And Trump didn't tell social media to close down globally-important news stories
Taking cases to the courts to resolve disputes is a fine old Yankee tradition absolutely.
Riling up a mob to invade Congress to overturn the result having lost both the elections and the court cases is not.
I'm increasingly less convinced of all this (in reply to everyone who answered me)
I see the deliberate suppression of the Lab Leak Hypothesis as absolutely equal, or worse than, anything Trump did. It was a total and flagrant insult to the Free Speech Amendment, it was done deliberately to fuck Trump's campaign, it was perfectly outrageous, and it concerned the origins of the greatest threat to humanity since WW2 - potentially incriminating Democrat heroes like Fauci
AND TWENTY MILLION DIED
Don't get me wrong. I ABHOR Trump. I wish he did not exist. I want him gone. But I do not see these Democrats as any better, in quite serious ways they are worse
In Scotland problems also accumulate in the Criminal Justice System. GeoAmay are supposed to provide transportation for those who are in custody to get them to court and also to provide security for those appearing in the court. The current situation is disastrous. The Sheriff Principals have now provided that courts must finish dealing with custodies by 7pm on a Monday and 6pm every other night unless the accused, the summons and a representative are all present before that cut off in which case the court can be dealt with.
Everyone is extremely unhappy with GeoAmay but the reality is that no one else seems to want the contract which they probably under bid for and carries huge amounts of unpaid responsibility and PR risk.
What this utter shambles suggests to me is that it just might not be the case that the utter chaos south of the border is entirely the fault of incompetent ministers or even corrupt and self serving police officers. We need to look much more realistically at what we do and why we do it.
We have gone from a situation which positively encouraged the hiding of contrary evidence to a point where the disclosure provisions require hundreds of pages for relatively simple crimes which need to be read, discussed with the accused and just might form the basis of some contrived defence. I think that we have gone too far. We seem to increase the length of served sentences to reflect public anger without regard to the consequences for our prison service or those who work in it. We lock up more than anyone else in Europe: is it working? We have lots of prosecutions of single complainer rapes which allegedly occurred within a relationship in the knowledge that the conviction rate for such charges is pitiful. Why do we do this? Who does it help?
The infantile way our politics and our media discuss these things make sensible discussions almost impossible. The police are indeed blameworthy but they operate in a system that just doesn't work for anyone, the victims, the accused, the participants and the public. No one is getting what they want out of this.
This deserves a lot more likes than it got.
Aren't you in charge of likes? Can't you just fiddle the votes somehow and give him a bonus 50 likes?
How dare you insinuate that Mr Smithson Jr. would fiddle the system in that way. I believe he's beyond incorruptible!
(PS Robert if you could see your way to popping me a few likes for this from defunct posters, that'd be great.)
I think it was perfectly sensible of the Home Secretary to request a review of the terms under which the police deploy firearms so they can be sure on what grounds they can be used.
Unless and until Brand is charged of any offences there should also be some limits on what the media can report on the matter
Isn't it the other way around?
If charges are filed then the matter becomes sub judice and reporting restrictions apply, but currently its only subject to libel laws, not judicial ones, is it not?
Now the police investigation is under way, not if that is prejudiced and any subsequent trial
It has been repeatedly pointed out to you that you have not understood the law correctly which is, essentially, that contempt becomes a live issue on arrest, which has not happened.
I just suggest, for the sake of your own dignity, that you educate yourself, rather than continuing to bluster.
How do you know? If witnesses are interfered with by media during a police investigation that could well be contempt.
The AG certainly thinks there is a risk articles could be in breach of the Contempt of Court Act
In Scotland problems also accumulate in the Criminal Justice System. GeoAmay are supposed to provide transportation for those who are in custody to get them to court and also to provide security for those appearing in the court. The current situation is disastrous. The Sheriff Principals have now provided that courts must finish dealing with custodies by 7pm on a Monday and 6pm every other night unless the accused, the summons and a representative are all present before that cut off in which case the court can be dealt with.
Everyone is extremely unhappy with GeoAmay but the reality is that no one else seems to want the contract which they probably under bid for and carries huge amounts of unpaid responsibility and PR risk.
What this utter shambles suggests to me is that it just might not be the case that the utter chaos south of the border is entirely the fault of incompetent ministers or even corrupt and self serving police officers. We need to look much more realistically at what we do and why we do it.
We have gone from a situation which positively encouraged the hiding of contrary evidence to a point where the disclosure provisions require hundreds of pages for relatively simple crimes which need to be read, discussed with the accused and just might form the basis of some contrived defence. I think that we have gone too far. We seem to increase the length of served sentences to reflect public anger without regard to the consequences for our prison service or those who work in it. We lock up more than anyone else in Europe: is it working? We have lots of prosecutions of single complainer rapes which allegedly occurred within a relationship in the knowledge that the conviction rate for such charges is pitiful. Why do we do this? Who does it help?
The infantile way our politics and our media discuss these things make sensible discussions almost impossible. The police are indeed blameworthy but they operate in a system that just doesn't work for anyone, the victims, the accused, the participants and the public. No one is getting what they want out of this.
Thanks for posting this @DavidL . I think the problem with this is that most questions of crime and punishment invoke a reaction of disgust which is amplified by social media and against which it is impossible to provide a compelling counter narrative. People try, admirably - even the occasional politician - but it never really works. What the people seem to want is a massive jail population in third world style conditions, perhaps self funded by some form of slave labour amongst prisoners. We seem to move further towards this with every new policy announcement on the subject of criminal justice, today being no exception.
Yes, and apart from a tiny handful of exceptions like Letby those who are sent to prison will come out again and form a part of our society. The consequences of jail include the loss of employment, the loss of housing, loss of contact with family members, the creation of a new friendship group of those also serving sentences, all too often new problems with addiction and mental health. None of these factors make reoffending less likely. None.
Rory made a test of his time as Prison minister was whether he could find ways to reduce recidivism. He was, as usual, spot on. Education, support on departure, restorative justice, community justice initiatives, this is where we need to go. But sounding tough is so much easier.
In Scotland problems also accumulate in the Criminal Justice System. GeoAmay are supposed to provide transportation for those who are in custody to get them to court and also to provide security for those appearing in the court. The current situation is disastrous. The Sheriff Principals have now provided that courts must finish dealing with custodies by 7pm on a Monday and 6pm every other night unless the accused, the summons and a representative are all present before that cut off in which case the court can be dealt with.
Everyone is extremely unhappy with GeoAmay but the reality is that no one else seems to want the contract which they probably under bid for and carries huge amounts of unpaid responsibility and PR risk.
What this utter shambles suggests to me is that it just might not be the case that the utter chaos south of the border is entirely the fault of incompetent ministers or even corrupt and self serving police officers. We need to look much more realistically at what we do and why we do it.
We have gone from a situation which positively encouraged the hiding of contrary evidence to a point where the disclosure provisions require hundreds of pages for relatively simple crimes which need to be read, discussed with the accused and just might form the basis of some contrived defence. I think that we have gone too far. We seem to increase the length of served sentences to reflect public anger without regard to the consequences for our prison service or those who work in it. We lock up more than anyone else in Europe: is it working? We have lots of prosecutions of single complainer rapes which allegedly occurred within a relationship in the knowledge that the conviction rate for such charges is pitiful. Why do we do this? Who does it help?
The infantile way our politics and our media discuss these things make sensible discussions almost impossible. The police are indeed blameworthy but they operate in a system that just doesn't work for anyone, the victims, the accused, the participants and the public. No one is getting what they want out of this.
Thanks for posting this @DavidL . I think the problem with this is that most questions of crime and punishment invoke a reaction of disgust which is amplified by social media and against which it is impossible to provide a compelling counter narrative. People try, admirably - even the occasional politician - but it never really works. What the people seem to want is a massive jail population in third world style conditions, perhaps self funded by some form of slave labour amongst prisoners. We seem to move further towards this with every new policy announcement on the subject of criminal justice, today being no exception.
Yes, and apart from a tiny handful of exceptions like Letby those who are sent to prison will come out again and form a part of our society. The consequences of jail include the loss of employment, the loss of housing, loss of contact with family members, the creation of a new friendship group of those also serving sentences, all too often new problems with addiction and mental health. None of these factors make reoffending less likely. None.
Rory made a test of his time as Prison minister was whether he could find ways to reduce recidivism. He was, as usual, spot on. Education, support on departure, restorative justice, community justice initiatives, this is where we need to go. But sounding tough is so much easier.
Gove took a similar attitude as Justice Minister too. He was very good with it.
Though the main problems at the minute are due to the Treasury not the Justice Department anyway. Whether you want punishment, or rehabilitation, or both, you need a working criminal justice system that sees cases dealt with in a timely fashion.
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Here's a dozen reasons to be going on with, in no particular order:
1. His refusal to accept the democratic process in 2020. 2. His attempt to insight insurrection following the 2020 election. 3. His complete disregard for the US constitution. 4. His cosying up to the most dangerous man in the world. 5. His willingness to sell Ukraine down the river. 6. His undermining of the global influence and leadership of the West. 7. His scamming exploitation of every possible opportunity for self-enrichment. 8. His threat to the national security of the US and its Western allies. 9. His blindness to the threat of global warming. 10. His threats to lock up his political opponents. 11. His pandering subservience to foreign strongmen Erdoğan and Kim Jong Un. 12. His lack of leadership during the Covid crisis which led to the unnecessary deaths of many of his countrymen.
To late to edit to correct my grammar but re 2. - with Trump you get 'incite' not 'insight', of course.
Interesting historical note, Trump's breaking of tradition by not attending his successors inauguration broke an uninterrupted tradition going back 152 years.
The last POTUS before Trump not to attend his successors inauguration after an election is the historical POTUS that Trump seems most like and the only historical POTUS worse than Trump in my eyes, President Andrew Johnson.
In Scotland problems also accumulate in the Criminal Justice System. GeoAmay are supposed to provide transportation for those who are in custody to get them to court and also to provide security for those appearing in the court. The current situation is disastrous. The Sheriff Principals have now provided that courts must finish dealing with custodies by 7pm on a Monday and 6pm every other night unless the accused, the summons and a representative are all present before that cut off in which case the court can be dealt with.
Everyone is extremely unhappy with GeoAmay but the reality is that no one else seems to want the contract which they probably under bid for and carries huge amounts of unpaid responsibility and PR risk.
What this utter shambles suggests to me is that it just might not be the case that the utter chaos south of the border is entirely the fault of incompetent ministers or even corrupt and self serving police officers. We need to look much more realistically at what we do and why we do it.
We have gone from a situation which positively encouraged the hiding of contrary evidence to a point where the disclosure provisions require hundreds of pages for relatively simple crimes which need to be read, discussed with the accused and just might form the basis of some contrived defence. I think that we have gone too far. We seem to increase the length of served sentences to reflect public anger without regard to the consequences for our prison service or those who work in it. We lock up more than anyone else in Europe: is it working? We have lots of prosecutions of single complainer rapes which allegedly occurred within a relationship in the knowledge that the conviction rate for such charges is pitiful. Why do we do this? Who does it help?
The infantile way our politics and our media discuss these things make sensible discussions almost impossible. The police are indeed blameworthy but they operate in a system that just doesn't work for anyone, the victims, the accused, the participants and the public. No one is getting what they want out of this.
Thanks for posting this @DavidL . I think the problem with this is that most questions of crime and punishment invoke a reaction of disgust which is amplified by social media and against which it is impossible to provide a compelling counter narrative. People try, admirably - even the occasional politician - but it never really works. What the people seem to want is a massive jail population in third world style conditions, perhaps self funded by some form of slave labour amongst prisoners. We seem to move further towards this with every new policy announcement on the subject of criminal justice, today being no exception.
Yes, and apart from a tiny handful of exceptions like Letby those who are sent to prison will come out again and form a part of our society. The consequences of jail include the loss of employment, the loss of housing, loss of contact with family members, the creation of a new friendship group of those also serving sentences, all too often new problems with addiction and mental health. None of these factors make reoffending less likely. None.
Rory made a test of his time as Prison minister was whether he could find ways to reduce recidivism. He was, as usual, spot on. Education, support on departure, restorative justice, community justice initiatives, this is where we need to go. But sounding tough is so much easier.
He seemed unlikely to meet his own tests, and he's not spoken about that, so far as I know.
Interesting historical note, Trump's breaking of tradition by not attending his successors inauguration broke an uninterrupted tradition going back 152 years.
The last POTUS before Trump not to attend his successors inauguration after an election is the historical POTUS that Trump seems most like and the only historical POTUS worse than Trump in my eyes, President Andrew Johnson.
Didn't JFK fail to attend LBJ's inauguration?
"... after an election ..."
LBJ's first inauguration was not following an election.
In Scotland problems also accumulate in the Criminal Justice System. GeoAmay are supposed to provide transportation for those who are in custody to get them to court and also to provide security for those appearing in the court. The current situation is disastrous. The Sheriff Principals have now provided that courts must finish dealing with custodies by 7pm on a Monday and 6pm every other night unless the accused, the summons and a representative are all present before that cut off in which case the court can be dealt with.
Everyone is extremely unhappy with GeoAmay but the reality is that no one else seems to want the contract which they probably under bid for and carries huge amounts of unpaid responsibility and PR risk.
What this utter shambles suggests to me is that it just might not be the case that the utter chaos south of the border is entirely the fault of incompetent ministers or even corrupt and self serving police officers. We need to look much more realistically at what we do and why we do it.
We have gone from a situation which positively encouraged the hiding of contrary evidence to a point where the disclosure provisions require hundreds of pages for relatively simple crimes which need to be read, discussed with the accused and just might form the basis of some contrived defence. I think that we have gone too far. We seem to increase the length of served sentences to reflect public anger without regard to the consequences for our prison service or those who work in it. We lock up more than anyone else in Europe: is it working? We have lots of prosecutions of single complainer rapes which allegedly occurred within a relationship in the knowledge that the conviction rate for such charges is pitiful. Why do we do this? Who does it help?
The infantile way our politics and our media discuss these things make sensible discussions almost impossible. The police are indeed blameworthy but they operate in a system that just doesn't work for anyone, the victims, the accused, the participants and the public. No one is getting what they want out of this.
Thanks for posting this @DavidL . I think the problem with this is that most questions of crime and punishment invoke a reaction of disgust which is amplified by social media and against which it is impossible to provide a compelling counter narrative. People try, admirably - even the occasional politician - but it never really works. What the people seem to want is a massive jail population in third world style conditions, perhaps self funded by some form of slave labour amongst prisoners. We seem to move further towards this with every new policy announcement on the subject of criminal justice, today being no exception.
Yes, and apart from a tiny handful of exceptions like Letby those who are sent to prison will come out again and form a part of our society. The consequences of jail include the loss of employment, the loss of housing, loss of contact with family members, the creation of a new friendship group of those also serving sentences, all too often new problems with addiction and mental health. None of these factors make reoffending less likely. None.
Rory made a test of his time as Prison minister was whether he could find ways to reduce recidivism. He was, as usual, spot on. Education, support on departure, restorative justice, community justice initiatives, this is where we need to go. But sounding tough is so much easier.
Interesting historical note, Trump's breaking of tradition by not attending his successors inauguration broke an uninterrupted tradition going back 152 years.
The last POTUS before Trump not to attend his successors inauguration after an election is the historical POTUS that Trump seems most like and the only historical POTUS worse than Trump in my eyes, President Andrew Johnson.
Tbf neither FDR nor JFK attended their successors' inauguration but they both had good excuses.
(Actually, JFK was at LBJ's of course, in body if not in spirit.)
Interesting historical note, Trump's breaking of tradition by not attending his successors inauguration broke an uninterrupted tradition going back 152 years.
The last POTUS before Trump not to attend his successors inauguration after an election is the historical POTUS that Trump seems most like and the only historical POTUS worse than Trump in my eyes, President Andrew Johnson.
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Pretending he won in 2020, when he actually lost by 7 million votes?
Biden 81 million Trump 74 million
What did Hillary do? Or Al Gore?
Disputing elections looks like a fine old Yankee tradition, to me
And Trump didn't tell social media to close down globally-important news stories
Taking cases to the courts to resolve disputes is a fine old Yankee tradition absolutely.
Riling up a mob to invade Congress to overturn the result having lost both the elections and the court cases is not.
I'm increasingly less convinced of all this (in reply to everyone who answered me)
I see the deliberate suppression of the Lab Leak Hypothesis as absolutely equal, or worse than, anything Trump did. It was a total and flagrant insult to the Free Speech Amendment, it was done deliberately to fuck Trump's campaign, it was perfectly outrageous, and it concerned the origins of the greatest threat to humanity since WW2 - potentially incriminating Democrat heroes like Fauci
AND TWENTY MILLION DIED
Don't get me wrong. I ABHOR Trump. I wish he did not exist. I want him gone. But I do not see these Democrats as any better, in quite serious ways they are worse
The greatest threat to humanity since WW2 was surely the Cuban missile crisis. Covid was nowhere near.
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Pretending he won in 2020, when he actually lost by 7 million votes?
Biden 81 million Trump 74 million
What did Hillary do? Or Al Gore?
Disputing elections looks like a fine old Yankee tradition, to me
And Trump didn't tell social media to close down globally-important news stories
I don't remember either of them submitting slates of fake electors. But that's probably just my memory.
In Scotland problems also accumulate in the Criminal Justice System. GeoAmay are supposed to provide transportation for those who are in custody to get them to court and also to provide security for those appearing in the court. The current situation is disastrous. The Sheriff Principals have now provided that courts must finish dealing with custodies by 7pm on a Monday and 6pm every other night unless the accused, the summons and a representative are all present before that cut off in which case the court can be dealt with.
Everyone is extremely unhappy with GeoAmay but the reality is that no one else seems to want the contract which they probably under bid for and carries huge amounts of unpaid responsibility and PR risk.
What this utter shambles suggests to me is that it just might not be the case that the utter chaos south of the border is entirely the fault of incompetent ministers or even corrupt and self serving police officers. We need to look much more realistically at what we do and why we do it.
We have gone from a situation which positively encouraged the hiding of contrary evidence to a point where the disclosure provisions require hundreds of pages for relatively simple crimes which need to be read, discussed with the accused and just might form the basis of some contrived defence. I think that we have gone too far. We seem to increase the length of served sentences to reflect public anger without regard to the consequences for our prison service or those who work in it. We lock up more than anyone else in Europe: is it working? We have lots of prosecutions of single complainer rapes which allegedly occurred within a relationship in the knowledge that the conviction rate for such charges is pitiful. Why do we do this? Who does it help?
The infantile way our politics and our media discuss these things make sensible discussions almost impossible. The police are indeed blameworthy but they operate in a system that just doesn't work for anyone, the victims, the accused, the participants and the public. No one is getting what they want out of this.
Thanks for posting this @DavidL . I think the problem with this is that most questions of crime and punishment invoke a reaction of disgust which is amplified by social media and against which it is impossible to provide a compelling counter narrative. People try, admirably - even the occasional politician - but it never really works. What the people seem to want is a massive jail population in third world style conditions, perhaps self funded by some form of slave labour amongst prisoners. We seem to move further towards this with every new policy announcement on the subject of criminal justice, today being no exception.
Yes, and apart from a tiny handful of exceptions like Letby those who are sent to prison will come out again and form a part of our society. The consequences of jail include the loss of employment, the loss of housing, loss of contact with family members, the creation of a new friendship group of those also serving sentences, all too often new problems with addiction and mental health. None of these factors make reoffending less likely. None.
Rory made a test of his time as Prison minister was whether he could find ways to reduce recidivism. He was, as usual, spot on. Education, support on departure, restorative justice, community justice initiatives, this is where we need to go. But sounding tough is so much easier.
As I recall Gove was making similar noises back in 2015. I think there is some danger in experts who work in the criminal justice system saying 'people need to be rehabilitated because eventually they come out'. The popular reaction to this is that often that people have 'done wrong' (killed, raped etc) so they shouldn't ever come out. It should be 'whole life' or a sentence of something like 50 years. The government keep on feeding this beast. It is essentially based on ignorance of how and why a lot of crime happens.
Feels quite tetchy on here this evening and that’s without anyone mentioning cyclists, veganism or cashless society.
On which, I was in Blackpool today at the Pleasure Beach. Magnificent day (hardly any queues; lovely sunshine) but was scuppered at the chippy on the way back to the station because it was… cash only!
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Here's a dozen reasons to be going on with, in no particular order:
1. His refusal to accept the democratic process in 2020. 2. His attempt to insight insurrection following the 2020 election. 3. His complete disregard for the US constitution. 4. His cosying up to the most dangerous man in the world. 5. His willingness to sell Ukraine down the river. 6. His undermining of the global influence and leadership of the West. 7. His scamming exploitation of every possible opportunity for self-enrichment. 8. His threat to the national security of the US and its Western allies. 9. His blindness to the threat of global warming. 10. His threats to lock up his political opponents. 11. His pandering subservience to foreign strongmen Erdoğan and Kim Jong Un. 12. His lack of leadership during the Covid crisis which led to the unnecessary deaths of many of his countrymen.
To late to edit to correct my grammar but re 2. - with Trump you get 'incite' not 'insight', of course.
In Scotland problems also accumulate in the Criminal Justice System. GeoAmay are supposed to provide transportation for those who are in custody to get them to court and also to provide security for those appearing in the court. The current situation is disastrous. The Sheriff Principals have now provided that courts must finish dealing with custodies by 7pm on a Monday and 6pm every other night unless the accused, the summons and a representative are all present before that cut off in which case the court can be dealt with.
Everyone is extremely unhappy with GeoAmay but the reality is that no one else seems to want the contract which they probably under bid for and carries huge amounts of unpaid responsibility and PR risk.
What this utter shambles suggests to me is that it just might not be the case that the utter chaos south of the border is entirely the fault of incompetent ministers or even corrupt and self serving police officers. We need to look much more realistically at what we do and why we do it.
We have gone from a situation which positively encouraged the hiding of contrary evidence to a point where the disclosure provisions require hundreds of pages for relatively simple crimes which need to be read, discussed with the accused and just might form the basis of some contrived defence. I think that we have gone too far. We seem to increase the length of served sentences to reflect public anger without regard to the consequences for our prison service or those who work in it. We lock up more than anyone else in Europe: is it working? We have lots of prosecutions of single complainer rapes which allegedly occurred within a relationship in the knowledge that the conviction rate for such charges is pitiful. Why do we do this? Who does it help?
The infantile way our politics and our media discuss these things make sensible discussions almost impossible. The police are indeed blameworthy but they operate in a system that just doesn't work for anyone, the victims, the accused, the participants and the public. No one is getting what they want out of this.
So, apart from emigrating to less stupid nations, what's the way out?
The problems are complicated and have accumulated over decades, all too often in an attempt to correct some previous wrong. They do not admit to easy solutions in short paragraphs on a blog. Having said that:
We need to simplify the criminal justice system so that it can process people faster and cheaper.
We need to invest in community based solutions that work. We need to learn from those who do it better.
We need to encourage community policing so that the police are once again acting on behalf of a community that they are a part of rather than an occupying force, resented, distrusted and hostile.
We need to make better use of the time that people are in prison to remove or address the reasons for their offending rather than focusing almost exclusively on punishment.
I am sure that I could come up with a few more but these are a start.
We have to be realistic, too.
There will always be communities (eg in Northern Ireland, but elsewhere too) for whom the police are always going to be part of an occupying force.
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Here's a dozen reasons to be going on with, in no particular order:
1. His refusal to accept the democratic process in 2020. 2. His attempt to insight insurrection following the 2020 election. 3. His complete disregard for the US constitution. 4. His cosying up to the most dangerous man in the world. 5. His willingness to sell Ukraine down the river. 6. His undermining of the global influence and leadership of the West. 7. His scamming exploitation of every possible opportunity for self-enrichment. 8. His threat to the national security of the US and its Western allies. 9. His blindness to the threat of global warming. 10. His threats to lock up his political opponents. 11. His pandering subservience to foreign strongmen Erdoğan and Kim Jong Un. 12. His lack of leadership during the Covid crisis which led to the unnecessary deaths of many of his countrymen.
I note Trump has upgraded (10) to threats to execute his political opponents, as with Mark Milley.
Is there any solution other than to disband the police? There's no guaranteed way to improve so-called "public trust", and it feels like trust has been trending downward in a range of institutions for six decades.
In Scotland problems also accumulate in the Criminal Justice System. GeoAmay are supposed to provide transportation for those who are in custody to get them to court and also to provide security for those appearing in the court. The current situation is disastrous. The Sheriff Principals have now provided that courts must finish dealing with custodies by 7pm on a Monday and 6pm every other night unless the accused, the summons and a representative are all present before that cut off in which case the court can be dealt with.
Everyone is extremely unhappy with GeoAmay but the reality is that no one else seems to want the contract which they probably under bid for and carries huge amounts of unpaid responsibility and PR risk.
What this utter shambles suggests to me is that it just might not be the case that the utter chaos south of the border is entirely the fault of incompetent ministers or even corrupt and self serving police officers. We need to look much more realistically at what we do and why we do it.
We have gone from a situation which positively encouraged the hiding of contrary evidence to a point where the disclosure provisions require hundreds of pages for relatively simple crimes which need to be read, discussed with the accused and just might form the basis of some contrived defence. I think that we have gone too far. We seem to increase the length of served sentences to reflect public anger without regard to the consequences for our prison service or those who work in it. We lock up more than anyone else in Europe: is it working? We have lots of prosecutions of single complainer rapes which allegedly occurred within a relationship in the knowledge that the conviction rate for such charges is pitiful. Why do we do this? Who does it help?
The infantile way our politics and our media discuss these things make sensible discussions almost impossible. The police are indeed blameworthy but they operate in a system that just doesn't work for anyone, the victims, the accused, the participants and the public. No one is getting what they want out of this.
Thanks for posting this @DavidL . I think the problem with this is that most questions of crime and punishment invoke a reaction of disgust which is amplified by social media and against which it is impossible to provide a compelling counter narrative. People try, admirably - even the occasional politician - but it never really works. What the people seem to want is a massive jail population in third world style conditions, perhaps self funded by some form of slave labour amongst prisoners. We seem to move further towards this with every new policy announcement on the subject of criminal justice, today being no exception.
Yes, and apart from a tiny handful of exceptions like Letby those who are sent to prison will come out again and form a part of our society. The consequences of jail include the loss of employment, the loss of housing, loss of contact with family members, the creation of a new friendship group of those also serving sentences, all too often new problems with addiction and mental health. None of these factors make reoffending less likely. None.
Rory made a test of his time as Prison minister was whether he could find ways to reduce recidivism. He was, as usual, spot on. Education, support on departure, restorative justice, community justice initiatives, this is where we need to go. But sounding tough is so much easier.
As I recall Gove was making similar noises back in 2015. I think there is some danger in experts who work in the criminal justice system saying 'people need to be rehabilitated because eventually they come out'. The popular reaction to this is that often that people have 'done wrong' (killed, raped etc) so they shouldn't ever come out. It should be 'whole life' or a sentence of something like 50 years. The government keep on feeding this beast. It is essentially based on ignorance of how and why a lot of crime happens.
The thing is, there are people who really should not ever be released from prison.
It's so easy to think of every criminal as someone who's just a victim of circumstance. Many are, but a significant proportion are not.
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Pretending he won in 2020, when he actually lost by 7 million votes?
Biden 81 million Trump 74 million
What did Hillary do? Or Al Gore?
Disputing elections looks like a fine old Yankee tradition, to me
And Trump didn't tell social media to close down globally-important news stories
I don't remember either of them submitting slates of fake electors. But that's probably just my memory.
I'm trying to help you, and the generalised flailing midwits of PB
America is polling - at least in one instance - 51-42 for Trump over Biden. A massive lead for a man that PB regards as an obvious fraud, charlatan, villain and imbecile. Why is this happening?
You can either ignore me, then be thunderstruck when Trump wins, or you can hearken to me, as I talk through reasons why Trump might win, with the average American
I respect America and Americans, they are certainly not stupid - or no more stupid than any other society. Yet Americans are edging towards Trump. Why? Are they all just fat deluded idiots, or is something more nuanced going on?
I think it was perfectly sensible of the Home Secretary to request a review of the terms under which the police deploy firearms so they can be sure on what grounds they can be used.
Unless and until Brand is charged of any offences there should also be some limits on what the media can report on the matter
Isn't it the other way around?
If charges are filed then the matter becomes sub judice and reporting restrictions apply, but currently its only subject to libel laws, not judicial ones, is it not?
Now the police investigation is under way, not if that is prejudiced and any subsequent trial
It has been repeatedly pointed out to you that you have not understood the law correctly which is, essentially, that contempt becomes a live issue on arrest, which has not happened.
I just suggest, for the sake of your own dignity, that you educate yourself, rather than continuing to bluster.
How do you know? If witnesses are interfered with by media during a police investigation that could well be contempt.
The AG certainly thinks there is a risk articles could be in breach of the Contempt of Court Act
I know because I've studied Law and am not a moron.
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Here's a dozen reasons to be going on with, in no particular order:
1. His refusal to accept the democratic process in 2020. 2. His attempt to insight insurrection following the 2020 election. 3. His complete disregard for the US constitution. 4. His cosying up to the most dangerous man in the world. 5. His willingness to sell Ukraine down the river. 6. His undermining of the global influence and leadership of the West. 7. His scamming exploitation of every possible opportunity for self-enrichment. 8. His threat to the national security of the US and its Western allies. 9. His blindness to the threat of global warming. 10. His threats to lock up his political opponents. 11. His pandering subservience to foreign strongmen Erdoğan and Kim Jong Un. 12. His lack of leadership during the Covid crisis which led to the unnecessary deaths of many of his countrymen.
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Here's a dozen reasons to be going on with, in no particular order:
1. His refusal to accept the democratic process in 2020. 2. His attempt to insight insurrection following the 2020 election. 3. His complete disregard for the US constitution. 4. His cosying up to the most dangerous man in the world. 5. His willingness to sell Ukraine down the river. 6. His undermining of the global influence and leadership of the West. 7. His scamming exploitation of every possible opportunity for self-enrichment. 8. His threat to the national security of the US and its Western allies. 9. His blindness to the threat of global warming. 10. His threats to lock up his political opponents. 11. His pandering subservience to foreign strongmen Erdoğan and Kim Jong Un. 12. His lack of leadership during the Covid crisis which led to the unnecessary deaths of many of his countrymen.
I note Trump has upgraded (10) to threats to execute his political opponents, as with Mark Milley.
Hillary Clinton joked about droning Julian Assange and laughed about the killing of Gaddafi.
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Here's a dozen reasons to be going on with, in no particular order:
1. His refusal to accept the democratic process in 2020. 2. His attempt to insight insurrection following the 2020 election. 3. His complete disregard for the US constitution. 4. His cosying up to the most dangerous man in the world. 5. His willingness to sell Ukraine down the river. 6. His undermining of the global influence and leadership of the West. 7. His scamming exploitation of every possible opportunity for self-enrichment. 8. His threat to the national security of the US and its Western allies. 9. His blindness to the threat of global warming. 10. His threats to lock up his political opponents. 11. His pandering subservience to foreign strongmen Erdoğan and Kim Jong Un. 12. His lack of leadership during the Covid crisis which led to the unnecessary deaths of many of his countrymen.
And his impact (massive and global) as a negative role model. Every mean spirited, small minded bigot on the planet feels better about themselves, feels validated and empowered by the political success of Donald Trump. This aspect is much underappreciated imo.
I think it was perfectly sensible of the Home Secretary to request a review of the terms under which the police deploy firearms so they can be sure on what grounds they can be used.
Unless and until Brand is charged of any offences there should also be some limits on what the media can report on the matter
Isn't it the other way around?
If charges are filed then the matter becomes sub judice and reporting restrictions apply, but currently its only subject to libel laws, not judicial ones, is it not?
Now the police investigation is under way, not if that is prejudiced and any subsequent trial
It has been repeatedly pointed out to you that you have not understood the law correctly which is, essentially, that contempt becomes a live issue on arrest, which has not happened.
I just suggest, for the sake of your own dignity, that you educate yourself, rather than continuing to bluster.
How do you know? If witnesses are interfered with by media during a police investigation that could well be contempt.
The AG certainly thinks there is a risk articles could be in breach of the Contempt of Court Act
I know because I've studied Law and am not a moron.
Contempt of Court applies to the risk that the course of justice in proceedings will be prejudiced, that does not exclude police investigations and evidence that produces that could ultimately end up in court
I criticise this government for failing to adequately fund our criminal justice system, and for treating the punishment of crime as some kind of "nice to have", rather than being at the heart of what a government is meant to be there for.
But, I have no problem at all with having a big prison population - nor with lengthy sentences.
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Here's a dozen reasons to be going on with, in no particular order:
1. His refusal to accept the democratic process in 2020. 2. His attempt to insight insurrection following the 2020 election. 3. His complete disregard for the US constitution. 4. His cosying up to the most dangerous man in the world. 5. His willingness to sell Ukraine down the river. 6. His undermining of the global influence and leadership of the West. 7. His scamming exploitation of every possible opportunity for self-enrichment. 8. His threat to the national security of the US and its Western allies. 9. His blindness to the threat of global warming. 10. His threats to lock up his political opponents. 11. His pandering subservience to foreign strongmen Erdoğan and Kim Jong Un. 12. His lack of leadership during the Covid crisis which led to the unnecessary deaths of many of his countrymen.
I note Trump has upgraded (10) to threats to execute his political opponents, as with Mark Milley.
Hillary Clinton joked about droning Julian Assange and laughed about the killing of Gaddafi.
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Here's a dozen reasons to be going on with, in no particular order:
1. His refusal to accept the democratic process in 2020. 2. His attempt to insight insurrection following the 2020 election. 3. His complete disregard for the US constitution. 4. His cosying up to the most dangerous man in the world. 5. His willingness to sell Ukraine down the river. 6. His undermining of the global influence and leadership of the West. 7. His scamming exploitation of every possible opportunity for self-enrichment. 8. His threat to the national security of the US and its Western allies. 9. His blindness to the threat of global warming. 10. His threats to lock up his political opponents. 11. His pandering subservience to foreign strongmen Erdoğan and Kim Jong Un. 12. His lack of leadership during the Covid crisis which led to the unnecessary deaths of many of his countrymen.
I note Trump has upgraded (10) to threats to execute his political opponents, as with Mark Milley.
Hillary Clinton joked about droning Julian Assange and laughed about the killing of Gaddafi.
Is there any solution other than to disband the police? There's no guaranteed way to improve so-called "public trust", and it feels like trust has been trending downward in a range of institutions for six decades.
We could disband the police and just leave policing to private companies. I am unconvinced that would improve public confidence in law enforcement.
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Pretending he won in 2020, when he actually lost by 7 million votes?
Biden 81 million Trump 74 million
What did Hillary do? Or Al Gore?
Disputing elections looks like a fine old Yankee tradition, to me
And Trump didn't tell social media to close down globally-important news stories
I don't remember either of them submitting slates of fake electors. But that's probably just my memory.
I'm trying to help you, and the generalised flailing midwits of PB
America is polling - at least in one instance - 51-42 for Trump over Biden. A massive lead for a man that PB regards as an obvious fraud, charlatan, villain and imbecile. Why is this happening?
You can either ignore me, then be thunderstruck when Trump wins, or you can hearken to me, as I talk through reasons why Trump might win, with the average American
I respect America and Americans, they are certainly not stupid - or no more stupid than any other society. Yet Americans are edging towards Trump. Why? Are they all just fat deluded idiots, or is something more nuanced going on?
He is a white supremacist who praised terrorists attacking black Christians as fine people. Of course as a fan of The Spectator that's par for the course for you, and some of us remember your record here too.
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Here's a dozen reasons to be going on with, in no particular order:
1. His refusal to accept the democratic process in 2020. 2. His attempt to insight insurrection following the 2020 election. 3. His complete disregard for the US constitution. 4. His cosying up to the most dangerous man in the world. 5. His willingness to sell Ukraine down the river. 6. His undermining of the global influence and leadership of the West. 7. His scamming exploitation of every possible opportunity for self-enrichment. 8. His threat to the national security of the US and its Western allies. 9. His blindness to the threat of global warming. 10. His threats to lock up his political opponents. 11. His pandering subservience to foreign strongmen Erdoğan and Kim Jong Un. 12. His lack of leadership during the Covid crisis which led to the unnecessary deaths of many of his countrymen.
I note Trump has upgraded (10) to threats to execute his political opponents, as with Mark Milley.
Hillary Clinton joked about droning Julian Assange and laughed about the killing of Gaddafi.
Gaddafi getting killed was objectively hilarious
As for Assange, I don't support just droning the guy. He should be tried in front of a jury of his peers for any crimes he's accused of, and then droned.
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Pretending he won in 2020, when he actually lost by 7 million votes?
Biden 81 million Trump 74 million
What did Hillary do? Or Al Gore?
Disputing elections looks like a fine old Yankee tradition, to me
And Trump didn't tell social media to close down globally-important news stories
I don't remember either of them submitting slates of fake electors. But that's probably just my memory.
I'm trying to help you, and the generalised flailing midwits of PB
America is polling - at least in one instance - 51-42 for Trump over Biden. A massive lead for a man that PB regards as an obvious fraud, charlatan, villain and imbecile. Why is this happening?
You can either ignore me, then be thunderstruck when Trump wins, or you can hearken to me, as I talk through reasons why Trump might win, with the average American
I respect America and Americans, they are certainly not stupid - or no more stupid than any other society. Yet Americans are edging towards Trump. Why? Are they all just fat deluded idiots, or is something more nuanced going on?
He is a white supremacist who praised terrorists attacking black Christians as fine people. Of course as a fan of The Spectator that's par for the course for you, and some of us remember your record here too.
Is there any solution other than to disband the police? There's no guaranteed way to improve so-called "public trust", and it feels like trust has been trending downward in a range of institutions for six decades.
We could disband the police and just leave policing to private companies. I am unconvinced that would improve public confidence in law enforcement.
It wouldn't. But I think "higher public trust" is a recipe for failure to meet targets, followed by more long blog posts. The public don't just trust any more.
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Here's a dozen reasons to be going on with, in no particular order:
1. His refusal to accept the democratic process in 2020. 2. His attempt to insight insurrection following the 2020 election. 3. His complete disregard for the US constitution. 4. His cosying up to the most dangerous man in the world. 5. His willingness to sell Ukraine down the river. 6. His undermining of the global influence and leadership of the West. 7. His scamming exploitation of every possible opportunity for self-enrichment. 8. His threat to the national security of the US and its Western allies. 9. His blindness to the threat of global warming. 10. His threats to lock up his political opponents. 11. His pandering subservience to foreign strongmen Erdoğan and Kim Jong Un. 12. His lack of leadership during the Covid crisis which led to the unnecessary deaths of many of his countrymen.
Is there any solution other than to disband the police? There's no guaranteed way to improve so-called "public trust", and it feels like trust has been trending downward in a range of institutions for six decades.
We could disband the police and just leave policing to private companies. I am unconvinced that would improve public confidence in law enforcement.
Inadequately funded over budget projects unfinished until after his death were IKB's speciality. In fact, the bridge in the picture was I believe finished posthumously. So the cartoon doesn't quite land.
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Pretending he won in 2020, when he actually lost by 7 million votes?
Biden 81 million Trump 74 million
What did Hillary do? Or Al Gore?
Disputing elections looks like a fine old Yankee tradition, to me
And Trump didn't tell social media to close down globally-important news stories
I don't remember either of them submitting slates of fake electors. But that's probably just my memory.
What is, unfortunately, a big US tradition, is the use of violence to overturn results you don't like.
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Pretending he won in 2020, when he actually lost by 7 million votes?
Biden 81 million Trump 74 million
What did Hillary do? Or Al Gore?
Disputing elections looks like a fine old Yankee tradition, to me
And Trump didn't tell social media to close down globally-important news stories
Taking cases to the courts to resolve disputes is a fine old Yankee tradition absolutely.
Riling up a mob to invade Congress to overturn the result having lost both the elections and the court cases is not.
I'm increasingly less convinced of all this (in reply to everyone who answered me)
I see the deliberate suppression of the Lab Leak Hypothesis as absolutely equal, or worse than, anything Trump did. It was a total and flagrant insult to the Free Speech Amendment, it was done deliberately to fuck Trump's campaign, it was perfectly outrageous, and it concerned the origins of the greatest threat to humanity since WW2 - potentially incriminating Democrat heroes like Fauci
AND TWENTY MILLION DIED
Don't get me wrong. I ABHOR Trump. I wish he did not exist. I want him gone. But I do not see these Democrats as any better, in quite serious ways they are worse
I suspect a lot of people in the US quietly support Trump in a 'least worst option' way, and for a variety of reasons, that is what boosts his support.
The trouble the democrats have is that they regard Trump voters with vocal contempt, so they will never get them to change sides.
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Here's a dozen reasons to be going on with, in no particular order:
1. His refusal to accept the democratic process in 2020. 2. His attempt to insight insurrection following the 2020 election. 3. His complete disregard for the US constitution. 4. His cosying up to the most dangerous man in the world. 5. His willingness to sell Ukraine down the river. 6. His undermining of the global influence and leadership of the West. 7. His scamming exploitation of every possible opportunity for self-enrichment. 8. His threat to the national security of the US and its Western allies. 9. His blindness to the threat of global warming. 10. His threats to lock up his political opponents. 11. His pandering subservience to foreign strongmen Erdoğan and Kim Jong Un. 12. His lack of leadership during the Covid crisis which led to the unnecessary deaths of many of his countrymen.
Inadequately funded over budget projects unfinished until after his death were IKB's speciality. In fact, the bridge in the picture was I believe finished posthumously. So the cartoon doesn't quite land.
Actually that makes it better since none of Richi's plans will be complete before his political demise
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
My guess would be that Trump won't do any debates. That's his usual form.
Biden remains far more able to provide coherent answers to questions than Trump, who can't remember how many World Wars there have been.
In Scotland problems also accumulate in the Criminal Justice System. GeoAmay are supposed to provide transportation for those who are in custody to get them to court and also to provide security for those appearing in the court. The current situation is disastrous. The Sheriff Principals have now provided that courts must finish dealing with custodies by 7pm on a Monday and 6pm every other night unless the accused, the summons and a representative are all present before that cut off in which case the court can be dealt with.
Everyone is extremely unhappy with GeoAmay but the reality is that no one else seems to want the contract which they probably under bid for and carries huge amounts of unpaid responsibility and PR risk.
What this utter shambles suggests to me is that it just might not be the case that the utter chaos south of the border is entirely the fault of incompetent ministers or even corrupt and self serving police officers. We need to look much more realistically at what we do and why we do it.
We have gone from a situation which positively encouraged the hiding of contrary evidence to a point where the disclosure provisions require hundreds of pages for relatively simple crimes which need to be read, discussed with the accused and just might form the basis of some contrived defence. I think that we have gone too far. We seem to increase the length of served sentences to reflect public anger without regard to the consequences for our prison service or those who work in it. We lock up more than anyone else in Europe: is it working? We have lots of prosecutions of single complainer rapes which allegedly occurred within a relationship in the knowledge that the conviction rate for such charges is pitiful. Why do we do this? Who does it help?
The infantile way our politics and our media discuss these things make sensible discussions almost impossible. The police are indeed blameworthy but they operate in a system that just doesn't work for anyone, the victims, the accused, the participants and the public. No one is getting what they want out of this.
Let me pick you up on a couple of points.
1.The amount of disclosure required.
This is in part because of the incontinence with which people use all forms of social media, texts, chats and other communication channels and the fact that there are so many of them. One way of analysing this material is to use AI style investigative tools which can analyse a lot of material very effectively and reliably. I have used such tools in major regulatory investigations and in criminal ones too and they should be available to the police, prosecution and defence. But they are not because we won't spend the money and lack the wit to learn from those who have had to. So the disclosure issues could be made much much more manageable if only we used the tools already available.
2. This sentence - "We have lots of prosecutions of single complainer rapes which allegedly occurred within a relationship in the knowledge that the conviction rate for such charges is pitiful."
Hmm ..... that comes perilously close to saying that if you are in an established relationship you have given blanket consent to sex on each and every occasion regardless of your particular wishes at the time. That was the position before 2003 when the law on rape within marriage was changed by the House of Lords. If we do not prosecute in these cases, we risk de facto going back to the pre-2003 position but for any sort of relationship. Really?
I think it was perfectly sensible of the Home Secretary to request a review of the terms under which the police deploy firearms so they can be sure on what grounds they can be used.
Unless and until Brand is charged of any offences there should also be some limits on what the media can report on the matter
Isn't it the other way around?
If charges are filed then the matter becomes sub judice and reporting restrictions apply, but currently its only subject to libel laws, not judicial ones, is it not?
Now the police investigation is under way, not if that is prejudiced and any subsequent trial
It has been repeatedly pointed out to you that you have not understood the law correctly which is, essentially, that contempt becomes a live issue on arrest, which has not happened.
I just suggest, for the sake of your own dignity, that you educate yourself, rather than continuing to bluster.
How do you know? If witnesses are interfered with by media during a police investigation that could well be contempt.
The AG certainly thinks there is a risk articles could be in breach of the Contempt of Court Act
I know because I've studied Law and am not a moron.
Contempt of Court applies to the risk that the course of justice in proceedings will be prejudiced, that does not exclude police investigations and evidence that produces that could ultimately end up in court
Cyclefree has made the point, as have many others who aren't as legally ignorant as you, that it's very well established that cases are only active and this only applies when an arrest is made or warrant issued.
You've been repeatedly informed of the position, but are the sort of person who simply doesn't listen when informed by qualified people. So I'll give up at that - you are beyond help.
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Pretending he won in 2020, when he actually lost by 7 million votes?
Biden 81 million Trump 74 million
What did Hillary do? Or Al Gore?
Disputing elections looks like a fine old Yankee tradition, to me
And Trump didn't tell social media to close down globally-important news stories
I don't remember either of them submitting slates of fake electors. But that's probably just my memory.
I'm trying to help you, and the generalised flailing midwits of PB
America is polling - at least in one instance - 51-42 for Trump over Biden. A massive lead for a man that PB regards as an obvious fraud, charlatan, villain and imbecile. Why is this happening?
You can either ignore me, then be thunderstruck when Trump wins, or you can hearken to me, as I talk through reasons why Trump might win, with the average American
I respect America and Americans, they are certainly not stupid - or no more stupid than any other society. Yet Americans are edging towards Trump. Why? Are they all just fat deluded idiots, or is something more nuanced going on?
Oh, it's entirely possible Trump is reelected.
I wouldn't be surprised at all. Upset, yes. But not surprised.
My point is that by signing up fake electors and pressuring Pence to recognize them over the legitimate ones, Trump crossed a line.
The Jan 6 riots were not insurrection. But this was. This was an attempt to throw out the legitimate results of an election, which would - undoubtedly - have resulted in civil war in the US.
Comparing Trump's actions to Hillary's or Gore's is beyond insane. They groused. He committed an incredibly serious offence.
Inadequately funded over budget projects unfinished until after his death were IKB's speciality. In fact, the bridge in the picture was I believe finished posthumously. So the cartoon doesn't quite land.
Actually that makes it better since none of Richi's plans will be complete before his political demise
No. The cartoon is trying to contrast the two characters. IKB, it suggests, would never do anything so ludicrous as to leave a bridge undone. But RKB would.
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Here's a dozen reasons to be going on with, in no particular order:
1. His refusal to accept the democratic process in 2020. 2. His attempt to insight insurrection following the 2020 election. 3. His complete disregard for the US constitution. 4. His cosying up to the most dangerous man in the world. 5. His willingness to sell Ukraine down the river. 6. His undermining of the global influence and leadership of the West. 7. His scamming exploitation of every possible opportunity for self-enrichment. 8. His threat to the national security of the US and its Western allies. 9. His blindness to the threat of global warming. 10. His threats to lock up his political opponents. 11. His pandering subservience to foreign strongmen Erdoğan and Kim Jong Un. 12. His lack of leadership during the Covid crisis which led to the unnecessary deaths of many of his countrymen.
Those are perfectly good reasons to fear a Trump victory. I fear it. I think it would be a dreadful outcome.
But, we need to look at the *why* Trump might win.
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
My guess would be that Trump won't do any debates. That's his usual form.
Biden remains far more able to provide coherent answers to questions than Trump, who can't remember how many World Wars there have been.
That's not fair. It's not that Trump forgot there was a WW2. It's just he wants it replayed because his team lost.
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Pretending he won in 2020, when he actually lost by 7 million votes?
Biden 81 million Trump 74 million
What did Hillary do? Or Al Gore?
Disputing elections looks like a fine old Yankee tradition, to me
And Trump didn't tell social media to close down globally-important news stories
I don't remember either of them submitting slates of fake electors. But that's probably just my memory.
I'm trying to help you, and the generalised flailing midwits of PB
America is polling - at least in one instance - 51-42 for Trump over Biden. A massive lead for a man that PB regards as an obvious fraud, charlatan, villain and imbecile. Why is this happening?
You can either ignore me, then be thunderstruck when Trump wins, or you can hearken to me, as I talk through reasons why Trump might win, with the average American
I respect America and Americans, they are certainly not stupid - or no more stupid than any other society. Yet Americans are edging towards Trump. Why? Are they all just fat deluded idiots, or is something more nuanced going on?
He is a white supremacist who praised terrorists attacking black Christians as fine people. Of course as a fan of The Spectator that's par for the course for you, and some of us remember your record here too.
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Pretending he won in 2020, when he actually lost by 7 million votes?
Biden 81 million Trump 74 million
What did Hillary do? Or Al Gore?
Disputing elections looks like a fine old Yankee tradition, to me
And Trump didn't tell social media to close down globally-important news stories
I don't remember either of them submitting slates of fake electors. But that's probably just my memory.
What is, unfortunately, a big US tradition, is the use of violence to overturn results you don't like.
Birth of a Nation was a blueprint.
Maybe it is time for the US to split?
The North East, the Midwest, Colorado and the West Coast form one country, and the South forms another.
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Here's a dozen reasons to be going on with, in no particular order:
1. His refusal to accept the democratic process in 2020. 2. His attempt to insight insurrection following the 2020 election. 3. His complete disregard for the US constitution. 4. His cosying up to the most dangerous man in the world. 5. His willingness to sell Ukraine down the river. 6. His undermining of the global influence and leadership of the West. 7. His scamming exploitation of every possible opportunity for self-enrichment. 8. His threat to the national security of the US and its Western allies. 9. His blindness to the threat of global warming. 10. His threats to lock up his political opponents. 11. His pandering subservience to foreign strongmen Erdoğan and Kim Jong Un. 12. His lack of leadership during the Covid crisis which led to the unnecessary deaths of many of his countrymen.
I note Trump has upgraded (10) to threats to execute his political opponents, as with Mark Milley.
Hillary Clinton joked about droning Julian Assange and laughed about the killing of Gaddafi.
So she's not a soulless robot and has a sense of humour? Good for her.
Shame it didn't come out more on the campaign trail.
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Here's a dozen reasons to be going on with, in no particular order:
1. His refusal to accept the democratic process in 2020. 2. His attempt to insight insurrection following the 2020 election. 3. His complete disregard for the US constitution. 4. His cosying up to the most dangerous man in the world. 5. His willingness to sell Ukraine down the river. 6. His undermining of the global influence and leadership of the West. 7. His scamming exploitation of every possible opportunity for self-enrichment. 8. His threat to the national security of the US and its Western allies. 9. His blindness to the threat of global warming. 10. His threats to lock up his political opponents. 11. His pandering subservience to foreign strongmen Erdoğan and Kim Jong Un. 12. His lack of leadership during the Covid crisis which led to the unnecessary deaths of many of his countrymen.
Those are perfectly good reasons to fear a Trump victory. I fear it. I think it would be a dreadful outcome.
But, we need to look at the *why* Trump might win.
That's easy. People vote with their wallet, and right now high interest rates mean that peoples' disposable incomes are being squeezed.
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Pretending he won in 2020, when he actually lost by 7 million votes?
Biden 81 million Trump 74 million
What did Hillary do? Or Al Gore?
Disputing elections looks like a fine old Yankee tradition, to me
And Trump didn't tell social media to close down globally-important news stories
I don't remember either of them submitting slates of fake electors. But that's probably just my memory.
I'm trying to help you, and the generalised flailing midwits of PB
America is polling - at least in one instance - 51-42 for Trump over Biden. A massive lead for a man that PB regards as an obvious fraud, charlatan, villain and imbecile. Why is this happening?
You can either ignore me, then be thunderstruck when Trump wins, or you can hearken to me, as I talk through reasons why Trump might win, with the average American
I respect America and Americans, they are certainly not stupid - or no more stupid than any other society. Yet Americans are edging towards Trump. Why? Are they all just fat deluded idiots, or is something more nuanced going on?
No, you implied that Gore and Clinton did the same as Trump. This is because you are an idiot.
In Scotland problems also accumulate in the Criminal Justice System. GeoAmay are supposed to provide transportation for those who are in custody to get them to court and also to provide security for those appearing in the court. The current situation is disastrous. The Sheriff Principals have now provided that courts must finish dealing with custodies by 7pm on a Monday and 6pm every other night unless the accused, the summons and a representative are all present before that cut off in which case the court can be dealt with.
Everyone is extremely unhappy with GeoAmay but the reality is that no one else seems to want the contract which they probably under bid for and carries huge amounts of unpaid responsibility and PR risk.
What this utter shambles suggests to me is that it just might not be the case that the utter chaos south of the border is entirely the fault of incompetent ministers or even corrupt and self serving police officers. We need to look much more realistically at what we do and why we do it.
We have gone from a situation which positively encouraged the hiding of contrary evidence to a point where the disclosure provisions require hundreds of pages for relatively simple crimes which need to be read, discussed with the accused and just might form the basis of some contrived defence. I think that we have gone too far. We seem to increase the length of served sentences to reflect public anger without regard to the consequences for our prison service or those who work in it. We lock up more than anyone else in Europe: is it working? We have lots of prosecutions of single complainer rapes which allegedly occurred within a relationship in the knowledge that the conviction rate for such charges is pitiful. Why do we do this? Who does it help?
The infantile way our politics and our media discuss these things make sensible discussions almost impossible. The police are indeed blameworthy but they operate in a system that just doesn't work for anyone, the victims, the accused, the participants and the public. No one is getting what they want out of this.
Thanks for posting this @DavidL . I think the problem with this is that most questions of crime and punishment invoke a reaction of disgust which is amplified by social media and against which it is impossible to provide a compelling counter narrative. People try, admirably - even the occasional politician - but it never really works. What the people seem to want is a massive jail population in third world style conditions, perhaps self funded by some form of slave labour amongst prisoners. We seem to move further towards this with every new policy announcement on the subject of criminal justice, today being no exception.
Yes, and apart from a tiny handful of exceptions like Letby those who are sent to prison will come out again and form a part of our society. The consequences of jail include the loss of employment, the loss of housing, loss of contact with family members, the creation of a new friendship group of those also serving sentences, all too often new problems with addiction and mental health. None of these factors make reoffending less likely. None.
Rory made a test of his time as Prison minister was whether he could find ways to reduce recidivism. He was, as usual, spot on. Education, support on departure, restorative justice, community justice initiatives, this is where we need to go. But sounding tough is so much easier.
As I recall Gove was making similar noises back in 2015. I think there is some danger in experts who work in the criminal justice system saying 'people need to be rehabilitated because eventually they come out'. The popular reaction to this is that often that people have 'done wrong' (killed, raped etc) so they shouldn't ever come out. It should be 'whole life' or a sentence of something like 50 years. The government keep on feeding this beast. It is essentially based on ignorance of how and why a lot of crime happens.
The thing is, there are people who really should not ever be released from prison.
It's so easy to think of every criminal as someone who's just a victim of circumstance. Many are, but a significant proportion are not.
OK - if there is no possibility of redemption, why keep people alive in very poor conditions? Isn't this just avoiding a difficult decision?
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Here's a dozen reasons to be going on with, in no particular order:
1. His refusal to accept the democratic process in 2020. 2. His attempt to insight insurrection following the 2020 election. 3. His complete disregard for the US constitution. 4. His cosying up to the most dangerous man in the world. 5. His willingness to sell Ukraine down the river. 6. His undermining of the global influence and leadership of the West. 7. His scamming exploitation of every possible opportunity for self-enrichment. 8. His threat to the national security of the US and its Western allies. 9. His blindness to the threat of global warming. 10. His threats to lock up his political opponents. 11. His pandering subservience to foreign strongmen Erdoğan and Kim Jong Un. 12. His lack of leadership during the Covid crisis which led to the unnecessary deaths of many of his countrymen.
I note Trump has upgraded (10) to threats to execute his political opponents, as with Mark Milley.
Hillary Clinton joked about droning Julian Assange and laughed about the killing of Gaddafi.
Do you really think either of those are comparable? Pull the other one.
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Pretending he won in 2020, when he actually lost by 7 million votes?
Biden 81 million Trump 74 million
What did Hillary do? Or Al Gore?
Disputing elections looks like a fine old Yankee tradition, to me
And Trump didn't tell social media to close down globally-important news stories
I don't remember either of them submitting slates of fake electors. But that's probably just my memory.
What is, unfortunately, a big US tradition, is the use of violence to overturn results you don't like.
Birth of a Nation was a blueprint.
Maybe it is time for the US to split?
The North East, the Midwest, Colorado and the West Coast form one country, and the South forms another.
it would be geographically divided, as the Plains States, and Appalachia would join the South. The Mid West would in turn, divide along county lines.
In Scotland problems also accumulate in the Criminal Justice System. GeoAmay are supposed to provide transportation for those who are in custody to get them to court and also to provide security for those appearing in the court. The current situation is disastrous. The Sheriff Principals have now provided that courts must finish dealing with custodies by 7pm on a Monday and 6pm every other night unless the accused, the summons and a representative are all present before that cut off in which case the court can be dealt with.
Everyone is extremely unhappy with GeoAmay but the reality is that no one else seems to want the contract which they probably under bid for and carries huge amounts of unpaid responsibility and PR risk.
What this utter shambles suggests to me is that it just might not be the case that the utter chaos south of the border is entirely the fault of incompetent ministers or even corrupt and self serving police officers. We need to look much more realistically at what we do and why we do it.
We have gone from a situation which positively encouraged the hiding of contrary evidence to a point where the disclosure provisions require hundreds of pages for relatively simple crimes which need to be read, discussed with the accused and just might form the basis of some contrived defence. I think that we have gone too far. We seem to increase the length of served sentences to reflect public anger without regard to the consequences for our prison service or those who work in it. We lock up more than anyone else in Europe: is it working? We have lots of prosecutions of single complainer rapes which allegedly occurred within a relationship in the knowledge that the conviction rate for such charges is pitiful. Why do we do this? Who does it help?
The infantile way our politics and our media discuss these things make sensible discussions almost impossible. The police are indeed blameworthy but they operate in a system that just doesn't work for anyone, the victims, the accused, the participants and the public. No one is getting what they want out of this.
Thanks for posting this @DavidL . I think the problem with this is that most questions of crime and punishment invoke a reaction of disgust which is amplified by social media and against which it is impossible to provide a compelling counter narrative. People try, admirably - even the occasional politician - but it never really works. What the people seem to want is a massive jail population in third world style conditions, perhaps self funded by some form of slave labour amongst prisoners. We seem to move further towards this with every new policy announcement on the subject of criminal justice, today being no exception.
Yes, and apart from a tiny handful of exceptions like Letby those who are sent to prison will come out again and form a part of our society. The consequences of jail include the loss of employment, the loss of housing, loss of contact with family members, the creation of a new friendship group of those also serving sentences, all too often new problems with addiction and mental health. None of these factors make reoffending less likely. None.
Rory made a test of his time as Prison minister was whether he could find ways to reduce recidivism. He was, as usual, spot on. Education, support on departure, restorative justice, community justice initiatives, this is where we need to go. But sounding tough is so much easier.
As I recall Gove was making similar noises back in 2015. I think there is some danger in experts who work in the criminal justice system saying 'people need to be rehabilitated because eventually they come out'. The popular reaction to this is that often that people have 'done wrong' (killed, raped etc) so they shouldn't ever come out. It should be 'whole life' or a sentence of something like 50 years. The government keep on feeding this beast. It is essentially based on ignorance of how and why a lot of crime happens.
The thing is, there are people who really should not ever be released from prison.
It's so easy to think of every criminal as someone who's just a victim of circumstance. Many are, but a significant proportion are not.
OK - if there is no possibility of redemption, why keep people alive in very poor conditions? Isn't this just avoiding a difficult decision?
In case there's been a horrendous miscarriage of justice.
In Scotland problems also accumulate in the Criminal Justice System. GeoAmay are supposed to provide transportation for those who are in custody to get them to court and also to provide security for those appearing in the court. The current situation is disastrous. The Sheriff Principals have now provided that courts must finish dealing with custodies by 7pm on a Monday and 6pm every other night unless the accused, the summons and a representative are all present before that cut off in which case the court can be dealt with.
Everyone is extremely unhappy with GeoAmay but the reality is that no one else seems to want the contract which they probably under bid for and carries huge amounts of unpaid responsibility and PR risk.
What this utter shambles suggests to me is that it just might not be the case that the utter chaos south of the border is entirely the fault of incompetent ministers or even corrupt and self serving police officers. We need to look much more realistically at what we do and why we do it.
We have gone from a situation which positively encouraged the hiding of contrary evidence to a point where the disclosure provisions require hundreds of pages for relatively simple crimes which need to be read, discussed with the accused and just might form the basis of some contrived defence. I think that we have gone too far. We seem to increase the length of served sentences to reflect public anger without regard to the consequences for our prison service or those who work in it. We lock up more than anyone else in Europe: is it working? We have lots of prosecutions of single complainer rapes which allegedly occurred within a relationship in the knowledge that the conviction rate for such charges is pitiful. Why do we do this? Who does it help?
The infantile way our politics and our media discuss these things make sensible discussions almost impossible. The police are indeed blameworthy but they operate in a system that just doesn't work for anyone, the victims, the accused, the participants and the public. No one is getting what they want out of this.
Thanks for posting this @DavidL . I think the problem with this is that most questions of crime and punishment invoke a reaction of disgust which is amplified by social media and against which it is impossible to provide a compelling counter narrative. People try, admirably - even the occasional politician - but it never really works. What the people seem to want is a massive jail population in third world style conditions, perhaps self funded by some form of slave labour amongst prisoners. We seem to move further towards this with every new policy announcement on the subject of criminal justice, today being no exception.
Yes, and apart from a tiny handful of exceptions like Letby those who are sent to prison will come out again and form a part of our society. The consequences of jail include the loss of employment, the loss of housing, loss of contact with family members, the creation of a new friendship group of those also serving sentences, all too often new problems with addiction and mental health. None of these factors make reoffending less likely. None.
Rory made a test of his time as Prison minister was whether he could find ways to reduce recidivism. He was, as usual, spot on. Education, support on departure, restorative justice, community justice initiatives, this is where we need to go. But sounding tough is so much easier.
As I recall Gove was making similar noises back in 2015. I think there is some danger in experts who work in the criminal justice system saying 'people need to be rehabilitated because eventually they come out'. The popular reaction to this is that often that people have 'done wrong' (killed, raped etc) so they shouldn't ever come out. It should be 'whole life' or a sentence of something like 50 years. The government keep on feeding this beast. It is essentially based on ignorance of how and why a lot of crime happens.
The thing is, there are people who really should not ever be released from prison.
It's so easy to think of every criminal as someone who's just a victim of circumstance. Many are, but a significant proportion are not.
OK - if there is no possibility of redemption, why keep people alive in very poor conditions? Isn't this just avoiding a difficult decision?
Well, it's generally accepted that 30-40 years of anal rape, dreadful food, and horrible housing is more humane than execution.
I see HYUFD can’t read, so I’ll repost this bit. … The Attorney-General issues a warning to the press about the reporting around Brand’s sex life. There have been no arrests, no interviews, no charges – no live investigation – just one report of a complaint in the UK. The contempt of court laws do not apply – unlike in the Kaba case. Criminal prosecutions and investigative reporting are different and necessary functions and subject to different legal regimes. The Attorney-General has no business – and no legal authority – to warn off newspapers reporting on matters in circumstances when the contempt of court laws do not apply. If she is so concerned about these laws, she would be better off speaking to the Home Secretary. Like many other aspects of the government’s actions these days, it is reactive, designed to be populist while lacking in thought or principle...
There have been media reports of multiple complaints and in depth accusations made against Brand before any charges are made.
I am no great fan of Brand but that arguably is contempt of court if it prejudices a subsequent trial if charges are made when the police investigation should be left to deal with it without excess media interference
No it isn't. The media are not interfering. They are doing their job. A pity politicians cannot do theirs.
Their job is not to provide masses of media coverage of a matter which is currently under police investigation and where no charges have even yet been made.
We have the rule of law not trial by media
The bit in bold is the bit you need to focus on.
Your mistaken view would result in no need for any journalism at all because of the vague possibility that a charge might occur sometime in the future. We may as well just get handed our free copy of the latest Conservative Party press release every morning.
I could try and educate you on the law and press freedom but what would be the point? It'd be like trying to educate the speaking clock.
Clearly you do support trial by media then, rather than leaving investigations to the police and CPS and media coverage to any subsequent court case. Which is how a nation based on rule of law should work
You don’t support a free press. Should the Times not have investigated and reported the Rotherham abuse cases ?
You argument is ridiculous.
A police investigation is now under way into Brand, the media should not be reporting it further until either charges are laid or not
To quote the Times: “… “Anyone with even the sketchiest knowledge of how the media works surely knows that every single word of reporting on Brand has been rigorously scrutinised before publication.”
The column concluded: “The attorney general’s censorious warning has no basis in law. She should withdraw it immediately.”..”
Your opinion, just as the AG’s, has no basis in law.
You cannot know that until any trial and the result of that trial
Your logic is intended to shuit down any criticism of any Tory Party politician or supporter just because they might end up in court sooner or later?
Given the former leader of the SNP is currently under police investigation alongside her husband and the leader of the SNP before that was on trial for rape, I would have thought you would have wanted senior figures in your party too to be protected from trial by media
I'm not thinking of Brand.
And the law is the law. Which you don't seem to think important.
Tomorrow at the Post Office Inquiry, it'll be the return of Anne Chambers, one of the main Fujitsu software engineers who was involved with the Horizon System. This is a blog post related to her previous appearance at the inquiry in May.
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Pretending he won in 2020, when he actually lost by 7 million votes?
Biden 81 million Trump 74 million
What did Hillary do? Or Al Gore?
Disputing elections looks like a fine old Yankee tradition, to me
And Trump didn't tell social media to close down globally-important news stories
I don't remember either of them submitting slates of fake electors. But that's probably just my memory.
I'm trying to help you, and the generalised flailing midwits of PB
America is polling - at least in one instance - 51-42 for Trump over Biden. A massive lead for a man that PB regards as an obvious fraud, charlatan, villain and imbecile. Why is this happening?
You can either ignore me, then be thunderstruck when Trump wins, or you can hearken to me, as I talk through reasons why Trump might win, with the average American
I respect America and Americans, they are certainly not stupid - or no more stupid than any other society. Yet Americans are edging towards Trump. Why? Are they all just fat deluded idiots, or is something more nuanced going on?
Oh, it's entirely possible Trump is reelected.
I wouldn't be surprised at all. Upset, yes. But not surprised.
My point is that by signing up fake electors and pressuring Pence to recognize them over the legitimate ones, Trump crossed a line.
The Jan 6 riots were not insurrection. But this was. This was an attempt to throw out the legitimate results of an election, which would - undoubtedly - have resulted in civil war in the US.
Comparing Trump's actions to Hillary's or Gore's is beyond insane. They groused. He committed an incredibly serious offence.
But there is literally ZERO analysis on PB of why Trump might easily win, even with intelligent and educated Americans. Honestly: none. Nil. Zipppppp. It is a pitiful failure
And don't ask me to do it, I get paid for my flints and my words. I suggest you, as an intelligent Brit resident in America, sit down and honestly think it through, then write
It would make a seriously interesting piece. But purge your preconceptions beforehand
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Pretending he won in 2020, when he actually lost by 7 million votes?
Biden 81 million Trump 74 million
What did Hillary do? Or Al Gore?
Disputing elections looks like a fine old Yankee tradition, to me
And Trump didn't tell social media to close down globally-important news stories
I don't remember either of them submitting slates of fake electors. But that's probably just my memory.
I'm trying to help you, and the generalised flailing midwits of PB
America is polling - at least in one instance - 51-42 for Trump over Biden. A massive lead for a man that PB regards as an obvious fraud, charlatan, villain and imbecile. Why is this happening?
You can either ignore me, then be thunderstruck when Trump wins, or you can hearken to me, as I talk through reasons why Trump might win, with the average American
I respect America and Americans, they are certainly not stupid - or no more stupid than any other society. Yet Americans are edging towards Trump. Why? Are they all just fat deluded idiots, or is something more nuanced going on?
Oh, it's entirely possible Trump is reelected.
I wouldn't be surprised at all. Upset, yes. But not surprised.
My point is that by signing up fake electors and pressuring Pence to recognize them over the legitimate ones, Trump crossed a line.
The Jan 6 riots were not insurrection. But this was. This was an attempt to throw out the legitimate results of an election, which would - undoubtedly - have resulted in civil war in the US.
Comparing Trump's actions to Hillary's or Gore's is beyond insane. They groused. He committed an incredibly serious offence.
Aside from the wider awfulness and risks to the West, what would a Trump victory mean for a UK GE were that to take place after November 5th 2024?
I think it was perfectly sensible of the Home Secretary to request a review of the terms under which the police deploy firearms so they can be sure on what grounds they can be used.
Unless and until Brand is charged of any offences there should also be some limits on what the media can report on the matter
Isn't it the other way around?
If charges are filed then the matter becomes sub judice and reporting restrictions apply, but currently its only subject to libel laws, not judicial ones, is it not?
Now the police investigation is under way, not if that is prejudiced and any subsequent trial
It has been repeatedly pointed out to you that you have not understood the law correctly which is, essentially, that contempt becomes a live issue on arrest, which has not happened.
I just suggest, for the sake of your own dignity, that you educate yourself, rather than continuing to bluster.
How do you know? If witnesses are interfered with by media during a police investigation that could well be contempt.
The AG certainly thinks there is a risk articles could be in breach of the Contempt of Court Act
I know because I've studied Law and am not a moron.
Contempt of Court applies to the risk that the course of justice in proceedings will be prejudiced, that does not exclude police investigations and evidence that produces that could ultimately end up in court
Cyclefree has made the point, as have many others who aren't as legally ignorant as you, that it's very well established that cases are only active and this only applies when an arrest is made or warrant issued.
You've been repeatedly informed of the position, but are the sort of person who simply doesn't listen when informed by qualified people. So I'll give up at that - you are beyond help.
Well the Attorney General is a qualified barrister and disagrees with both you and Cyclefree on this.
Show me one clear legal case or statute that prejudice to the 'course of justice in proceedings' excludes any evidence brought up in police investigations that may later be used in a court of law?
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Pretending he won in 2020, when he actually lost by 7 million votes?
Biden 81 million Trump 74 million
What did Hillary do? Or Al Gore?
Disputing elections looks like a fine old Yankee tradition, to me
And Trump didn't tell social media to close down globally-important news stories
I don't remember either of them submitting slates of fake electors. But that's probably just my memory.
What is, unfortunately, a big US tradition, is the use of violence to overturn results you don't like.
Birth of a Nation was a blueprint.
Maybe it is time for the US to split?
The North East, the Midwest, Colorado and the West Coast form one country, and the South forms another.
it would be geographically divided, as the Plains States, and Appalachia would join the South. The Mid West would in turn, divide along county lines.
Although Alberta and Saskatchewan should perhaps belong to Jesusland.
I wouldn't be surprised at all. Upset, yes. But not surprised.
My point is that by signing up fake electors and pressuring Pence to recognize them over the legitimate ones, Trump crossed a line.
The Jan 6 riots were not insurrection. But this was. This was an attempt to throw out the legitimate results of an election, which would - undoubtedly - have resulted in civil war in the US.
Comparing Trump's actions to Hillary's or Gore's is beyond insane. They groused. He committed an incredibly serious offence.
If Trump wins in 2024 it won't be like 2016. He won't have a cabinet full of sober types doing their bit to rein in a dangerous President, Trump will surround himself with the worst people who will pander to his whims. The whole world will be in grave danger.
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Pretending he won in 2020, when he actually lost by 7 million votes?
Biden 81 million Trump 74 million
What did Hillary do? Or Al Gore?
Disputing elections looks like a fine old Yankee tradition, to me
And Trump didn't tell social media to close down globally-important news stories
I don't remember either of them submitting slates of fake electors. But that's probably just my memory.
What is, unfortunately, a big US tradition, is the use of violence to overturn results you don't like.
Birth of a Nation was a blueprint.
Maybe it is time for the US to split?
The North East, the Midwest, Colorado and the West Coast form one country, and the South forms another.
it would be geographically divided, as the Plains States, and Appalachia would join the South. The Mid West would in turn, divide along county lines.
You can't really do it along county lines, otherwise the cities would all be Democrat and the rural areas all Republican.
And - look - some of this is going to be easy, and some hard. You can't really have Texas and Arizona being in one country, and New Mexico another.
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Pretending he won in 2020, when he actually lost by 7 million votes?
Biden 81 million Trump 74 million
What did Hillary do? Or Al Gore?
Disputing elections looks like a fine old Yankee tradition, to me
And Trump didn't tell social media to close down globally-important news stories
I don't remember either of them submitting slates of fake electors. But that's probably just my memory.
I'm trying to help you, and the generalised flailing midwits of PB
America is polling - at least in one instance - 51-42 for Trump over Biden. A massive lead for a man that PB regards as an obvious fraud, charlatan, villain and imbecile. Why is this happening?
You can either ignore me, then be thunderstruck when Trump wins, or you can hearken to me, as I talk through reasons why Trump might win, with the average American
I respect America and Americans, they are certainly not stupid - or no more stupid than any other society. Yet Americans are edging towards Trump. Why? Are they all just fat deluded idiots, or is something more nuanced going on?
Oh, it's entirely possible Trump is reelected.
I wouldn't be surprised at all. Upset, yes. But not surprised.
My point is that by signing up fake electors and pressuring Pence to recognize them over the legitimate ones, Trump crossed a line.
The Jan 6 riots were not insurrection. But this was. This was an attempt to throw out the legitimate results of an election, which would - undoubtedly - have resulted in civil war in the US.
Comparing Trump's actions to Hillary's or Gore's is beyond insane. They groused. He committed an incredibly serious offence.
Yes, clearly Trump might win. Enough Americans love the man-baby or hate the Democrats enough to vote for any Republican.
I think it would be a disaster for America, the world and Ukraine in particular if America goes back to Isolationism, but clearly not unlikely.
I think it was perfectly sensible of the Home Secretary to request a review of the terms under which the police deploy firearms so they can be sure on what grounds they can be used.
Unless and until Brand is charged of any offences there should also be some limits on what the media can report on the matter
Isn't it the other way around?
If charges are filed then the matter becomes sub judice and reporting restrictions apply, but currently its only subject to libel laws, not judicial ones, is it not?
Now the police investigation is under way, not if that is prejudiced and any subsequent trial
It has been repeatedly pointed out to you that you have not understood the law correctly which is, essentially, that contempt becomes a live issue on arrest, which has not happened.
I just suggest, for the sake of your own dignity, that you educate yourself, rather than continuing to bluster.
How do you know? If witnesses are interfered with by media during a police investigation that could well be contempt.
The AG certainly thinks there is a risk articles could be in breach of the Contempt of Court Act
I know because I've studied Law and am not a moron.
Contempt of Court applies to the risk that the course of justice in proceedings will be prejudiced, that does not exclude police investigations and evidence that produces that could ultimately end up in court
Cyclefree has made the point, as have many others who aren't as legally ignorant as you, that it's very well established that cases are only active and this only applies when an arrest is made or warrant issued.
You've been repeatedly informed of the position, but are the sort of person who simply doesn't listen when informed by qualified people. So I'll give up at that - you are beyond help.
Well the Attorney General is a qualified barrister and disagrees with both you and Cyclefree on this.
Show me one clear legal case or statute that prejudice to the 'course of justice in proceedings' excludes any evidence brought up in police investigations that may later be used in a court of law?
Is there such a thing as a "qualification" for a barrister? I thought it consisted of eating a set number of dinners in the Inner Temple, Lincoln's Inn, etc. etc.
In Scotland problems also accumulate in the Criminal Justice System. GeoAmay are supposed to provide transportation for those who are in custody to get them to court and also to provide security for those appearing in the court. The current situation is disastrous. The Sheriff Principals have now provided that courts must finish dealing with custodies by 7pm on a Monday and 6pm every other night unless the accused, the summons and a representative are all present before that cut off in which case the court can be dealt with.
Everyone is extremely unhappy with GeoAmay but the reality is that no one else seems to want the contract which they probably under bid for and carries huge amounts of unpaid responsibility and PR risk.
What this utter shambles suggests to me is that it just might not be the case that the utter chaos south of the border is entirely the fault of incompetent ministers or even corrupt and self serving police officers. We need to look much more realistically at what we do and why we do it.
We have gone from a situation which positively encouraged the hiding of contrary evidence to a point where the disclosure provisions require hundreds of pages for relatively simple crimes which need to be read, discussed with the accused and just might form the basis of some contrived defence. I think that we have gone too far. We seem to increase the length of served sentences to reflect public anger without regard to the consequences for our prison service or those who work in it. We lock up more than anyone else in Europe: is it working? We have lots of prosecutions of single complainer rapes which allegedly occurred within a relationship in the knowledge that the conviction rate for such charges is pitiful. Why do we do this? Who does it help?
The infantile way our politics and our media discuss these things make sensible discussions almost impossible. The police are indeed blameworthy but they operate in a system that just doesn't work for anyone, the victims, the accused, the participants and the public. No one is getting what they want out of this.
Thanks for posting this @DavidL . I think the problem with this is that most questions of crime and punishment invoke a reaction of disgust which is amplified by social media and against which it is impossible to provide a compelling counter narrative. People try, admirably - even the occasional politician - but it never really works. What the people seem to want is a massive jail population in third world style conditions, perhaps self funded by some form of slave labour amongst prisoners. We seem to move further towards this with every new policy announcement on the subject of criminal justice, today being no exception.
Yes, and apart from a tiny handful of exceptions like Letby those who are sent to prison will come out again and form a part of our society. The consequences of jail include the loss of employment, the loss of housing, loss of contact with family members, the creation of a new friendship group of those also serving sentences, all too often new problems with addiction and mental health. None of these factors make reoffending less likely. None.
Rory made a test of his time as Prison minister was whether he could find ways to reduce recidivism. He was, as usual, spot on. Education, support on departure, restorative justice, community justice initiatives, this is where we need to go. But sounding tough is so much easier.
As I recall Gove was making similar noises back in 2015. I think there is some danger in experts who work in the criminal justice system saying 'people need to be rehabilitated because eventually they come out'. The popular reaction to this is that often that people have 'done wrong' (killed, raped etc) so they shouldn't ever come out. It should be 'whole life' or a sentence of something like 50 years. The government keep on feeding this beast. It is essentially based on ignorance of how and why a lot of crime happens.
The thing is, there are people who really should not ever be released from prison.
It's so easy to think of every criminal as someone who's just a victim of circumstance. Many are, but a significant proportion are not.
OK - if there is no possibility of redemption, why keep people alive in very poor conditions? Isn't this just avoiding a difficult decision?
In case there's been a horrendous miscarriage of justice.
Next question please.
Many of the people on whole life sentences pleaded guilty.
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Pretending he won in 2020, when he actually lost by 7 million votes?
Biden 81 million Trump 74 million
What did Hillary do? Or Al Gore?
Disputing elections looks like a fine old Yankee tradition, to me
And Trump didn't tell social media to close down globally-important news stories
I don't remember either of them submitting slates of fake electors. But that's probably just my memory.
I'm trying to help you, and the generalised flailing midwits of PB
America is polling - at least in one instance - 51-42 for Trump over Biden. A massive lead for a man that PB regards as an obvious fraud, charlatan, villain and imbecile. Why is this happening?
You can either ignore me, then be thunderstruck when Trump wins, or you can hearken to me, as I talk through reasons why Trump might win, with the average American
I respect America and Americans, they are certainly not stupid - or no more stupid than any other society. Yet Americans are edging towards Trump. Why? Are they all just fat deluded idiots, or is something more nuanced going on?
Oh, it's entirely possible Trump is reelected.
I wouldn't be surprised at all. Upset, yes. But not surprised.
My point is that by signing up fake electors and pressuring Pence to recognize them over the legitimate ones, Trump crossed a line.
The Jan 6 riots were not insurrection. But this was. This was an attempt to throw out the legitimate results of an election, which would - undoubtedly - have resulted in civil war in the US.
Comparing Trump's actions to Hillary's or Gore's is beyond insane. They groused. He committed an incredibly serious offence.
But there is literally ZERO analysis on PB of why Trump might easily win, even with intelligent and educated Americans. Honestly: none. Nil. Zipppppp. It is a pitiful failure
And don't ask me to do it, I get paid for my flints and my words. I suggest you, as an intelligent Brit resident in America, sit down and honestly think it through, then write
It would make a seriously interesting piece. But purge your preconceptions beforehand
But the responses were to the challenge you posed of: "What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it."
Can you see it now or are you still being as thick as shit?
In Scotland problems also accumulate in the Criminal Justice System. GeoAmay are supposed to provide transportation for those who are in custody to get them to court and also to provide security for those appearing in the court. The current situation is disastrous. The Sheriff Principals have now provided that courts must finish dealing with custodies by 7pm on a Monday and 6pm every other night unless the accused, the summons and a representative are all present before that cut off in which case the court can be dealt with.
Everyone is extremely unhappy with GeoAmay but the reality is that no one else seems to want the contract which they probably under bid for and carries huge amounts of unpaid responsibility and PR risk.
What this utter shambles suggests to me is that it just might not be the case that the utter chaos south of the border is entirely the fault of incompetent ministers or even corrupt and self serving police officers. We need to look much more realistically at what we do and why we do it.
We have gone from a situation which positively encouraged the hiding of contrary evidence to a point where the disclosure provisions require hundreds of pages for relatively simple crimes which need to be read, discussed with the accused and just might form the basis of some contrived defence. I think that we have gone too far. We seem to increase the length of served sentences to reflect public anger without regard to the consequences for our prison service or those who work in it. We lock up more than anyone else in Europe: is it working? We have lots of prosecutions of single complainer rapes which allegedly occurred within a relationship in the knowledge that the conviction rate for such charges is pitiful. Why do we do this? Who does it help?
The infantile way our politics and our media discuss these things make sensible discussions almost impossible. The police are indeed blameworthy but they operate in a system that just doesn't work for anyone, the victims, the accused, the participants and the public. No one is getting what they want out of this.
Thanks for posting this @DavidL . I think the problem with this is that most questions of crime and punishment invoke a reaction of disgust which is amplified by social media and against which it is impossible to provide a compelling counter narrative. People try, admirably - even the occasional politician - but it never really works. What the people seem to want is a massive jail population in third world style conditions, perhaps self funded by some form of slave labour amongst prisoners. We seem to move further towards this with every new policy announcement on the subject of criminal justice, today being no exception.
Yes, and apart from a tiny handful of exceptions like Letby those who are sent to prison will come out again and form a part of our society. The consequences of jail include the loss of employment, the loss of housing, loss of contact with family members, the creation of a new friendship group of those also serving sentences, all too often new problems with addiction and mental health. None of these factors make reoffending less likely. None.
Rory made a test of his time as Prison minister was whether he could find ways to reduce recidivism. He was, as usual, spot on. Education, support on departure, restorative justice, community justice initiatives, this is where we need to go. But sounding tough is so much easier.
As I recall Gove was making similar noises back in 2015. I think there is some danger in experts who work in the criminal justice system saying 'people need to be rehabilitated because eventually they come out'. The popular reaction to this is that often that people have 'done wrong' (killed, raped etc) so they shouldn't ever come out. It should be 'whole life' or a sentence of something like 50 years. The government keep on feeding this beast. It is essentially based on ignorance of how and why a lot of crime happens.
The thing is, there are people who really should not ever be released from prison.
It's so easy to think of every criminal as someone who's just a victim of circumstance. Many are, but a significant proportion are not.
OK - if there is no possibility of redemption, why keep people alive in very poor conditions? Isn't this just avoiding a difficult decision?
In case there's been a horrendous miscarriage of justice.
Next question please.
Many of the people on whole life sentences pleaded guilty.
Many innocent people have overtime pled guilty for various reasons to some quite horrific crimes before their innocence has later been revealed.
Inadequately funded over budget projects unfinished until after his death were IKB's speciality. In fact, the bridge in the picture was I believe finished posthumously. So the cartoon doesn't quite land.
To be fair to IKB the money ran out on the Clifton bridge before he could finish the job - so not his fault. What they did was reuse the chains from his Hungerford Bridge* (ie in London) to finish the job.
Successful organisations are ones that prioritise process over outcomes.
The US has civics lessons to try and hammer that point in: this is the process, and sometimes we win, and sometimes we don't, but we have process for a reason.
Problems occur when we say "fuck process, I care more about the outcome of my guy being in charge".
It might very well be that Trump is a better manager of the US economy that Biden. That is certainly what lots of Americans think.
But I'd rather have a fucked up outcome (say a Corbyn government implementing dumb policies) than throw away democracy and the rule of law to prevent it.
Too many Americans don't realise how precious and fragile their democracy is.
And once democracy has gone, it is really hard to get it back.
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Pretending he won in 2020, when he actually lost by 7 million votes?
Biden 81 million Trump 74 million
What did Hillary do? Or Al Gore?
Disputing elections looks like a fine old Yankee tradition, to me
And Trump didn't tell social media to close down globally-important news stories
I don't remember either of them submitting slates of fake electors. But that's probably just my memory.
What is, unfortunately, a big US tradition, is the use of violence to overturn results you don't like.
Birth of a Nation was a blueprint.
Maybe it is time for the US to split?
The North East, the Midwest, Colorado and the West Coast form one country, and the South forms another.
it would be geographically divided, as the Plains States, and Appalachia would join the South. The Mid West would in turn, divide along county lines.
Although Alberta and Saskatchewan should perhaps belong to Jesusland.
Jesusland is shrinking though - Colorado, Arizona and Nevada have lost the faith, and Georgia's not much more devout.
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Pretending he won in 2020, when he actually lost by 7 million votes?
Biden 81 million Trump 74 million
What did Hillary do? Or Al Gore?
Disputing elections looks like a fine old Yankee tradition, to me
And Trump didn't tell social media to close down globally-important news stories
I don't remember either of them submitting slates of fake electors. But that's probably just my memory.
I'm trying to help you, and the generalised flailing midwits of PB
America is polling - at least in one instance - 51-42 for Trump over Biden. A massive lead for a man that PB regards as an obvious fraud, charlatan, villain and imbecile. Why is this happening?
You can either ignore me, then be thunderstruck when Trump wins, or you can hearken to me, as I talk through reasons why Trump might win, with the average American
I respect America and Americans, they are certainly not stupid - or no more stupid than any other society. Yet Americans are edging towards Trump. Why? Are they all just fat deluded idiots, or is something more nuanced going on?
No, you implied that Gore and Clinton did the same as Trump. This is because you are an idiot.
I mean, you know, God bless, you must be struggling with German food, but this does not constitute an "argument", it's just pathetic sixth form wankiness
Why is Trump seen as a superior alternative by 50%+ of Americans, many of them highly educated who can see all his flaws? Generally much better than us?
I know it's over your intellectual pay-grade, and it will be hard, but have a bash
In Scotland problems also accumulate in the Criminal Justice System. GeoAmay are supposed to provide transportation for those who are in custody to get them to court and also to provide security for those appearing in the court. The current situation is disastrous. The Sheriff Principals have now provided that courts must finish dealing with custodies by 7pm on a Monday and 6pm every other night unless the accused, the summons and a representative are all present before that cut off in which case the court can be dealt with.
Everyone is extremely unhappy with GeoAmay but the reality is that no one else seems to want the contract which they probably under bid for and carries huge amounts of unpaid responsibility and PR risk.
What this utter shambles suggests to me is that it just might not be the case that the utter chaos south of the border is entirely the fault of incompetent ministers or even corrupt and self serving police officers. We need to look much more realistically at what we do and why we do it.
We have gone from a situation which positively encouraged the hiding of contrary evidence to a point where the disclosure provisions require hundreds of pages for relatively simple crimes which need to be read, discussed with the accused and just might form the basis of some contrived defence. I think that we have gone too far. We seem to increase the length of served sentences to reflect public anger without regard to the consequences for our prison service or those who work in it. We lock up more than anyone else in Europe: is it working? We have lots of prosecutions of single complainer rapes which allegedly occurred within a relationship in the knowledge that the conviction rate for such charges is pitiful. Why do we do this? Who does it help?
The infantile way our politics and our media discuss these things make sensible discussions almost impossible. The police are indeed blameworthy but they operate in a system that just doesn't work for anyone, the victims, the accused, the participants and the public. No one is getting what they want out of this.
Thanks for posting this @DavidL . I think the problem with this is that most questions of crime and punishment invoke a reaction of disgust which is amplified by social media and against which it is impossible to provide a compelling counter narrative. People try, admirably - even the occasional politician - but it never really works. What the people seem to want is a massive jail population in third world style conditions, perhaps self funded by some form of slave labour amongst prisoners. We seem to move further towards this with every new policy announcement on the subject of criminal justice, today being no exception.
Yes, and apart from a tiny handful of exceptions like Letby those who are sent to prison will come out again and form a part of our society. The consequences of jail include the loss of employment, the loss of housing, loss of contact with family members, the creation of a new friendship group of those also serving sentences, all too often new problems with addiction and mental health. None of these factors make reoffending less likely. None.
Rory made a test of his time as Prison minister was whether he could find ways to reduce recidivism. He was, as usual, spot on. Education, support on departure, restorative justice, community justice initiatives, this is where we need to go. But sounding tough is so much easier.
As I recall Gove was making similar noises back in 2015. I think there is some danger in experts who work in the criminal justice system saying 'people need to be rehabilitated because eventually they come out'. The popular reaction to this is that often that people have 'done wrong' (killed, raped etc) so they shouldn't ever come out. It should be 'whole life' or a sentence of something like 50 years. The government keep on feeding this beast. It is essentially based on ignorance of how and why a lot of crime happens.
The thing is, there are people who really should not ever be released from prison.
It's so easy to think of every criminal as someone who's just a victim of circumstance. Many are, but a significant proportion are not.
OK - if there is no possibility of redemption, why keep people alive in very poor conditions? Isn't this just avoiding a difficult decision?
In case there's been a horrendous miscarriage of justice.
Next question please.
Many of the people on whole life sentences pleaded guilty.
There have been miscarriages of justice around people who pleaded guilty. Was it four of the Birmingham Six who confessed after police brutality?
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Pretending he won in 2020, when he actually lost by 7 million votes?
Biden 81 million Trump 74 million
What did Hillary do? Or Al Gore?
Disputing elections looks like a fine old Yankee tradition, to me
And Trump didn't tell social media to close down globally-important news stories
I don't remember either of them submitting slates of fake electors. But that's probably just my memory.
I'm trying to help you, and the generalised flailing midwits of PB
America is polling - at least in one instance - 51-42 for Trump over Biden. A massive lead for a man that PB regards as an obvious fraud, charlatan, villain and imbecile. Why is this happening?
You can either ignore me, then be thunderstruck when Trump wins, or you can hearken to me, as I talk through reasons why Trump might win, with the average American
I respect America and Americans, they are certainly not stupid - or no more stupid than any other society. Yet Americans are edging towards Trump. Why? Are they all just fat deluded idiots, or is something more nuanced going on?
Oh, it's entirely possible Trump is reelected.
I wouldn't be surprised at all. Upset, yes. But not surprised.
My point is that by signing up fake electors and pressuring Pence to recognize them over the legitimate ones, Trump crossed a line.
The Jan 6 riots were not insurrection. But this was. This was an attempt to throw out the legitimate results of an election, which would - undoubtedly - have resulted in civil war in the US.
Comparing Trump's actions to Hillary's or Gore's is beyond insane. They groused. He committed an incredibly serious offence.
But there is literally ZERO analysis on PB of why Trump might easily win, even with intelligent and educated Americans. Honestly: none. Nil. Zipppppp. It is a pitiful failure
And don't ask me to do it, I get paid for my flints and my words. I suggest you, as an intelligent Brit resident in America, sit down and honestly think it through, then write
It would make a seriously interesting piece. But purge your preconceptions beforehand
But the responses were to the challenge you posed of: "What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it."
Can you see it now or are you still being as thick as shit?
Unfair, you can't expect a stable genius like Leon to remember what he posted 10 minutes ago.
I think it was perfectly sensible of the Home Secretary to request a review of the terms under which the police deploy firearms so they can be sure on what grounds they can be used.
Unless and until Brand is charged of any offences there should also be some limits on what the media can report on the matter
Isn't it the other way around?
If charges are filed then the matter becomes sub judice and reporting restrictions apply, but currently its only subject to libel laws, not judicial ones, is it not?
Now the police investigation is under way, not if that is prejudiced and any subsequent trial
It has been repeatedly pointed out to you that you have not understood the law correctly which is, essentially, that contempt becomes a live issue on arrest, which has not happened.
I just suggest, for the sake of your own dignity, that you educate yourself, rather than continuing to bluster.
How do you know? If witnesses are interfered with by media during a police investigation that could well be contempt.
The AG certainly thinks there is a risk articles could be in breach of the Contempt of Court Act
I know because I've studied Law and am not a moron.
Contempt of Court applies to the risk that the course of justice in proceedings will be prejudiced, that does not exclude police investigations and evidence that produces that could ultimately end up in court
Cyclefree has made the point, as have many others who aren't as legally ignorant as you, that it's very well established that cases are only active and this only applies when an arrest is made or warrant issued.
You've been repeatedly informed of the position, but are the sort of person who simply doesn't listen when informed by qualified people. So I'll give up at that - you are beyond help.
Well the Attorney General is a qualified barrister and disagrees with both you and Cyclefree on this.
Show me one clear legal case or statute that prejudice to the 'course of justice in proceedings' excludes any evidence brought up in police investigations that may later be used in a court of law?
Okay. Section 2 and Schedule 1 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981.
Successful organisations are ones that prioritise process over outcomes.
The US has civics lessons to try and hammer that point in: this is the process, and sometimes we win, and sometimes we don't, but we have process for a reason.
Problems occur when we say "fuck process, I care more about the outcome of my guy being in charge".
It might very well be that Trump is a better manager of the US economy that Biden. That is certainly what lots of Americans think.
But I'd rather have a fucked up outcome (say a Corbyn government implementing dumb policies) than throw away democracy and the rule of law to prevent it.
Too many Americans don't realise how precious and fragile their democracy is.
And once democracy has gone, it is really hard to get it back.
Similar to when Remainers say "who cares about sovereignty and Parliament setting our laws, what benefits does Brexit bring?"
Having a democratically elected sovereign Parliament setting our laws is the most precious and fragile thing we have.
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
He's a bit Teflon. I don't think we missed out in any way in having him out of mainstream politics. I cannot think of a politician who has been placed so well and has delivered so little. The only contender is Brown.
I tend to disagree.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool. He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock: "...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Spoke a lot of sense, and eloquently with passion. A bit like Ken Clarke. Conservatives worth listening too, and voting for, now seen as lefties by todays Tory members.
The real problem is that our political and voting system forces ambitious young politicians who are really centrist to choose between Tory and Labour, so that they can have a national political career, within which they have to hide many of their true beliefs in order to further said career, and they can only speak out once they are powerless and it’s too late.
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
I doubt Heseltine or Clarke in particular ever saw themselves as centrists. They were and are conservatives with a small c, but intelligent enough to accept that there are times when the state is best placed to provide solutions too, rather than rely on a particular dogma always being correct.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
On most issues Heseltine and Clarke were closer to New Labour and the LDs than Thatcherite Conservatives, indeed on Iraq they were even left of Blair
That wasn’t a right/left question - it was a right/wrong one. And they were right.
Not necessarily, if Iraq was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein he would certainly be supplying Putin with arms now and Iraq still under a brutal regime
Saddam Hussein would be 86 years old by now, in a country where male life expectancy is 68. I think it's highly unlikely he'd still be alive, let alone in power!
Or even worse Uday
"For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80,"
The GOP campaign will focus on Harris - who as veep may very well become POTUS in two years or so if Biden wins.
I am increasingly of the view that this is shaping up to be a bloody disaster by pushing on with Joe.
As a mate said to me this afternoon over a cuppa - how is Biden going to handle the TV debates with Trump? He can't have a flash card for every possible quick fire question.
Now that Trump has come out as More Liberal on Abortion than most GOP candidates, I am genuinely unsure as to why he is such a threat
So he *might* defund Ukraine, or he might actually seek a peace that could work - saving 100,000s of lives. What is Biden doing apart from feeding a war machine which chews up people?
He might also pursue a very isolationist, America-first economic and trade - oops, Biden is doing that
What else? He might actually stop migrants illegally crossing the border? That is increasingly the cry of Democrats in NYC, DC, LA, etc
So what's left? What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it. Because he breaks constitutional norms? Dems have done this for a decade or more, disputing elections and warping the media (see: the ban on discussing Lab Leak until Trump was defeated)
Where Trump is concerned you are like Big_G with the Tories, desperate for the slightest excuse to give open support.
Why seek the excuse? You know you are a Trumpite at heart.
Or, you could answer the question
After all we have seen, what makes Trump so uniquely bad?
Pretending he won in 2020, when he actually lost by 7 million votes?
Biden 81 million Trump 74 million
What did Hillary do? Or Al Gore?
Disputing elections looks like a fine old Yankee tradition, to me
And Trump didn't tell social media to close down globally-important news stories
I don't remember either of them submitting slates of fake electors. But that's probably just my memory.
I'm trying to help you, and the generalised flailing midwits of PB
America is polling - at least in one instance - 51-42 for Trump over Biden. A massive lead for a man that PB regards as an obvious fraud, charlatan, villain and imbecile. Why is this happening?
You can either ignore me, then be thunderstruck when Trump wins, or you can hearken to me, as I talk through reasons why Trump might win, with the average American
I respect America and Americans, they are certainly not stupid - or no more stupid than any other society. Yet Americans are edging towards Trump. Why? Are they all just fat deluded idiots, or is something more nuanced going on?
Oh, it's entirely possible Trump is reelected.
I wouldn't be surprised at all. Upset, yes. But not surprised.
My point is that by signing up fake electors and pressuring Pence to recognize them over the legitimate ones, Trump crossed a line.
The Jan 6 riots were not insurrection. But this was. This was an attempt to throw out the legitimate results of an election, which would - undoubtedly - have resulted in civil war in the US.
Comparing Trump's actions to Hillary's or Gore's is beyond insane. They groused. He committed an incredibly serious offence.
But there is literally ZERO analysis on PB of why Trump might easily win, even with intelligent and educated Americans. Honestly: none. Nil. Zipppppp. It is a pitiful failure
And don't ask me to do it, I get paid for my flints and my words. I suggest you, as an intelligent Brit resident in America, sit down and honestly think it through, then write
It would make a seriously interesting piece. But purge your preconceptions beforehand
But the responses were to the challenge you posed of: "What makes Trump so awful? I honestly can't see it."
Can you see it now or are you still being as thick as shit?
I was a step head. Sorry. I should have said "as an average American voter, not some nunbskulled boring zero-insight middlebrow PB twat like @Benpointer@kamski etc etc"
Successful organisations are ones that prioritise process over outcomes.
The US has civics lessons to try and hammer that point in: this is the process, and sometimes we win, and sometimes we don't, but we have process for a reason.
Problems occur when we say "fuck process, I care more about the outcome of my guy being in charge".
It might very well be that Trump is a better manager of the US economy that Biden. That is certainly what lots of Americans think.
But I'd rather have a fucked up outcome (say a Corbyn government implementing dumb policies) than throw away democracy and the rule of law to prevent it.
Too many Americans don't realise how precious and fragile their democracy is.
And once democracy has gone, it is really hard to get it back.
Which is how one can follow the collapse of the Roman Republic. Everyone thought "fuck process", what matters is that I win.
Comments
I just suggest, for the sake of your own dignity, that you educate yourself, rather than continuing to bluster.
Riling up a mob to invade Congress to overturn the result having lost both the elections and the court cases is not.
He is a unique disgrace and that behaviour really should have been the end of his career. Hopefully, it was.
You are attempting to draw an entirely bogus analogy.
To compare the two is farcical.
I think the problem with this is that most questions of crime and punishment invoke a reaction of disgust which is amplified by social media and against which it is impossible to provide a compelling counter narrative. People try, admirably - even the occasional politician - but it never really works. What the people seem to want is a massive jail population in third world style conditions, perhaps self funded by some form of slave labour amongst prisoners. We seem to move further towards this with every new policy announcement on the subject of criminal justice, today being no exception.
1. His refusal to accept the democratic process in 2020.
2. His attempt to insight insurrection following the 2020 election.
3. His complete disregard for the US constitution.
4. His cosying up to the most dangerous man in the world.
5. His willingness to sell Ukraine down the river.
6. His undermining of the global influence and leadership of the West.
7. His scamming exploitation of every possible opportunity for self-enrichment.
8. His threat to the national security of the US and its Western allies.
9. His blindness to the threat of global warming.
10. His threats to lock up his political opponents.
11. His pandering subservience to foreign strongmen Erdoğan and Kim Jong Un.
12. His lack of leadership during the Covid crisis which led to the unnecessary deaths of many of his countrymen.
Edit, edit! Ok I have to admit that RCS is amongst the posters that I would spend time to read.
The last POTUS before Trump not to attend his successors inauguration after an election is the historical POTUS that Trump seems most like and the only historical POTUS worse than Trump in my eyes, President Andrew Johnson.
I see the deliberate suppression of the Lab Leak Hypothesis as absolutely equal, or worse than, anything Trump did. It was a total and flagrant insult to the Free Speech Amendment, it was done deliberately to fuck Trump's campaign, it was perfectly outrageous, and it concerned the origins of the greatest threat to humanity since WW2 - potentially incriminating Democrat heroes like Fauci
AND TWENTY MILLION DIED
Don't get me wrong. I ABHOR Trump. I wish he did not exist. I want him gone. But I do not see these Democrats as any better, in quite serious ways they are worse
(PS Robert if you could see your way to popping me a few likes for this from defunct posters, that'd be great.)
The AG certainly thinks there is a risk articles could be in breach of the Contempt of Court Act
Rory made a test of his time as Prison minister was whether he could find ways to reduce recidivism. He was, as usual, spot on. Education, support on departure, restorative justice, community justice initiatives, this is where we need to go. But sounding tough is so much easier.
Though the main problems at the minute are due to the Treasury not the Justice Department anyway. Whether you want punishment, or rehabilitation, or both, you need a working criminal justice system that sees cases dealt with in a timely fashion.
LBJ's first inauguration was not following an election.
(Actually, JFK was at LBJ's of course, in body if not in spirit.)
I think there is some danger in experts who work in the criminal justice system saying 'people need to be rehabilitated because eventually they come out'.
The popular reaction to this is that often that people have 'done wrong' (killed, raped etc) so they shouldn't ever come out. It should be 'whole life' or a sentence of something like 50 years. The government keep on feeding this beast. It is essentially based on ignorance of how and why a lot of crime happens.
On which, I was in Blackpool today at the Pleasure Beach. Magnificent day (hardly any queues; lovely sunshine) but was scuppered at the chippy on the way back to the station because it was… cash only!
There will always be communities (eg in Northern Ireland, but elsewhere too) for whom the police are always going to be part of an occupying force.
It's so easy to think of every criminal as someone who's just a victim of circumstance. Many are, but a significant proportion are not.
America is polling - at least in one instance - 51-42 for Trump over Biden. A massive lead for a man that PB regards as an obvious fraud, charlatan, villain and imbecile. Why is this happening?
You can either ignore me, then be thunderstruck when Trump wins, or you can hearken to me, as I talk through reasons why Trump might win, with the average American
I respect America and Americans, they are certainly not stupid - or no more stupid than any other society. Yet Americans are edging towards Trump. Why? Are they all just fat deluded idiots, or is something more nuanced going on?
But, I have no problem at all with having a big prison population - nor with lengthy sentences.
Trump 63 million votes
Birth of a Nation was a blueprint.
The trouble the democrats have is that they regard Trump voters with vocal contempt, so they will never get them to change sides.
Biden remains far more able to provide coherent answers to questions than Trump, who can't remember how many World Wars there have been.
1.The amount of disclosure required.
This is in part because of the incontinence with which people use all forms of social media, texts, chats and other communication channels and the fact that there are so many of them. One way of analysing this material is to use AI style investigative tools which can analyse a lot of material very effectively and reliably. I have used such tools in major regulatory investigations and in criminal ones too and they should be available to the police, prosecution and defence. But they are not because we won't spend the money and lack the wit to learn from those who have had to. So the disclosure issues could be made much much more manageable if only we used the tools already available.
2. This sentence - "We have lots of prosecutions of single complainer rapes which allegedly occurred within a relationship in the knowledge that the conviction rate for such charges is pitiful."
Hmm ..... that comes perilously close to saying that if you are in an established relationship you have given blanket consent to sex on each and every occasion regardless of your particular wishes at the time. That was the position before 2003 when the law on rape within marriage was changed by the House of Lords. If we do not prosecute in these cases, we risk de facto going back to the pre-2003 position but for any sort of relationship. Really?
You've been repeatedly informed of the position, but are the sort of person who simply doesn't listen when informed by qualified people. So I'll give up at that - you are beyond help.
I wouldn't be surprised at all. Upset, yes. But not surprised.
My point is that by signing up fake electors and pressuring Pence to recognize them over the legitimate ones, Trump crossed a line.
The Jan 6 riots were not insurrection. But this was. This was an attempt to throw out the legitimate results of an election, which would - undoubtedly - have resulted in civil war in the US.
Comparing Trump's actions to Hillary's or Gore's is beyond insane. They groused. He committed an incredibly serious offence.
But, we need to look at the *why* Trump might win.
The North East, the Midwest, Colorado and the West Coast form one country, and the South forms another.
Shame it didn't come out more on the campaign trail.
Next question please.
And the law is the law. Which you don't seem to think important.
https://www.postofficescandal.uk/post/ecce-chambers/
And don't ask me to do it, I get paid for my flints and my words. I suggest you, as an intelligent Brit resident in America, sit down and honestly think it through, then write
It would make a seriously interesting piece. But purge your preconceptions beforehand
Show me one clear legal case or statute that prejudice to the 'course of justice in proceedings' excludes any evidence brought up in police investigations that may later be used in a court of law?
Although Alberta and Saskatchewan should perhaps belong to Jesusland.
And - look - some of this is going to be easy, and some hard. You can't really have Texas and Arizona being in one country, and New Mexico another.
I think it would be a disaster for America, the world and Ukraine in particular if America goes back to Isolationism, but clearly not unlikely.
Can you see it now or are you still being as thick as shit?
https://talbot.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/2015/08/28/summer-pleasures-the-hungerford-and-clifton-suspension-bridges/
Though personally I think he'd prefer the Saltash Bridge as a memorial. It does have I. K. Brunel Engineer inscribed on it.
Edit:*Which so far as I know worked fine. It was replaced only because someone wanted to build a railway bridge on the site.
The US has civics lessons to try and hammer that point in: this is the process, and sometimes we win, and sometimes we don't, but we have process for a reason.
Problems occur when we say "fuck process, I care more about the outcome of my guy being in charge".
It might very well be that Trump is a better manager of the US economy that Biden. That is certainly what lots of Americans think.
But I'd rather have a fucked up outcome (say a Corbyn government implementing dumb policies) than throw away democracy and the rule of law to prevent it.
Too many Americans don't realise how precious and fragile their democracy is.
And once democracy has gone, it is really hard to get it back.
Why is Trump seen as a superior alternative by 50%+ of Americans, many of them highly educated who can see all his flaws? Generally much better than us?
I know it's over your intellectual pay-grade, and it will be hard, but have a bash
I await your apology.
Having a democratically elected sovereign Parliament setting our laws is the most precious and fragile thing we have.
MY BAD