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Stand up for the rights of the disinterested masses. – politicalbetting.com
Stand up for the rights of the disinterested masses. – politicalbetting.com
The rise and rise of the single issue activist have been one of the noteworthy features of the last 30 years. Whether it is gender, climate, dogs, cats, oil or housing there will be a pressure group full of activists ready to swing into action. Activists are focused on their pet project and are quite vocal about it too. And it’s not just individuals, often charities are corporate activists while receiving money from taxpayers.
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Would he have allowed any, some or all of the Stop the Iraq War, Countryside Alliance or People’s Vote single issue protests to name but a few?
Unlike, for example, the gendercrats in Scotland, almost entirely dependent on Scottish Government funding, who advised the Scottish government on gender recognition reform and when subsequently consulted on it decided it was absolutely fine?
That’s the whole point, politicians outsourcing the hard thinking to special interest groups, then ducking responsibility for the consequences when poorly thought through law blows up in their faces “but we asked civil (sic) society - don’t blame us!”.
https://senseaboutscience.org/activities/maddox-prize-2023/
The scourge of single interest political pressure groups exists on the right as well as the left. The players are different - it’s usually expressed via noisy think tanks like the IEA or rabble rousing politicians like Farage - and the means can be more insidious, but the effect is the same: to stop necessary things being done and cause unnecessary things to be done.
It’s difficult to regulate the influence of single issue campaigners precisely because it’s usually about influence through speech and action rather than money (as is the case in more corrupt countries). The best prophylactic is politicians with brains in their heads and a press that exercises due scepticism.
And of course some single issue campaigns are absolutely vital, be they from business or environmentalists or rights activists. Without them we’d live in a much more authoritarian, more polluted, more bureaucratic world.
This is almost worthy of a Rishi Sunak policy initiative.
Is this a trend?
* Apart from very unusual cases (like when May barely had a majority) the front benches have complete control over the process, amendments by backbenchers never get through
* The incentives of the front benches are to just simplistically push " govt view good/bad" and not try to improve legislation in the commons
* Evidence for breakdown of commons scrutiny is that a) the govt increasingly ships unchanged legislation to the commons and then fixes is up later by their own amendments in the lords, and b) that there is an exponential growth in laws that just give ministers the ability to legislate via secondary or even tertiary legislation
* The report stage, where detailed scrutiny is supposed to happen, is completely broken.
So, if MPs are supposed to oppose special interest legislation, this needs fixing first.
Single issue campaigns have always been the driving force behind democratic politics, from the Reform Act onwards. Trade Union rights, universal emancipation, female suffrage, etc etc.
People who claim to speak for the "disinterested masses" or "silent majority" are almost always tyrants in the making.
Catastrophic damage will occur as this unprecedented storm moves ashore in Acapulco, home to over 1 million people.
https://x.com/US_Stormwatch/status/1717059947161395337?s=20
Alanbrooke's plea for the interest of the 'disinterested' voter to be given more weight is a good one. It's something of a shame that he appears to blur that voter's interest with the (small c) conservative interest.
https://www.weather.gov/hgx/tropical_scale
For me the system of judicial review is totally borked. Of course there needs to be a right of appeal against executive overreach. But on Heathrow there were something like 7 different judicial reviews all going over the same points. It should just be a once and done review if it is necessary - but since Blair’s reforms it has been weaponised by the activist community
At Ferguson's for the launch of the Glen Sannox - real excitement and very proud that commercial shipbuilding on the Clyde alive and well!
https://x.com/HumzaYousaf/status/932967198636855296?s=20
“£175m is what we’ve paid for a boat that’s worth £70m?”
“Running the simple maths, that seems to be the answer.”
https://x.com/staylorish/status/1716819398420566071?s=20
The whole point of JR in these circumstances is not to just prevent “executive overreach” but also to simply sure that decisions are made within the parameters they are required to be made within.
Our whole civil and administrative justice system involves individual parties bringing claims on specific points. Requiring “one shot” at JR from all points and from all possible parties is just unworkable. Our justice system does not require parties to work together and never has.
There isn't a single person in the country, for example, completely disinterested regarding our energy policy choices.
The uncertainty as to what downstream carbon emissions should be measured is the subject of many JRs currently. That could have been avoided it Parliament had spent proper time passing a good law and not relying on the courts to sort it out later.
Because we don't continually order XYZ we lose all the knowledge we gathered the last time round (so every mistake will be repeated continually). And worse because you are starting at the beginning a lot of costs that could be split across 10-20 items need to be included in every single project.
As you say, the govt is subcontracting out its thinking to these groups. They are effectively arms of the state. The main issue with that, I can see, is these groups simply have a single issue and a single viewpoint. There is also the issue of mission creep and where does it stop. The moment they win, the moment they have influenced and changed policy they cease to need to be so they have to find something else to campaign on to keep the funds flowing.
It did cross my mind that one way of ensuring compliance with the restriction would be to lock them up for the year. As it was, after the gentlest of taps on the wrist, they were completely unapologetic and said they would do it again. Indeed their prosecution became just another campaigning opportunity.
So I understand where @Alanbrooke is coming from. But, even when they interrupt something as important as the cricket, I support the right to protest. I would have somewhat harsher penalties on those who block roads or seek to interrupt others enjoyment but I accept that people doing that are exercising their democratic right of protest. I do think that there should be some rebalancing but not too much.
But there is also the kernel of a good argument somewhere in there.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-67172231
Protesting is of course fair and reasonable - but disrupting for more than a few minutes events that people have paid to see, causing danger to themselves and others, causing damage to eg a snooker table, or blocking the public highway, need to be dealt with much more harshly by the authorities.
In any event vagueness breeds JR (and other litigation) by its very nature.
EDIT: Being charitable, perhaps Parliament intends for the courts to interpret the vagueness over time so that the law can keep pace with changes in society and science, etc. This is fine and a great benefit of the Westminster system however for this to work you need JR…
"But finding no evidentiary support for their radical positions, they nonetheless prepared and authored a “policy statement” ... proposing an entirely new model of treatment, which not only misrepresented or misleadingly presented its purported evidentiary support but was also rife with outright fraudulent representations."
https://x.com/SVPhillimore/status/1717070597316813150?s=20
But it's actually essential to thinking about his argument.
There's a very real difference, for instance, between having no interest in a particular issue, and having no interest at all in politics.
And the argument that politicians paying too much attention to issues which don't affect you does indeed affect you in aggregate is an interesting one.
TimS makes the best point, though. What is required is politicians with better judgment.
Though quite how we find them needs better explaining.
Why do we have so many agitated and organised protests? The author of course only fingers the protests he politically disapproves of - which in part explains the why. Why do so many people feel so disconnected from our polity that their only recourse is disobedience?
The reason - surely - is the failure of politics. Our political parties have become narrowly defined cults who select morons. Hello Richard Burgon and Scott Benton. Hello to the "fuck off" abusive MPs like Lee Anderson and nearly that Tory candidate in Tamworth. Hello the authors of Britannia Unchained who think their constituents are feckless lazy scum. Hello the people who deliberately create a system where public services are ground down to dust whilst literal billions of pounds is lost in tax dodging and PPE contracts and Spiv middlemen "management".
The author fingers the protestors he doesn't like - almost nobody likes them btw - but seems nonplussed by any of the reasons behind it. They protest because politics has failed them in a country which is visibly broken and no longer works.
Read the Joseph Rowntree Foundation report of this week. Understand the depths of depravity we have brought this country down to. Understand that work doesn't pay the bills, there is no safety net, and the right still want to blame the millions reduced to destitution.
We have an epidemic of shoplifters. People utterly desperate, being organised by criminal gangs. Knowing that in many towns there is no police presence. Even if they get caught the chances of actually getting prosecuted are low, or of eventually going to court, and the prisons are so full that rapists can't be sent there. The Tories have created Britain as Gotham. Yet we're told not to protest?
An election would help. Removing the criminally corrupt and incompetent Tory government would help. But its not a fix because things are so broken. You want to empower people so that protest is less of an issue? Make politics work. PR - vote for what you actually want. In a refounded country where we actually have public services and a social fabric fit for purpose. Then we can put the placards down.
As awful as the pro-Palestine protests have been, the Met for a change were light in policing it. Perhaps down to their desperate lack of resources, perhaps because of woke fears - whatever. Let the protest happen and go home. What they said was awful, and I want arrests of anyone explicitly breaking the law, but otherwise let them.
We’ve had a couple of thoughtful back to basics headers recently.
I suggest that one of the problems we have started back in the early 80s, when the Blessed Margaret implicitly criticised people for going into public service, rather than the city, or somewhere else where they can make money. Public service used to be where the best brains in this country went, or at least some of them! That doesn’t seem to be the case any longer.
F1: Mexico next, during which I shall perform my traditional act of remembering the high altitude affects the cars significantly, but forget in what way.
Genuinely though, How much of what I wrote do you agree with? You don't usually post as someone who accepts that the country is broken. A million children in *destitution* - not poverty. Don't you support the lot whose Tamworth candidate thought that the people reduced to destitution should "fuck off"?
A quick Google indicates there are 12.7 million or so children in the UK, making a million around 8%.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/25/mike-johnson-nominated-us-house-speaker-louisiana
How many candidates will the GOP Congress disagree over before Donald J Trump is nominated? Unless there is a radical change of mind the majority have pledged not to support any candidate backed by the Democrats. So there isn't going to be a cross-party compromise candidate.
Which suggests the opposite. The MAGA faithful want a MAGA candidate, and the non-MAGA representatives fear the MAGA people. Just put the crime lord in the chair, watch the chaos, blame the democrats.
So as a floating voter I have no-one to vote,
The USA is sadly becoming a failed state .
The GOP will likely even win a veto-proof 3/5 majority outside of Dem wave years.
https://twitter.com/PoliticsWolf/status/1717208918030487811
“More thoughts from the armchair....
I'm probably right in thinking you have never visited any of Israel's neighbour or even Israel itself? Just non stop drivel. Why not go back to your tedious holiday snaps?”
Ok. You asked
I have visited Israel maybe six or seven times over four decades. The earliest in the 1980s. The most recent a year or two before Covid. I have stayed in the Negev desert on a fundamentalist farm. I have dined with Israeli ministers. I have been to swingers clubs in tel aviv. I have stayed in the best suite in the King David Hotel
I’ve stayed on a kibbutz. I’ve walked around the Dead Sea. I once got trapped in no man’s land between eilat and Sinai (and was rescued from my predicament by kind Israeli AND Egyptian border guards). I’ve slept on Israeli beaches. I’ve been all over the West Bank from Bethlehem to Jericho - talking to Palestinians. I’ve stayed in Palestinian hotels and guest houses. I baptised myself in the garden of gethsemane - using Jordan water
As for Israel’s neighbours I’ve actually lived in Egypt. I’ve been all over Syria. I’ve spent weeks in Jordan from Petra to Amman (I once slept in an Amman car park). And in the Lebanon I’ve been from Byblos to Beirut to Baalbek several times, indeed I once got kidnapped by Hezbollah militants in machgarah who held me at gunpoint for a night even as the village was strafed and bombed by the Israeli army and air force
But no, apart from that, I have no experience of the region you stupid fat geriatric old fuck
And I think that is only going to move in the opposite direction to the way Alanbrooke wants.
And I find it hard to argue against a lack of government money for anyone with a legal case against the government. Should some groups be able to use goverment money to attack the government non-legally as well, with campaigns and the like? Less clear to me, but it the cliche is of a group which uses government funds to lobby the government for more money, which if true would be a bit weird.
Did you meet Nick Palmer there ?
The only crumb if Trump is re-elected is we’re likely to see the continuation of a more withdrawn foreign policy . I doubt he will be starting any foreign wars and won’t accidentally hit the nuke button as he’s fumbling around for his Cheetos !
The alleged hospital bombing turned out to be a Jihadi bomb. The Israelis have given about two weeks notice for civilians to get out before their troops are going in.
Just what more can Israel do to avoid civilian deaths, without giving up on holding Hamas to account?
Or been made redundant ?
Instead of politics being something that a large number of people in a democratic society engage in, it's now largely seen in transactional terms. Politicians are treated effectively as any other professional you might engage to provide a service, and if they fail you sack them and bring another firm in.
But that isn't how politics works. Politics is a process, and a democratic citizen's role has to go beyond voting once every few years.
How else do MPs know what tradeoffs are the right ones to make if people across the country are not part of a debate that considers those tradeoffs?
Single-issue activism has arisen as a lacklustre alternative to general political engagement, because people generally have disengaged from the political process.
Israel is quite schizophrenic. But maybe that doesn’t need saying
A number of western states have independent redistricting commissions:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering_in_the_United_States
And note the worst offenders, where maps can be redrawn by a simple majority of the legislature, which can also override a governor's veto (which would otherwise be a safeguard in the hands of a majority of the electorate) are all Republican southern states.
The GOP is an opponent of democracy.
Unless both Biden and then Harris die (and any VP Harris would have appointed dies) he also is not going to be President
A refreshingly different voice. More please
And of course it affects Congressional elections.
'Just makes it more difficult' - you don't really believe in democracy, do you ?
And my intended point was that even where it is widespread, that does not mean specific sides or examples cannot be particularly egregious. One was recently tossed out in, I think, Alabama, which must have been remarkably brazen even by these standards.
The couple who ran it were horrible people, using it to support a luxurious lifestyle while treating their staff like shit.
Only some form of proportional voting system can avoid these sorts of effects that are seen with single-member constituencies.
The other big change is I have stopped working in a sector ( water ) where having views that dont fit the narrative just create problems. So I was lurking for a bit to avoid the digital lynch mobs and all the nonsense that comes with it.
It was an interesting experience though seeing just how badly some of our major services and infrastructure projects are run.
A man who was removed from his role as Scotland's first period dignity officer has settled his case out of court.
Jason Grant sued the partnership that hired him last year, on the grounds of sex discrimination, with the case set to call next March.
An HM Courts and Tribunal Service spokeswoman confirmed the case had been settled and would not be proceeding as planned.
No details of the terms of settlement have been been made.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-67197945
And for those who want a retro 70s style story of a nationalised shipyard and a nationalised ferry company:
The wrong type of steel, which is more prone to corrosion, was installed on an already delayed and over-budget ferry, the boss of Ferguson Marine has admitted.
David Tydeman, the chief executive, highlighted the error as one of a number of “mistakes” that have been made during the building process.
A mild steel was used on the hydraulic systems for the MV Glen Sannox’s clamshell doors rather than stainless steel.
Tydeman told MSPs on the net zero, energy and transport committee that the bungle had been recognised but acknowledged that there were several other similar mistakes, such as the wrong type of pipes being installed, which had contributed to the delays and rising costs.
Tydeman had outlined recently how the price of delivering the two ferries was likely to be £360 million, although he had priced in a further £30 million for contingencies.
The initial contract was awarded in 2015 for £97 million and both vessels should have been delivered in 2018.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/wrong-type-of-steel-used-to-build-new-calmac-ferry-x5qq32c0x
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-us-canada-67211376
"After a detailed cost analysis it is now clear that at 4 cents/mile Voyager probe is the most cost-efficient means of personal transport"
https://twitter.com/DrChrisCombs/status/1717186629712916849
Labour leads by 16% in the Red Wall.
Red Wall VI (22 October):
Labour 48% (+3)
Conservative 32% (+1)
Liberal Democrat 7% (+1)
Reform UK 6% (-4)
Green 4% (-2)
Plaid Cymru 1% (–)
Other 2% (+1)
Changes +/- 23 September
redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-red-wal…
https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1717209401805754425?t=dq9p-8icFUTkBvd5E2C3IQ&s=19
Its the implementation that is much harder.
We express them through ranting on here.
But I am here. On the chic side of Ortygia under a mildly dramatic moon
I have a related question for well travelled PB-ers. I’ve got six more nights in Sicily then I must be back in Blighty. I’ve got two more here in Siracusa but then I’m wondering… maybe move on? But where? I’ve seen Palermo and the north coast and all that
I’ve not seen the interior. Is it worth it? The valley of the temples? Corleone?!
"We are the beacon of freedom and we must preserve this grand experiment of self governance."
He says one of the first bills he brings forward will be in defence of Israel.'
'Getting to his political priorities, Johnson said that the US government must address southern border security.
Claiming that the issue had been ignored by the Democratic-led Senate and White House, he said it was time to "come together and addres the broken border".