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The let’s get Rwanda done election? – politicalbetting.com

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    bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 7,969

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    algarkirk said:

    algarkirk said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    It is not impossible that there are wider implications. Tom de la Mare KC comments thus today on TwiX:

    One of the practical merits of the British Constitution hitherto is that the limits of the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty have never been explored by the passing of extreme legislation testing the unstated but assumed premises of our constitutional arrangements.

    Those problems are amplified by the other multifold ways in which our Parliament is evidently defective, starting with the abuse of delegated legislation and power transfer to the Executive, against which only the Courts are a safeguard, leading to further constitutional strain.

    Precisely!
    There are a couple of deep issues here.
    One is the question of what courts/lawyers/judges are for. Do they merely check out the law or do they ever make it?

    And secondly, who is the final arbiter? The Supreme Court or Parliament? And can a court simply say 'You can't do that because of reasons'.

    The government can change the law as it sees fit. But the government is not seeking to do that with the Rwanda legislation. It is seeking to disapply it inasmuch as it effects a particular category of people. If it can do it to them (refugees), what is to stop it doing the same to anyone else? It seems to me that we have entered entirely uncharted territory.

    Parliament can do what it likes. You display a fairly astonishing lack of understanding of the UK’s constitutional history

    It is an elected dictatorship, hedged about by convention. This is well known

    Is it flawless? No. Are other systems better? Maybe logically, but we have avoided revolution or ACTUAL dictatorship for 400 years unlike almost every other country in the world

    I totally understand that Parliament can do what it wants, but it is being asked to do what it has never done before. Our constitutional settlement is predicated on the principle that while Parliament is theoretically unconstrained, in practice it is, that there are certain things it will not do. I'd argue that removing human rights from a carefully defined group of people is one such action. If it can and then does do that with regard to refugees, why not other groups too?

    i advise you to shut up, from this point. Embarrassing ignorance of basic English constitutional history and theory
    Yes, I get that you do not like the issue to be raised. I suggest that you just don't get involved in the conversation.

    I’ve not taken you for an idiot before. Quite surprised, TBH

    I do think it was Blair/Brown calling the new court “the Supreme Court” in 2009 which literally did this to midwits like you. Add in ten years of watching the West Wing and you actually believe it is just like the SCOTUS

    No, I don't. If it was, this wouldn't be an issue. The legislation would go to the Supreme Court. The whole point here is that there is no avenue to challenge a parliament which decides to remove human rights from a defined group of people. In the past, this has not been an issue because Parliament has not done it.

    Parliament hasn't done it lately. It's done it centuries ago to Catholics. It did it with internment during WWII. I'm sure there are more examples.
  • Options
    Leon said:

    THIS is brilliant

    Less than half of university students chanting “from the river to sea” can correctly identify the river and the sea. Answers range from “the Nile” to “the Euphrates”, to “the Atlantic” and “the Caribbean”

    https://x.com/simonmontefiore/status/1732713846308008252?s=61&t=GGp3Vs1t1kTWDiyA-odnZg

    It's the sort of thing we used to rib geographers about.

    "You're reading Geography and you can't even find us a chip shop."
  • Options
    JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 39,165
    Nigelb said:

    Who knew this ?
    I love the fact that they retired them on a regular basis to live out their 50year lives.

    Someone Explains How Poland Uses Clams To Control Its Water Supply And It’s Pretty Crazy
    https://www.boredpanda.com/clams-measure-water-quality-poland-fat-kathy/

    A chemical factory I was involved with as a teenager kept small live fish in the water outlet culverts. Although they took water samples a few times a day, the fish provided a very quick indication of whether any naughty chemicals had made it into the water.

    Later on, a fish farm was built to use the warm water coming out of the on-site power station. Buggin's here was involved in assembling all the pipework for it. As the fish grew, they'd just flow them between the different tanks.
  • Options
    isam said:

    Leon said:

    algarkirk said:

    algarkirk said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    It is not impossible that there are wider implications. Tom de la Mare KC comments thus today on TwiX:

    One of the practical merits of the British Constitution hitherto is that the limits of the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty have never been explored by the passing of extreme legislation testing the unstated but assumed premises of our constitutional arrangements.

    Those problems are amplified by the other multifold ways in which our Parliament is evidently defective, starting with the abuse of delegated legislation and power transfer to the Executive, against which only the Courts are a safeguard, leading to further constitutional strain.

    Precisely!
    There are a couple of deep issues here.
    One is the question of what courts/lawyers/judges are for. Do they merely check out the law or do they ever make it?

    And secondly, who is the final arbiter? The Supreme Court or Parliament? And can a court simply say 'You can't do that because of reasons'.

    The government can change the law as it sees fit. But the government is not seeking to do that with the Rwanda legislation. It is seeking to disapply it inasmuch as it effects a particular category of people. If it can do it to them (refugees), what is to stop it doing the same to anyone else? It seems to me that we have entered entirely uncharted territory.

    Parliament can do what it likes. You display a fairly astonishing lack of understanding of the UK’s constitutional history

    It is an elected dictatorship, hedged about by convention. This is well known

    Is it flawless? No. Are other systems better? Maybe logically, but we have avoided revolution or ACTUAL dictatorship for 400 years unlike almost every other country in the world

    I totally understand that Parliament can do what it wants, but it is being asked to do what it has never done before. Our constitutional settlement is predicated on the principle that while Parliament is theoretically unconstrained, in practice it is, that there are certain things it will not do. I'd argue that removing human rights from a carefully defined group of people is one such action. If it can and then does do that with regard to refugees, why not other groups too?

    I feel your pain - some things are technically legal but just *feel* wrong. Yet they get away with it

    We'll see if they get away with it. An election is approaching. This government cannot now use Parliament to ban them as the House of Lords can block the required legislation. So the people will decide.

    Some things are legal, other things are not legal. Boris Johnson broke the law. Keir Starmer did not break the law. Let it go. It is done.

  • Options
    DougSealDougSeal Posts: 11,338
    Leon said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    Can you tell me the last time the UK government legislated to allow itself to break the law? Not to change the law, but to break it?

    The current constitutional settlement wrests on the notion that there are some things the government won’t do even if, in theory, it can. I’d suggest that a couple of those are legislating to remove all human rights from a defined group of people and legislating to allow the government to break the law. That goes beyond politics, although only politics can resolve it - if the government does not legislate that away.

    Well, your lot decided to try and cancel democracy by annulling a referendum - Britain’s biggest ever vote - before the result was even enacted. So frankly you can fuck off with this pious bullshit

    Not least because Sir Kir Royale was a leading “2nd voter”
    It was the LD's who
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    Can you tell me the last time the UK government legislated to allow itself to break the law? Not to change the law, but to break it?

    The current constitutional settlement wrests on the notion that there are some things the government won’t do even if, in theory, it can. I’d suggest that a couple of those are legislating to remove all human rights from a defined group of people and legislating to allow the government to break the law. That goes beyond politics, although only politics can resolve it - if the government does not legislate that away.

    Well, your lot decided to try and cancel democracy by annulling a referendum - Britain’s biggest ever vote - before the result was even enacted. So frankly you can fuck off with this pious bullshit

    Not least because Sir Kir Royale was a leading “2nd voter”
    That would be Nigel Farage, surely, who was first to call for a second referendum (but only when he thought he'd lost the first one).
    I mean, that may make you feel better but it’s shite, isn’t it?


    Starmer and the 2nd voters literally tried to overturn democracy. A vote which David Cameron solemnly promised would be honoured. Indeed, let us go back and revisit the Prime Minister’s words


    ‘Ultimately it will be the judgment of the British people in the referendum… You will have to judge what is best for you and your family, for your children and grandchildren, for our country, for our future. It will be your decision whether to remain in the EU on the basis of the reforms we secure, or whether we leave. Your decision. Nobody else’s. Not politicians’. Not Parliament’s. Not lobby groups’. Not mine. Just you. You, the British people, will decide. At that moment, you will hold this country’s destiny in your hands. This is a huge decision for our country, perhaps the biggest we will make in our lifetimes. And it will be the final decision.’

    And there is more:

    ‘So to those who suggest that a decision in the referendum to leave would merely produce another stronger renegotiation, and then a second referendum in which Britain would stay, I say: think again. The renegotiation is happening right now. And the referendum that follows will be a once in a generation choice. An in or out referendum. When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum.’

    Was that vote “respected” by Starmer and the Remoaners? Absolutely not. They attempted a British version of the January 6 coup
    Yeah. They asked people to vote in an election that would give them a vote in another election. That's exactly the same as trying to physically threaten lawmakers into doing their bidding.

    Go back to school you posturing poltroon. Labour asked a question in the 2019 election asking whether the electorate would like a second referendum. The electorate said 'no thanks'. To suggest that is in any way equivalent to armed insurrectionists threatening lawmakers with violence unless they did what demanded shows the morally depraved cesspool your what passes for your intellect oozes from.

    I appreciate you are a fash curious Putin fanboi herrenvolk shite (thanks Shane!) who would prefer we never have to bother with the messy process of democracy, but at least come out and admit it rather than blathering on pious bullshit about 'democracy'.
  • Options
    williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 48,228

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    algarkirk said:

    algarkirk said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    It is not impossible that there are wider implications. Tom de la Mare KC comments thus today on TwiX:

    One of the practical merits of the British Constitution hitherto is that the limits of the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty have never been explored by the passing of extreme legislation testing the unstated but assumed premises of our constitutional arrangements.

    Those problems are amplified by the other multifold ways in which our Parliament is evidently defective, starting with the abuse of delegated legislation and power transfer to the Executive, against which only the Courts are a safeguard, leading to further constitutional strain.

    Precisely!
    There are a couple of deep issues here.
    One is the question of what courts/lawyers/judges are for. Do they merely check out the law or do they ever make it?

    And secondly, who is the final arbiter? The Supreme Court or Parliament? And can a court simply say 'You can't do that because of reasons'.

    The government can change the law as it sees fit. But the government is not seeking to do that with the Rwanda legislation. It is seeking to disapply it inasmuch as it effects a particular category of people. If it can do it to them (refugees), what is to stop it doing the same to anyone else? It seems to me that we have entered entirely uncharted territory.

    Parliament can do what it likes. You display a fairly astonishing lack of understanding of the UK’s constitutional history

    It is an elected dictatorship, hedged about by convention. This is well known

    Is it flawless? No. Are other systems better? Maybe logically, but we have avoided revolution or ACTUAL dictatorship for 400 years unlike almost every other country in the world

    I totally understand that Parliament can do what it wants, but it is being asked to do what it has never done before. Our constitutional settlement is predicated on the principle that while Parliament is theoretically unconstrained, in practice it is, that there are certain things it will not do. I'd argue that removing human rights from a carefully defined group of people is one such action. If it can and then does do that with regard to refugees, why not other groups too?

    i advise you to shut up, from this point. Embarrassing ignorance of basic English constitutional history and theory
    Yes, I get that you do not like the issue to be raised. I suggest that you just don't get involved in the conversation.

    I’ve not taken you for an idiot before. Quite surprised, TBH

    I do think it was Blair/Brown calling the new court “the Supreme Court” in 2009 which literally did this to midwits like you. Add in ten years of watching the West Wing and you actually believe it is just like the SCOTUS
    New Labour Americanising the country is a scandal yet to be written, from the Supreme Court to half the country going to university, let alone the wars (not just Iraq).
    It was a kind of cargo cult from the time when the centre-left regarded Bill Clinton as the Messiah.
  • Options
    Andy_JS said:

    Parliament ought to be sovereign, not the supreme court.

    Isn't the problem with that argument that the Supreme Court is only interpreting legislation in the light of already existing legal commitments and laws passed by Parliament?

    The real issue here is that the Government is curretnly making stupid, ill thought out and ill drafted legislation which does not conform with existing leglislation and international treaties and the Supreme Court is doing its correct job by pointing this out.

    It is the same job that used to be done by the Law Lords.
  • Options

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    algarkirk said:

    algarkirk said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    It is not impossible that there are wider implications. Tom de la Mare KC comments thus today on TwiX:

    One of the practical merits of the British Constitution hitherto is that the limits of the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty have never been explored by the passing of extreme legislation testing the unstated but assumed premises of our constitutional arrangements.

    Those problems are amplified by the other multifold ways in which our Parliament is evidently defective, starting with the abuse of delegated legislation and power transfer to the Executive, against which only the Courts are a safeguard, leading to further constitutional strain.

    Precisely!
    There are a couple of deep issues here.
    One is the question of what courts/lawyers/judges are for. Do they merely check out the law or do they ever make it?

    And secondly, who is the final arbiter? The Supreme Court or Parliament? And can a court simply say 'You can't do that because of reasons'.

    The government can change the law as it sees fit. But the government is not seeking to do that with the Rwanda legislation. It is seeking to disapply it inasmuch as it effects a particular category of people. If it can do it to them (refugees), what is to stop it doing the same to anyone else? It seems to me that we have entered entirely uncharted territory.

    Parliament can do what it likes. You display a fairly astonishing lack of understanding of the UK’s constitutional history

    It is an elected dictatorship, hedged about by convention. This is well known

    Is it flawless? No. Are other systems better? Maybe logically, but we have avoided revolution or ACTUAL dictatorship for 400 years unlike almost every other country in the world

    I totally understand that Parliament can do what it wants, but it is being asked to do what it has never done before. Our constitutional settlement is predicated on the principle that while Parliament is theoretically unconstrained, in practice it is, that there are certain things it will not do. I'd argue that removing human rights from a carefully defined group of people is one such action. If it can and then does do that with regard to refugees, why not other groups too?

    i advise you to shut up, from this point. Embarrassing ignorance of basic English constitutional history and theory
    Yes, I get that you do not like the issue to be raised. I suggest that you just don't get involved in the conversation.

    I’ve not taken you for an idiot before. Quite surprised, TBH

    I do think it was Blair/Brown calling the new court “the Supreme Court” in 2009 which literally did this to midwits like you. Add in ten years of watching the West Wing and you actually believe it is just like the SCOTUS
    New Labour Americanising the country is a scandal yet to be written, from the Supreme Court to half the country going to university, let alone the wars (not just Iraq). ETA privatised health care too.
    Half the country going to university was a policy introduced by John Major not New Labour.
  • Options
    isamisam Posts: 41,033
    edited December 2023
    l

    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    Can you tell me the last time the UK government legislated to allow itself to break the law? Not to change the law, but to break it?

    The current constitutional settlement wrests on the notion that there are some things the government won’t do even if, in theory, it can. I’d suggest that a couple of those are legislating to remove all human rights from a defined group of people and legislating to allow the government to break the law. That goes beyond politics, although only politics can resolve it - if the government does not legislate that away.

    Well, your lot decided to try and cancel democracy by annulling a referendum - Britain’s biggest ever vote - before the result was even enacted. So frankly you can fuck off with this pious bullshit

    Not least because Sir Kir Royale was a leading “2nd voter”

    My lot?

    I did not vote Labour in December 2019. However, I did think that MPs elected on a manifesto promise to oppose a No Deal Brexit were perfectly entitled to seek to prevent one. The MPs that did not have such a right were the Tory ones.

    Sir Keir wanted a second referendum even if the PM and the EU agreed a deal before the 2019 GE; one of the options had to be remain, and he would campaign for Remain

    And Labour put that case to the British people and was roundly defeated.

    Yes, but you can’t get away with that, sorry.

    Sir Keir wanted a second referendum with remain an option, in which he would campaign for remain when there was no GE in the offing

    This is despite being elected in 2017 after saying respecting the result was ‘an important point of principle’
    Starmer did not get what he wanted. But what he wanted was to put his case to the British people, not impose an outcome on them.

    He said in the 2017 GE campaign

    We’ve got to do this from a position of principle.
    Did we agree agree that we’d put this out to the public for a vote? Yes
    Did we agree that we’d accept that vote? Yes
    Have we got to accept that result? Yes
    So the first position is a matter of principle; Having done this, having got a result, we’ve got to accept it, & simply saying ‘well it’s better for us electorally if we do this or do that’ doesn’t help”


    Then in 2019 when the Tories were between Prime Ministers, he said

    I’m really pleased that whatever outcome the next Prime Minister puts before us, whether that’s a deal of some sort, or no deal, we’ve agreed that it must be subject to another referendum, & in that referendum Remain must be an option and Labour will be campaigning for Remain

    That’s a really important point of principle ”

    So he did want to re run the referendum without a GE.
    After saying that would be wrong.
    And both were matters of principle

  • Options
    isamisam Posts: 41,033
    edited December 2023
    ….
  • Options
    Andy_JS said:

    Parliament ought to be sovereign, not the supreme court.

    It is. Next.
  • Options
    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    DougSeal said:

    Leon said:

    Andy_JS said:

    It's always worth putting a bet on another Tory leadership challenge within 18 months. I should have learnt that by now.

    What we are witnessing is Sunak refusing to leave the EHCR and other international bodies and challenging those in his party who want us to align with Russia and Belarus as the only countries outside international law

    On this he has my support and maybe it is better to take the right on now, as if he does win the vote with just a handful of his mps voting against then he will be in a more secure position - of course if the right decide to commit 'hari - kari' then it is all over for the conservative party as we know it
    Russia is rapidly expanding its territory and is about to win a major war in Europe. Meanwhile its economy is growing healthily and its people are infused with patriotic fervour, and they know that a woman is a woman and a good cigar is a smoke

    Here in the west we cower pathetically from the likes of Barbados as they demand “$5.4 trillion” in reparations and some of the leading universities of
    the western world say it’s ok to ask for genocide on the Jews but don’t misgender anyone!

    We are pitiful. Putin is right
    It is impossible to take any of your "the west are cucks" posts seriously since your posts detailing your pants-filling terror at sailing on waters, from your photographs, were at a sea state 1 at worst. What an absolute melt you are.
    I am seduced by the idea you took my posts seriously until you saw me in a squid-fishing boat in the Gulf of Siam
    Nah, it just sealed the deal.

    How many of these have you visited ?
    Including the replies.

    The most breathtaking church from every country in Europe 🧵

    1. Germany: Cologne Cathedral, Cologne (1880) 🇩🇪

    https://twitter.com/Culture_Crit/status/1732401881136132274
    A noble attempt to distract him from unsuccessfully cosplaying a constitutional expert.
    Will he be grateful? Will he feck.
  • Options
    nico679nico679 Posts: 5,091
    The Rwanda legislation is very unusual in what it asks UK courts to do . Even if war broke out in Rwanda the courts would be forced to accept its a safe country . Aswell as this they are being asked to ignore parts of the HRA . It’s an extraordinary piece of legislation!
  • Options
    isam said:

    l

    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    Can you tell me the last time the UK government legislated to allow itself to break the law? Not to change the law, but to break it?

    The current constitutional settlement wrests on the notion that there are some things the government won’t do even if, in theory, it can. I’d suggest that a couple of those are legislating to remove all human rights from a defined group of people and legislating to allow the government to break the law. That goes beyond politics, although only politics can resolve it - if the government does not legislate that away.

    Well, your lot decided to try and cancel democracy by annulling a referendum - Britain’s biggest ever vote - before the result was even enacted. So frankly you can fuck off with this pious bullshit

    Not least because Sir Kir Royale was a leading “2nd voter”

    My lot?

    I did not vote Labour in December 2019. However, I did think that MPs elected on a manifesto promise to oppose a No Deal Brexit were perfectly entitled to seek to prevent one. The MPs that did not have such a right were the Tory ones.

    Sir Keir wanted a second referendum even if the PM and the EU agreed a deal before the 2019 GE; one of the options had to be remain, and he would campaign for Remain

    And Labour put that case to the British people and was roundly defeated.

    Yes, but you can’t get away with that, sorry.

    Sir Keir wanted a second referendum with remain an option, in which he would campaign for remain when there was no GE in the offing

    This is despite being elected in 2017 after saying respecting the result was ‘an important point of principle’
    Starmer did not get what he wanted. But what he wanted was to put his case to the British people, not impose an outcome on them.

    He said in the 2017 GE campaign

    “We’ve got to do this from a position of principle.
    Did we agree agree that we’d put this out to the public for a vote? Yes
    Did we agree that we’d accept that vote? Yes
    Have we got to accept that result? Yes
    So the first position is a matter of principle; Having done this, having got a result, we’ve got to accept it, & simply saying ‘well it’s better for us electorally if we do this it do that’ doesn’t help”

    Then in 2019 when the Tories were between Prime Ministers, he said

    “I’m really pleased that whatever outcome the next Prime Minister puts before us, whether that’s a deal of some sort, or no deal, we’ve agreed that it must be subject to another referendum, & in that referendum Remain must be an option and Labour will be campaigning for Remain

    That’s a really important point of principle ”

    So he did want to re run the referendum without a GE.
    After saying that would be wrong.
    And both were matters of principle

    Politician changes mind shock!

  • Options
    TazTaz Posts: 11,373

    Taz said:

    License fee to rise by an exorbitant £10.50 a month to £169.50 a year just for the pleasure of receiving live TV signals.

    Sooner it is replaced with general taxation for the distribution network and the BBC seeking its funding in the commercial arena the better. Get this done and implemented before the next election.

    "The government is also launching a review of the BBC's funding model, Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer told MPs."

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-67646601

    As Brenda from Bristol would say: "Not another review of the BBC's funding model".
    Yup, just get on with it. Abolish the license fee and let them get on with it.
  • Options
    Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 27,092
    edited December 2023
    Nigelb said:

    Who knew this ?
    I love the fact that they retired them on a regular basis to live out their 50year lives.

    Someone Explains How Poland Uses Clams To Control Its Water Supply And It’s Pretty Crazy
    https://www.boredpanda.com/clams-measure-water-quality-poland-fat-kathy/

    Tom Scott talked about it on one of his mega-interesting videos recently. I would recommend watching them. I'm trying to get through 10 years' worth of "Things You Might Not Know" videos. Wish I'd discovered his channel earlier.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0RkEs3Xwf0
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,999

    Leon said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    Can you tell me the last time the UK government legislated to allow itself to break the law? Not to change the law, but to break it?

    The current constitutional settlement wrests on the notion that there are some things the government won’t do even if, in theory, it can. I’d suggest that a couple of those are legislating to remove all human rights from a defined group of people and legislating to allow the government to break the law. That goes beyond politics, although only politics can resolve it - if the government does not legislate that away.

    Firstly, the government doesn't legislate in instances like this, parliament does. That's an important distinction: the government is subject to the authority of the Courts, parliament is not.

    Secondly, you cannot legislate to allow a government to break the law. If it is allowed for in law then it cannot be illegal, domestically at least. The UK's constitutional settlement doesn't allow for international law to override domestic law and never has. To the extent that it can, it's because of how domestic law has integrated international bodies into its structure.

    I think the problem is that some people are raising the HRA to be akin to a kind of constitution. It is not. It is an Act of Parliament, and can be amended or repealed the same way as any other (in theory; in practice there'd be all sorts of problems, not least in relation to Treaties - but parliament isn't bound by those even if the government is in certain ways).

    The second, and bigger but related, problem is to look to the Courts for protection in the political sphere when in reality we need to look to ourselves. You're right that a lot of politics-as-normal rests on the Good Chap theory, and the government isn't behaving in a Good Chap way. But that's exactly why there are checks and balances (imperfect, granted), when any one part starts pushing their powers too far. If the people react against any government going beyond accepted boundaries, they won't do it: natural opposition will arise and, if necessary, the constitutional backstops will be emboldened to come into play. That is the proper constitutional process and a much better option than looking to the Courts, which if done too frequently must inevitably end with bringing the Supreme Court within the political arena and appointments made on the basis of political belief rather than judicial merit.
    Quite so


    If lefties want to go down this road with a US style Supreme Court having the ability to entirely stymie parliament then I will demand a politicised Supreme Court, otherwise you could end up with a dictatorship of the unelected lefty Islington lawyers, for all eternity

    Do we really want a US style Supreme Court? Really??
    It's remarkable how many people who should know better not only think that we've already got one, but also think we've always had one.

    Here's Lewis Goodall:

    "Independent Courts can “undo” laws Parliament makes- it’s an important part of our constitution."

    https://x.com/lewis_goodall/status/1732730561284739298
    To be fair to Goodall, I don't think that's what he is saying. He's saying that parliament sometimes passes contradictory legislation and that when it does, it's down to the courts to decide which to apply, when, and how - and that the practical effect of that is to annul whichever Act is deemed unapplicable in the relevant circumstances. Which is fair enough.

    Crucially, courts can only 'undo' a law in these cases because another law allows them to and they give it precedence, not because they don't like the look of the one set aside in isolation.
    This is a very good, and rather simple point which is rarely appreciated by the "but Parliament is supreme" crowd.

    Of course Parliament could legislate for a given law to override any and all contradictory legislation, but that opens a number of cans of worms too.
  • Options
    bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 7,969
    isam said:

    l

    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    Can you tell me the last time the UK government legislated to allow itself to break the law? Not to change the law, but to break it?

    The current constitutional settlement wrests on the notion that there are some things the government won’t do even if, in theory, it can. I’d suggest that a couple of those are legislating to remove all human rights from a defined group of people and legislating to allow the government to break the law. That goes beyond politics, although only politics can resolve it - if the government does not legislate that away.

    Well, your lot decided to try and cancel democracy by annulling a referendum - Britain’s biggest ever vote - before the result was even enacted. So frankly you can fuck off with this pious bullshit

    Not least because Sir Kir Royale was a leading “2nd voter”

    My lot?

    I did not vote Labour in December 2019. However, I did think that MPs elected on a manifesto promise to oppose a No Deal Brexit were perfectly entitled to seek to prevent one. The MPs that did not have such a right were the Tory ones.

    Sir Keir wanted a second referendum even if the PM and the EU agreed a deal before the 2019 GE; one of the options had to be remain, and he would campaign for Remain

    And Labour put that case to the British people and was roundly defeated.

    Yes, but you can’t get away with that, sorry.

    Sir Keir wanted a second referendum with remain an option, in which he would campaign for remain when there was no GE in the offing

    This is despite being elected in 2017 after saying respecting the result was ‘an important point of principle’
    Starmer did not get what he wanted. But what he wanted was to put his case to the British people, not impose an outcome on them.

    He said in the 2017 GE campaign

    “We’ve got to do this from a position of principle.
    Did we agree agree that we’d put this out to the public for a vote? Yes
    Did we agree that we’d accept that vote? Yes
    Have we got to accept that result? Yes
    So the first position is a matter of principle; Having done this, having got a result, we’ve got to accept it, & simply saying ‘well it’s better for us electorally if we do this it do that’ doesn’t help”

    Then in 2019 when the Tories were between Prime Ministers, he said

    “I’m really pleased that whatever outcome the next Prime Minister puts before us, whether that’s a deal of some sort, or no deal, we’ve agreed that it must be subject to another referendum, & in that referendum Remain must be an option and Labour will be campaigning for Remain

    That’s a really important point of principle ”

    So he did want to re run the referendum without a GE.
    After saying that would be wrong.
    And both were matters of principle

    But Parliament is supreme, as we're discussing today. That means Parliament is a higher power than a referendum result, and you can't really complain about someone trying to get a vote on something passed in Parliament.
  • Options

    I want to buy my brother in law a really good knife for Christmas

    What's the brand that everyone keeps raving about on here?

    Perhaps I should have been clear that I'm looking for a kitchen or bartender's knife. He's
    a bar manager and home chef from Turin

    Even though when I was four, my sister two years older who once did a shit in her swimming costume in a hotel swimming pool near the Epcot Center, where we were on holiday with our grandparents, and then swam next to me and released the shit from her swimming costume, climbed out of the pool and told my grandparents that I'd shat in the pool

    The pool had to be evacuated

    I had no idea why, but it was blamed on me

    My sister finally owned up when I was 16, she was 18
  • Options

    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    Can you tell me the last time the UK government legislated to allow itself to break the law? Not to change the law, but to break it?

    The current constitutional settlement wrests on the notion that there are some things the government won’t do even if, in theory, it can. I’d suggest that a couple of those are legislating to remove all human rights from a defined group of people and legislating to allow the government to break the law. That goes beyond politics, although only politics can resolve it - if the government does not legislate that away.

    Well, your lot decided to try and cancel democracy by annulling a referendum - Britain’s biggest ever vote - before the result was even enacted. So frankly you can fuck off with this pious bullshit

    Not least because Sir Kir Royale was a leading “2nd voter”

    My lot?

    I did not vote Labour in December 2019. However, I did think that MPs elected on a manifesto promise to oppose a No Deal Brexit were perfectly entitled to seek to prevent one. The MPs that did not have such a right were the Tory ones.

    Sir Keir wanted a second referendum even if the PM and the EU agreed a deal before the 2019 GE; one of the options had to be remain, and he would campaign for Remain

    And Labour put that case to the British people and was roundly defeated.

    Yes, but you can’t get away with that, sorry.

    Sir Keir wanted a second referendum with remain an option, in which he would campaign for remain when there was no GE in the offing

    This is despite being elected in 2017 after saying respecting the result was ‘an important point of principle’
    Starmer did not get what he wanted. But what he wanted was to put his case to the British people, not impose an outcome on them.

    Parties which lose elections have a right to dump their manifestos (e.g. Kinnock dumping unilateral disarmament and other unpopular policies following the 87 election). If isam were right, it would be wrong and undemocratic for a party to ever change its policies.
    If you a lose an election, whatever you said in your last manifesto is irrelevant.
  • Options

    Andy_JS said:

    Parliament ought to be sovereign, not the supreme court.

    Isn't the problem with that argument that the Supreme Court is only interpreting legislation in the light of already existing legal commitments and laws passed by Parliament?

    The real issue here is that the Government is curretnly making stupid, ill thought out and ill drafted legislation which does not conform with existing leglislation and international treaties and the Supreme Court is doing its correct job by pointing this out.

    It is the same job that used to be done by the Law Lords.
    The real issue ought to be the government not allowing parliament to do its job properly - giving time and space for effective scrutiny of legislation, and opportunity to amend it.

    Obviously, we know the reason why it's not been keen to do that but bad legislation doesn't stop being bad legislation simply because you've rammed it through parliament.
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,999

    I want to buy my brother in law a really good knife for Christmas

    What's the brand that everyone keeps raving about on here?

    Perhaps I should have been clear that I'm looking for a kitchen or bartender's knife. He's
    a bar manager and home chef from Turin

    Even though when I was four, my sister two years older who once did a shit in her swimming costume in a hotel swimming pool near the Epcot Center, where we were on holiday with our grandparents, and then swam next to me and released the shit from her swimming costume, climbed out of the pool and told my grandparents that I'd shat in the pool

    The pool had to be evacuated

    I had no idea why, but it was blamed on me

    My sister finally owned up when I was 16, she was 18
    Such experiences scar a person.
    I shall cut you more slack in future.
  • Options
    SelebianSelebian Posts: 7,523

    I want to buy my brother in law a really good knife for Christmas

    What's the brand that everyone keeps raving about on here?

    Perhaps I should have been clear that I'm looking for a kitchen or bartender's knife. He's
    a bar manager and home chef from Turin

    Even though when I was four, my sister two years older who once did a shit in her swimming costume in a hotel swimming pool near the Epcot Center, where we were on holiday with our grandparents, and then swam next to me and released the shit from her swimming costume, climbed out of the pool and told my grandparents that I'd shat in the pool

    The pool had to be evacuated

    I had no idea why, but it was blamed on me

    My sister finally owned up when I was 16, she was 18
    These things scar a person. I know of someone who has an ongoing dispute with a sibling on who really broke a TV about 25 years ago (person claims they only took the blame in the end as there was a we're all sitting here until someone owns up situation).
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,999

    isam said:

    l

    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    Can you tell me the last time the UK government legislated to allow itself to break the law? Not to change the law, but to break it?

    The current constitutional settlement wrests on the notion that there are some things the government won’t do even if, in theory, it can. I’d suggest that a couple of those are legislating to remove all human rights from a defined group of people and legislating to allow the government to break the law. That goes beyond politics, although only politics can resolve it - if the government does not legislate that away.

    Well, your lot decided to try and cancel democracy by annulling a referendum - Britain’s biggest ever vote - before the result was even enacted. So frankly you can fuck off with this pious bullshit

    Not least because Sir Kir Royale was a leading “2nd voter”

    My lot?

    I did not vote Labour in December 2019. However, I did think that MPs elected on a manifesto promise to oppose a No Deal Brexit were perfectly entitled to seek to prevent one. The MPs that did not have such a right were the Tory ones.

    Sir Keir wanted a second referendum even if the PM and the EU agreed a deal before the 2019 GE; one of the options had to be remain, and he would campaign for Remain

    And Labour put that case to the British people and was roundly defeated.

    Yes, but you can’t get away with that, sorry.

    Sir Keir wanted a second referendum with remain an option, in which he would campaign for remain when there was no GE in the offing

    This is despite being elected in 2017 after saying respecting the result was ‘an important point of principle’
    Starmer did not get what he wanted. But what he wanted was to put his case to the British people, not impose an outcome on them.

    He said in the 2017 GE campaign

    “We’ve got to do this from a position of principle.
    Did we agree agree that we’d put this out to the public for a vote? Yes
    Did we agree that we’d accept that vote? Yes
    Have we got to accept that result? Yes
    So the first position is a matter of principle; Having done this, having got a result, we’ve got to accept it, & simply saying ‘well it’s better for us electorally if we do this it do that’ doesn’t help”

    Then in 2019 when the Tories were between Prime Ministers, he said

    “I’m really pleased that whatever outcome the next Prime Minister puts before us, whether that’s a deal of some sort, or no deal, we’ve agreed that it must be subject to another referendum, & in that referendum Remain must be an option and Labour will be campaigning for Remain

    That’s a really important point of principle ”

    So he did want to re run the referendum without a GE.
    After saying that would be wrong.
    And both were matters of principle

    But Parliament is supreme, as we're discussing today. That means Parliament is a higher power than a referendum result, and you can't really complain about someone trying to get a vote on something passed in Parliament.
    We all distinguish between what is legally right; and what is morally right; and what is democratically right.
    Occasionally a couple of those things coincide.
    Most of the time we just pick the one which suits our argument.
  • Options
    Selebian said:

    I want to buy my brother in law a really good knife for Christmas

    What's the brand that everyone keeps raving about on here?

    Perhaps I should have been clear that I'm looking for a kitchen or bartender's knife. He's
    a bar manager and home chef from Turin

    Even though when I was four, my sister two years older who once did a shit in her swimming costume in a hotel swimming pool near the Epcot Center, where we were on holiday with our grandparents, and then swam next to me and released the shit from her swimming costume, climbed out of the pool and told my grandparents that I'd shat in the pool

    The pool had to be evacuated

    I had no idea why, but it was blamed on me

    My sister finally owned up when I was 16, she was 18
    These things scar a person. I know of someone who has an ongoing dispute with a sibling on who really broke a TV about 25 years ago (person claims they only took the blame in the end as there was a we're all sitting here until someone owns up situation).
    Being an only child is awesome. You get spoiled rotten plus none of this nonsense.
  • Options
    kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,429
    Andy_JS said:

    Parliament ought to be sovereign, not the supreme court.

    You say - until Parliament passes a law to persecute Andy-JS.
  • Options
    SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 20,764
    Leon said:

    THIS is brilliant

    Less than half of university students chanting “from the river to sea” can correctly identify the river and the sea. Answers range from “the Nile” to “the Euphrates”, to “the Atlantic” and “the Caribbean”

    https://x.com/simonmontefiore/status/1732713846308008252?s=61&t=GGp3Vs1t1kTWDiyA-odnZg

    From the River Ribble to the North Sea.

    The Yorkshire Party can have that one.

    OK. so a bit of Yorkshire is on the west side of the Ribble, but not many voters live there.
  • Options
    SelebianSelebian Posts: 7,523

    Selebian said:

    I want to buy my brother in law a really good knife for Christmas

    What's the brand that everyone keeps raving about on here?

    Perhaps I should have been clear that I'm looking for a kitchen or bartender's knife. He's
    a bar manager and home chef from Turin

    Even though when I was four, my sister two years older who once did a shit in her swimming costume in a hotel swimming pool near the Epcot Center, where we were on holiday with our grandparents, and then swam next to me and released the shit from her swimming costume, climbed out of the pool and told my grandparents that I'd shat in the pool

    The pool had to be evacuated

    I had no idea why, but it was blamed on me

    My sister finally owned up when I was 16, she was 18
    These things scar a person. I know of someone who has an ongoing dispute with a sibling on who really broke a TV about 25 years ago (person claims they only took the blame in the end as there was a we're all sitting here until someone owns up situation).
    Being an only child is awesome. You get spoiled rotten plus none of this nonsense.
    But who do you blame when you break the TV? :wink:
  • Options
    turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 15,437
    Selebian said:

    I want to buy my brother in law a really good knife for Christmas

    What's the brand that everyone keeps raving about on here?

    Perhaps I should have been clear that I'm looking for a kitchen or bartender's knife. He's
    a bar manager and home chef from Turin

    Even though when I was four, my sister two years older who once did a shit in her swimming costume in a hotel swimming pool near the Epcot Center, where we were on holiday with our grandparents, and then swam next to me and released the shit from her swimming costume, climbed out of the pool and told my grandparents that I'd shat in the pool

    The pool had to be evacuated

    I had no idea why, but it was blamed on me

    My sister finally owned up when I was 16, she was 18
    These things scar a person. I know of someone who has an ongoing dispute with a sibling on who really broke a TV about 25 years ago (person claims they only took the blame in the end as there was a we're all sitting here until someone owns up situation).
    A bit different but I was once sent to my room for scribbling pencil over a living room wall (behind my dad's chair). I had no idea what my parents were talking about. Turned out my dad had been doing something with a fishing rod that had been rubbing on the wall for an hour.

    The sense of wrongful punishment was huge...
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,999

    Selebian said:

    I want to buy my brother in law a really good knife for Christmas

    What's the brand that everyone keeps raving about on here?

    Perhaps I should have been clear that I'm looking for a kitchen or bartender's knife. He's
    a bar manager and home chef from Turin

    Even though when I was four, my sister two years older who once did a shit in her swimming costume in a hotel swimming pool near the Epcot Center, where we were on holiday with our grandparents, and then swam next to me and released the shit from her swimming costume, climbed out of the pool and told my grandparents that I'd shat in the pool

    The pool had to be evacuated

    I had no idea why, but it was blamed on me

    My sister finally owned up when I was 16, she was 18
    These things scar a person. I know of someone who has an ongoing dispute with a sibling on who really broke a TV about 25 years ago (person claims they only took the blame in the end as there was a we're all sitting here until someone owns up situation).
    Being an only child is awesome. You get spoiled rotten plus none of this nonsense.
    On the contrary - you are to blame for everything.
  • Options
    LeonLeon Posts: 47,683
    DougSeal said:

    Leon said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    Can you tell me the last time the UK government legislated to allow itself to break the law? Not to change the law, but to break it?

    The current constitutional settlement wrests on the notion that there are some things the government won’t do even if, in theory, it can. I’d suggest that a couple of those are legislating to remove all human rights from a defined group of people and legislating to allow the government to break the law. That goes beyond politics, although only politics can resolve it - if the government does not legislate that away.

    Well, your lot decided to try and cancel democracy by annulling a referendum - Britain’s biggest ever vote - before the result was even enacted. So frankly you can fuck off with this pious bullshit

    Not least because Sir Kir Royale was a leading “2nd voter”
    It was the LD's who
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    Can you tell me the last time the UK government legislated to allow itself to break the law? Not to change the law, but to break it?

    The current constitutional settlement wrests on the notion that there are some things the government won’t do even if, in theory, it can. I’d suggest that a couple of those are legislating to remove all human rights from a defined group of people and legislating to allow the government to break the law. That goes beyond politics, although only politics can resolve it - if the government does not legislate that away.

    Well, your lot decided to try and cancel democracy by annulling a referendum - Britain’s biggest ever vote - before the result was even enacted. So frankly you can fuck off with this pious bullshit

    Not least because Sir Kir Royale was a leading “2nd voter”
    That would be Nigel Farage, surely, who was first to call for a second referendum (but only when he thought he'd lost the first one).
    I mean, that may make you feel better but it’s shite, isn’t it?


    Starmer and the 2nd voters literally tried to overturn democracy. A vote which David Cameron solemnly promised would be honoured. Indeed, let us go back and revisit the Prime Minister’s words


    ‘Ultimately it will be the judgment of the British people in the referendum… You will have to judge what is best for you and your family, for your children and grandchildren, for our country, for our future. It will be your decision whether to remain in the EU on the basis of the reforms we secure, or whether we leave. Your decision. Nobody else’s. Not politicians’. Not Parliament’s. Not lobby groups’. Not mine. Just you. You, the British people, will decide. At that moment, you will hold this country’s destiny in your hands. This is a huge decision for our country, perhaps the biggest we will make in our lifetimes. And it will be the final decision.’

    And there is more:

    ‘So to those who suggest that a decision in the referendum to leave would merely produce another stronger renegotiation, and then a second referendum in which Britain would stay, I say: think again. The renegotiation is happening right now. And the referendum that follows will be a once in a generation choice. An in or out referendum. When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum.’

    Was that vote “respected” by Starmer and the Remoaners? Absolutely not. They attempted a British version of the January 6 coup
    Yeah. They asked people to vote in an election that would give them a vote in another election. That's exactly the same as trying to physically threaten lawmakers into doing their bidding.

    Go back to school you posturing poltroon. Labour asked a question in the 2019 election asking whether the electorate would like a second referendum. The electorate said 'no thanks'. To suggest that is in any way equivalent to armed insurrectionists threatening lawmakers with violence unless they did what demanded shows the morally depraved cesspool your what passes for your intellect oozes from.

    I appreciate you are a fash curious Putin fanboi herrenvolk shite (thanks Shane!) who would prefer we never have to bother with the messy process of democracy, but at least come out and admit it rather than blathering on pious bullshit about 'democracy'.
    Invective isn’t your “thing”, is it?

    I mean, “posturing poltroon”?!

    lol. Soz

  • Options
    Andy_JS said:

    Parliament ought to be sovereign, not the supreme court.

    Parliament has to follow the law. The SC upholds the law when it does not. Then parliament can change the law - it has the power to do that.

    Where the Rwanda temper tantrum gets funny is that *Rwanda* have a say. And they are very clear that if our sovereign parliament breaks the law, it will not be our partner. The Rwanda scheme falls apart if Rwanda say no.

    The right don't seem to comprehend this basic reality. They seem to think that Rwanda should do what it is told...
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,999
    The GOP leader in the House of Representatives, ladies and gentlemen.

    Mike Johnson told a gathering of Christian nationalists last night that weeks before he became House Speaker, "the Lord told me very clearly" to prepare to become a "Moses" who will lead the nation through a "Red Sea moment."
    https://twitter.com/RightWingWatch/status/1732499752644702649

    "Very clearly" is a nice touch.
  • Options
    isamisam Posts: 41,033

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    algarkirk said:

    algarkirk said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    It is not impossible that there are wider implications. Tom de la Mare KC comments thus today on TwiX:

    One of the practical merits of the British Constitution hitherto is that the limits of the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty have never been explored by the passing of extreme legislation testing the unstated but assumed premises of our constitutional arrangements.

    Those problems are amplified by the other multifold ways in which our Parliament is evidently defective, starting with the abuse of delegated legislation and power transfer to the Executive, against which only the Courts are a safeguard, leading to further constitutional strain.

    Precisely!
    There are a couple of deep issues here.
    One is the question of what courts/lawyers/judges are for. Do they merely check out the law or do they ever make it?

    And secondly, who is the final arbiter? The Supreme Court or Parliament? And can a court simply say 'You can't do that because of reasons'.

    The government can change the law as it sees fit. But the government is not seeking to do that with the Rwanda legislation. It is seeking to disapply it inasmuch as it effects a particular category of people. If it can do it to them (refugees), what is to stop it doing the same to anyone else? It seems to me that we have entered entirely uncharted territory.

    Parliament can do what it likes. You display a fairly astonishing lack of understanding of the UK’s constitutional history

    It is an elected dictatorship, hedged about by convention. This is well known

    Is it flawless? No. Are other systems better? Maybe logically, but we have avoided revolution or ACTUAL dictatorship for 400 years unlike almost every other country in the world

    I totally understand that Parliament can do what it wants, but it is being asked to do what it has never done before. Our constitutional settlement is predicated on the principle that while Parliament is theoretically unconstrained, in practice it is, that there are certain things it will not do. I'd argue that removing human rights from a carefully defined group of people is one such action. If it can and then does do that with regard to refugees, why not other groups too?

    I feel your pain - some things are technically legal but just *feel* wrong. Yet they get away with it

    We'll see if they get away with it. An election is approaching. This government cannot now use Parliament to ban them as the House of Lords can block the required legislation. So the people will decide.

    Some things are legal, other things are not legal. Boris Johnson broke the law. Keir Starmer did not break the law. Let it go. It is done.

    There is a cigarette paper between what Boris was fined for (his wife bringing a birthday cake and beer into his office), what Rishi Sunak was fined for (being there having a glass of water) & what Sir Keir was investigated for (having a beer and curry after work/whilst working). The beer and cake wasn’t considered necessary for work, the beer and curry was.

    Sir Keir wanted them to resign for being investigated but failed to offer his resignation when it happened to him.

    If all that matters is strict legality, then let’s apply that to everything; lobbying, second jobs, MPs expenses etc etc
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,999
    Leon said:

    DougSeal said:

    Leon said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    Can you tell me the last time the UK government legislated to allow itself to break the law? Not to change the law, but to break it?

    The current constitutional settlement wrests on the notion that there are some things the government won’t do even if, in theory, it can. I’d suggest that a couple of those are legislating to remove all human rights from a defined group of people and legislating to allow the government to break the law. That goes beyond politics, although only politics can resolve it - if the government does not legislate that away.

    Well, your lot decided to try and cancel democracy by annulling a referendum - Britain’s biggest ever vote - before the result was even enacted. So frankly you can fuck off with this pious bullshit

    Not least because Sir Kir Royale was a leading “2nd voter”
    It was the LD's who
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    Can you tell me the last time the UK government legislated to allow itself to break the law? Not to change the law, but to break it?

    The current constitutional settlement wrests on the notion that there are some things the government won’t do even if, in theory, it can. I’d suggest that a couple of those are legislating to remove all human rights from a defined group of people and legislating to allow the government to break the law. That goes beyond politics, although only politics can resolve it - if the government does not legislate that away.

    Well, your lot decided to try and cancel democracy by annulling a referendum - Britain’s biggest ever vote - before the result was even enacted. So frankly you can fuck off with this pious bullshit

    Not least because Sir Kir Royale was a leading “2nd voter”
    That would be Nigel Farage, surely, who was first to call for a second referendum (but only when he thought he'd lost the first one).
    I mean, that may make you feel better but it’s shite, isn’t it?


    Starmer and the 2nd voters literally tried to overturn democracy. A vote which David Cameron solemnly promised would be honoured. Indeed, let us go back and revisit the Prime Minister’s words


    ‘Ultimately it will be the judgment of the British people in the referendum… You will have to judge what is best for you and your family, for your children and grandchildren, for our country, for our future. It will be your decision whether to remain in the EU on the basis of the reforms we secure, or whether we leave. Your decision. Nobody else’s. Not politicians’. Not Parliament’s. Not lobby groups’. Not mine. Just you. You, the British people, will decide. At that moment, you will hold this country’s destiny in your hands. This is a huge decision for our country, perhaps the biggest we will make in our lifetimes. And it will be the final decision.’

    And there is more:

    ‘So to those who suggest that a decision in the referendum to leave would merely produce another stronger renegotiation, and then a second referendum in which Britain would stay, I say: think again. The renegotiation is happening right now. And the referendum that follows will be a once in a generation choice. An in or out referendum. When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum.’

    Was that vote “respected” by Starmer and the Remoaners? Absolutely not. They attempted a British version of the January 6 coup
    Yeah. They asked people to vote in an election that would give them a vote in another election. That's exactly the same as trying to physically threaten lawmakers into doing their bidding.

    Go back to school you posturing poltroon. Labour asked a question in the 2019 election asking whether the electorate would like a second referendum. The electorate said 'no thanks'. To suggest that is in any way equivalent to armed insurrectionists threatening lawmakers with violence unless they did what demanded shows the morally depraved cesspool your what passes for your intellect oozes from.

    I appreciate you are a fash curious Putin fanboi herrenvolk shite (thanks Shane!) who would prefer we never have to bother with the messy process of democracy, but at least come out and admit it rather than blathering on pious bullshit about 'democracy'.
    Invective isn’t your “thing”, is it?

    I mean, “posturing poltroon”?!

    lol. Soz

    That's a term of art, not invective.
  • Options
    JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 39,165
    Nigelb said:

    I want to buy my brother in law a really good knife for Christmas

    What's the brand that everyone keeps raving about on here?

    Perhaps I should have been clear that I'm looking for a kitchen or bartender's knife. He's
    a bar manager and home chef from Turin

    Even though when I was four, my sister two years older who once did a shit in her swimming costume in a hotel swimming pool near the Epcot Center, where we were on holiday with our grandparents, and then swam next to me and released the shit from her swimming costume, climbed out of the pool and told my grandparents that I'd shat in the pool

    The pool had to be evacuated

    I had no idea why, but it was blamed on me

    My sister finally owned up when I was 16, she was 18
    Such experiences scar a person.
    I shall cut you more slack in future.
    One of my primary schools used Repton school's sports facilities (*). Including their outdoor swimming pool. We would go swimming in all weathers, and I distinctly remember swimming amongst little ice floes after the ice had been broken.

    I have an older brother, and hence always got cast-me-down clothes. One day, I dived into the pool and started swimming a length. I heard the ex-military instructor blow his whistle - a command we had to get to the sides of the pool. I continued swimming to the far end.

    Once I finished, I heard his voice bellow out: "Jessop! Your trunks are down this end!

    And so I did the swim of shame, back to the far end, to collect my brother's trunks...

    (*) Apparently they only got an indoor pool in the 1990s. Which may cause some to forgive Clarkson...
  • Options
    isamisam Posts: 41,033

    isam said:

    l

    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    Can you tell me the last time the UK government legislated to allow itself to break the law? Not to change the law, but to break it?

    The current constitutional settlement wrests on the notion that there are some things the government won’t do even if, in theory, it can. I’d suggest that a couple of those are legislating to remove all human rights from a defined group of people and legislating to allow the government to break the law. That goes beyond politics, although only politics can resolve it - if the government does not legislate that away.

    Well, your lot decided to try and cancel democracy by annulling a referendum - Britain’s biggest ever vote - before the result was even enacted. So frankly you can fuck off with this pious bullshit

    Not least because Sir Kir Royale was a leading “2nd voter”

    My lot?

    I did not vote Labour in December 2019. However, I did think that MPs elected on a manifesto promise to oppose a No Deal Brexit were perfectly entitled to seek to prevent one. The MPs that did not have such a right were the Tory ones.

    Sir Keir wanted a second referendum even if the PM and the EU agreed a deal before the 2019 GE; one of the options had to be remain, and he would campaign for Remain

    And Labour put that case to the British people and was roundly defeated.

    Yes, but you can’t get away with that, sorry.

    Sir Keir wanted a second referendum with remain an option, in which he would campaign for remain when there was no GE in the offing

    This is despite being elected in 2017 after saying respecting the result was ‘an important point of principle’
    Starmer did not get what he wanted. But what he wanted was to put his case to the British people, not impose an outcome on them.

    He said in the 2017 GE campaign

    “We’ve got to do this from a position of principle.
    Did we agree agree that we’d put this out to the public for a vote? Yes
    Did we agree that we’d accept that vote? Yes
    Have we got to accept that result? Yes
    So the first position is a matter of principle; Having done this, having got a result, we’ve got to accept it, & simply saying ‘well it’s better for us electorally if we do this it do that’ doesn’t help”

    Then in 2019 when the Tories were between Prime Ministers, he said

    “I’m really pleased that whatever outcome the next Prime Minister puts before us, whether that’s a deal of some sort, or no deal, we’ve agreed that it must be subject to another referendum, & in that referendum Remain must be an option and Labour will be campaigning for Remain

    That’s a really important point of principle ”

    So he did want to re run the referendum without a GE.
    After saying that would be wrong.
    And both were matters of principle

    Politician changes mind shock!

    “Changes principles” I think you mean

  • Options

    Leon said:

    THIS is brilliant

    Less than half of university students chanting “from the river to sea” can correctly identify the river and the sea. Answers range from “the Nile” to “the Euphrates”, to “the Atlantic” and “the Caribbean”

    https://x.com/simonmontefiore/status/1732713846308008252?s=61&t=GGp3Vs1t1kTWDiyA-odnZg

    From the River Ribble to the North Sea.

    The Yorkshire Party can have that one.

    OK. so a bit of Yorkshire is on the west side of the Ribble, but not many voters live there.
    For 'North Sea' substitute 'Yorkshire Ocean.'
  • Options
    kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,429
    isam said:

    l

    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    Can you tell me the last time the UK government legislated to allow itself to break the law? Not to change the law, but to break it?

    The current constitutional settlement wrests on the notion that there are some things the government won’t do even if, in theory, it can. I’d suggest that a couple of those are legislating to remove all human rights from a defined group of people and legislating to allow the government to break the law. That goes beyond politics, although only politics can resolve it - if the government does not legislate that away.

    Well, your lot decided to try and cancel democracy by annulling a referendum - Britain’s biggest ever vote - before the result was even enacted. So frankly you can fuck off with this pious bullshit

    Not least because Sir Kir Royale was a leading “2nd voter”

    My lot?

    I did not vote Labour in December 2019. However, I did think that MPs elected on a manifesto promise to oppose a No Deal Brexit were perfectly entitled to seek to prevent one. The MPs that did not have such a right were the Tory ones.

    Sir Keir wanted a second referendum even if the PM and the EU agreed a deal before the 2019 GE; one of the options had to be remain, and he would campaign for Remain

    And Labour put that case to the British people and was roundly defeated.

    Yes, but you can’t get away with that, sorry.

    Sir Keir wanted a second referendum with remain an option, in which he would campaign for remain when there was no GE in the offing

    This is despite being elected in 2017 after saying respecting the result was ‘an important point of principle’
    Starmer did not get what he wanted. But what he wanted was to put his case to the British people, not impose an outcome on them.

    He said in the 2017 GE campaign

    We’ve got to do this from a position of principle.
    Did we agree agree that we’d put this out to the public for a vote? Yes
    Did we agree that we’d accept that vote? Yes
    Have we got to accept that result? Yes
    So the first position is a matter of principle; Having done this, having got a result, we’ve got to accept it, & simply saying ‘well it’s better for us electorally if we do this or do that’ doesn’t help”


    Then in 2019 when the Tories were between Prime Ministers, he said

    I’m really pleased that whatever outcome the next Prime Minister puts before us, whether that’s a deal of some sort, or no deal, we’ve agreed that it must be subject to another referendum, & in that referendum Remain must be an option and Labour will be campaigning for Remain

    That’s a really important point of principle ”

    So he did want to re run the referendum without a GE.
    After saying that would be wrong.
    And both were matters of principle
    This doesn't look like someone who has taken my well-meant advice to not obsess about SKS.
  • Options
    LeonLeon Posts: 47,683
    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    DougSeal said:

    Leon said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    Can you tell me the last time the UK government legislated to allow itself to break the law? Not to change the law, but to break it?

    The current constitutional settlement wrests on the notion that there are some things the government won’t do even if, in theory, it can. I’d suggest that a couple of those are legislating to remove all human rights from a defined group of people and legislating to allow the government to break the law. That goes beyond politics, although only politics can resolve it - if the government does not legislate that away.

    Well, your lot decided to try and cancel democracy by annulling a referendum - Britain’s biggest ever vote - before the result was even enacted. So frankly you can fuck off with this pious bullshit

    Not least because Sir Kir Royale was a leading “2nd voter”
    It was the LD's who
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    Can you tell me the last time the UK government legislated to allow itself to break the law? Not to change the law, but to break it?

    The current constitutional settlement wrests on the notion that there are some things the government won’t do even if, in theory, it can. I’d suggest that a couple of those are legislating to remove all human rights from a defined group of people and legislating to allow the government to break the law. That goes beyond politics, although only politics can resolve it - if the government does not legislate that away.

    Well, your lot decided to try and cancel democracy by annulling a referendum - Britain’s biggest ever vote - before the result was even enacted. So frankly you can fuck off with this pious bullshit

    Not least because Sir Kir Royale was a leading “2nd voter”
    That would be Nigel Farage, surely, who was first to call for a second referendum (but only when he thought he'd lost the first one).
    I mean, that may make you feel better but it’s shite, isn’t it?


    Starmer and the 2nd voters literally tried to overturn democracy. A vote which David Cameron solemnly promised would be honoured. Indeed, let us go back and revisit the Prime Minister’s words


    ‘Ultimately it will be the judgment of the British people in the referendum… You will have to judge what is best for you and your family, for your children and grandchildren, for our country, for our future. It will be your decision whether to remain in the EU on the basis of the reforms we secure, or whether we leave. Your decision. Nobody else’s. Not politicians’. Not Parliament’s. Not lobby groups’. Not mine. Just you. You, the British people, will decide. At that moment, you will hold this country’s destiny in your hands. This is a huge decision for our country, perhaps the biggest we will make in our lifetimes. And it will be the final decision.’

    And there is more:

    ‘So to those who suggest that a decision in the referendum to leave would merely produce another stronger renegotiation, and then a second referendum in which Britain would stay, I say: think again. The renegotiation is happening right now. And the referendum that follows will be a once in a generation choice. An in or out referendum. When the British people speak, their voice will be respected – not ignored. If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum.’

    Was that vote “respected” by Starmer and the Remoaners? Absolutely not. They attempted a British version of the January 6 coup
    Yeah. They asked people to vote in an election that would give them a vote in another election. That's exactly the same as trying to physically threaten lawmakers into doing their bidding.

    Go back to school you posturing poltroon. Labour asked a question in the 2019 election asking whether the electorate would like a second referendum. The electorate said 'no thanks'. To suggest that is in any way equivalent to armed insurrectionists threatening lawmakers with violence unless they did what demanded shows the morally depraved cesspool your what passes for your intellect oozes from.

    I appreciate you are a fash curious Putin fanboi herrenvolk shite (thanks Shane!) who would prefer we never have to bother with the messy process of democracy, but at least come out and admit it rather than blathering on pious bullshit about 'democracy'.
    Invective isn’t your “thing”, is it?

    I mean, “posturing poltroon”?!

    lol. Soz

    That's a term of art, not invective.
    POSTURING POLTROON

    What it is, is CRINGE
  • Options
    bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 7,969

    Parliament has to follow the law. The SC upholds the law when it does not. Then parliament can change the law - it has the power to do that.

    Parliament has to follow the law. It has to have the requisite number of fire exits, etc. Parliament cannot break the law by passing a new law.

    The SC has not ever, as far as I know, complained about Parliament not following the law. It has complained about Government not following the law. Government has to follow the law.
  • Options
    LeonLeon Posts: 47,683

    I want to buy my brother in law a really good knife for Christmas

    What's the brand that everyone keeps raving about on here?

    Perhaps I should have been clear that I'm looking for a kitchen or bartender's knife. He's
    a bar manager and home chef from Turin

    Even though when I was four, my sister two years older who once did a shit in her swimming costume in a hotel swimming pool near the Epcot Center, where we were on holiday with our grandparents, and then swam next to me and released the shit from her swimming costume, climbed out of the pool and told my grandparents that I'd shat in the pool

    The pool had to be evacuated

    I had no idea why, but it was blamed on me

    My sister finally owned up when I was 16, she was 18
    That is quite the memory

    Have you forgiven her?
  • Options
    isamisam Posts: 41,033
    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    l

    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    Can you tell me the last time the UK government legislated to allow itself to break the law? Not to change the law, but to break it?

    The current constitutional settlement wrests on the notion that there are some things the government won’t do even if, in theory, it can. I’d suggest that a couple of those are legislating to remove all human rights from a defined group of people and legislating to allow the government to break the law. That goes beyond politics, although only politics can resolve it - if the government does not legislate that away.

    Well, your lot decided to try and cancel democracy by annulling a referendum - Britain’s biggest ever vote - before the result was even enacted. So frankly you can fuck off with this pious bullshit

    Not least because Sir Kir Royale was a leading “2nd voter”

    My lot?

    I did not vote Labour in December 2019. However, I did think that MPs elected on a manifesto promise to oppose a No Deal Brexit were perfectly entitled to seek to prevent one. The MPs that did not have such a right were the Tory ones.

    Sir Keir wanted a second referendum even if the PM and the EU agreed a deal before the 2019 GE; one of the options had to be remain, and he would campaign for Remain

    And Labour put that case to the British people and was roundly defeated.

    Yes, but you can’t get away with that, sorry.

    Sir Keir wanted a second referendum with remain an option, in which he would campaign for remain when there was no GE in the offing

    This is despite being elected in 2017 after saying respecting the result was ‘an important point of principle’
    Starmer did not get what he wanted. But what he wanted was to put his case to the British people, not impose an outcome on them.

    He said in the 2017 GE campaign

    We’ve got to do this from a position of principle.
    Did we agree agree that we’d put this out to the public for a vote? Yes
    Did we agree that we’d accept that vote? Yes
    Have we got to accept that result? Yes
    So the first position is a matter of principle; Having done this, having got a result, we’ve got to accept it, & simply saying ‘well it’s better for us electorally if we do this or do that’ doesn’t help”


    Then in 2019 when the Tories were between Prime Ministers, he said

    I’m really pleased that whatever outcome the next Prime Minister puts before us, whether that’s a deal of some sort, or no deal, we’ve agreed that it must be subject to another referendum, & in that referendum Remain must be an option and Labour will be campaigning for Remain

    That’s a really important point of principle ”

    So he did want to re run the referendum without a GE.
    After saying that would be wrong.
    And both were matters of principle
    This doesn't look like someone who has taken my well-meant advice to not obsess about SKS.
    Must try harder, although your advice was for when he’s PM
  • Options
    LeonLeon Posts: 47,683
    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    l

    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    Can you tell me the last time the UK government legislated to allow itself to break the law? Not to change the law, but to break it?

    The current constitutional settlement wrests on the notion that there are some things the government won’t do even if, in theory, it can. I’d suggest that a couple of those are legislating to remove all human rights from a defined group of people and legislating to allow the government to break the law. That goes beyond politics, although only politics can resolve it - if the government does not legislate that away.

    Well, your lot decided to try and cancel democracy by annulling a referendum - Britain’s biggest ever vote - before the result was even enacted. So frankly you can fuck off with this pious bullshit

    Not least because Sir Kir Royale was a leading “2nd voter”

    My lot?

    I did not vote Labour in December 2019. However, I did think that MPs elected on a manifesto promise to oppose a No Deal Brexit were perfectly entitled to seek to prevent one. The MPs that did not have such a right were the Tory ones.

    Sir Keir wanted a second referendum even if the PM and the EU agreed a deal before the 2019 GE; one of the options had to be remain, and he would campaign for Remain

    And Labour put that case to the British people and was roundly defeated.

    Yes, but you can’t get away with that, sorry.

    Sir Keir wanted a second referendum with remain an option, in which he would campaign for remain when there was no GE in the offing

    This is despite being elected in 2017 after saying respecting the result was ‘an important point of principle’
    Starmer did not get what he wanted. But what he wanted was to put his case to the British people, not impose an outcome on them.

    He said in the 2017 GE campaign

    We’ve got to do this from a position of principle.
    Did we agree agree that we’d put this out to the public for a vote? Yes
    Did we agree that we’d accept that vote? Yes
    Have we got to accept that result? Yes
    So the first position is a matter of principle; Having done this, having got a result, we’ve got to accept it, & simply saying ‘well it’s better for us electorally if we do this or do that’ doesn’t help”


    Then in 2019 when the Tories were between Prime Ministers, he said

    I’m really pleased that whatever outcome the next Prime Minister puts before us, whether that’s a deal of some sort, or no deal, we’ve agreed that it must be subject to another referendum, & in that referendum Remain must be an option and Labour will be campaigning for Remain

    That’s a really important point of principle ”

    So he did want to re run the referendum without a GE.
    After saying that would be wrong.
    And both were matters of principle
    This doesn't look like someone who has taken my well-meant advice to not obsess about SKS.
    You don’t like it, and you want him to shut up, because you know @isam is completely right
  • Options
    SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 20,764

    Selebian said:

    I want to buy my brother in law a really good knife for Christmas

    What's the brand that everyone keeps raving about on here?

    Perhaps I should have been clear that I'm looking for a kitchen or bartender's knife. He's
    a bar manager and home chef from Turin

    Even though when I was four, my sister two years older who once did a shit in her swimming costume in a hotel swimming pool near the Epcot Center, where we were on holiday with our grandparents, and then swam next to me and released the shit from her swimming costume, climbed out of the pool and told my grandparents that I'd shat in the pool

    The pool had to be evacuated

    I had no idea why, but it was blamed on me

    My sister finally owned up when I was 16, she was 18
    These things scar a person. I know of someone who has an ongoing dispute with a sibling on who really broke a TV about 25 years ago (person claims they only took the blame in the end as there was a we're all sitting here until someone owns up situation).
    Being an only child is awesome. You get spoiled rotten plus none of this nonsense.
    The friends of a slightly older or younger sister would have been a source of interest, however.
  • Options
    bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 7,969
    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    algarkirk said:

    algarkirk said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    It is not impossible that there are wider implications. Tom de la Mare KC comments thus today on TwiX:

    One of the practical merits of the British Constitution hitherto is that the limits of the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty have never been explored by the passing of extreme legislation testing the unstated but assumed premises of our constitutional arrangements.

    Those problems are amplified by the other multifold ways in which our Parliament is evidently defective, starting with the abuse of delegated legislation and power transfer to the Executive, against which only the Courts are a safeguard, leading to further constitutional strain.

    Precisely!
    There are a couple of deep issues here.
    One is the question of what courts/lawyers/judges are for. Do they merely check out the law or do they ever make it?

    And secondly, who is the final arbiter? The Supreme Court or Parliament? And can a court simply say 'You can't do that because of reasons'.

    The government can change the law as it sees fit. But the government is not seeking to do that with the Rwanda legislation. It is seeking to disapply it inasmuch as it effects a particular category of people. If it can do it to them (refugees), what is to stop it doing the same to anyone else? It seems to me that we have entered entirely uncharted territory.

    Parliament can do what it likes. You display a fairly astonishing lack of understanding of the UK’s constitutional history

    It is an elected dictatorship, hedged about by convention. This is well known

    Is it flawless? No. Are other systems better? Maybe logically, but we have avoided revolution or ACTUAL dictatorship for 400 years unlike almost every other country in the world

    I totally understand that Parliament can do what it wants, but it is being asked to do what it has never done before. Our constitutional settlement is predicated on the principle that while Parliament is theoretically unconstrained, in practice it is, that there are certain things it will not do. I'd argue that removing human rights from a carefully defined group of people is one such action. If it can and then does do that with regard to refugees, why not other groups too?

    I feel your pain - some things are technically legal but just *feel* wrong. Yet they get away with it

    We'll see if they get away with it. An election is approaching. This government cannot now use Parliament to ban them as the House of Lords can block the required legislation. So the people will decide.

    Some things are legal, other things are not legal. Boris Johnson broke the law. Keir Starmer did not break the law. Let it go. It is done.

    There is a cigarette paper between what Boris was fined for (his wife bringing a birthday cake and beer into his office), what Rishi Sunak was fined for (being there having a glass of water) & what Sir Keir was investigated for (having a beer and curry after work/whilst working). The beer and cake wasn’t considered necessary for work, the beer and curry was.

    Sir Keir wanted them to resign for being investigated but failed to offer his resignation when it happened to him.

    If all that matters is strict legality, then let’s apply that to everything; lobbying, second jobs, MPs expenses etc etc
    This "cigarette paper" claim remains untrue.

    The COVID rules were very different when the event for which Boris and Sunak were fined took place and when Starmer's curry took place.

    The No. 10 "birthday party" brought together people who wouldn't otherwise have come together. Starmer's curry did not. This has significant epidemiological implications.
  • Options
    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    algarkirk said:

    algarkirk said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    It is not impossible that there are wider implications. Tom de la Mare KC comments thus today on TwiX:

    One of the practical merits of the British Constitution hitherto is that the limits of the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty have never been explored by the passing of extreme legislation testing the unstated but assumed premises of our constitutional arrangements.

    Those problems are amplified by the other multifold ways in which our Parliament is evidently defective, starting with the abuse of delegated legislation and power transfer to the Executive, against which only the Courts are a safeguard, leading to further constitutional strain.

    Precisely!
    There are a couple of deep issues here.
    One is the question of what courts/lawyers/judges are for. Do they merely check out the law or do they ever make it?

    And secondly, who is the final arbiter? The Supreme Court or Parliament? And can a court simply say 'You can't do that because of reasons'.

    The government can change the law as it sees fit. But the government is not seeking to do that with the Rwanda legislation. It is seeking to disapply it inasmuch as it effects a particular category of people. If it can do it to them (refugees), what is to stop it doing the same to anyone else? It seems to me that we have entered entirely uncharted territory.

    Parliament can do what it likes. You display a fairly astonishing lack of understanding of the UK’s constitutional history

    It is an elected dictatorship, hedged about by convention. This is well known

    Is it flawless? No. Are other systems better? Maybe logically, but we have avoided revolution or ACTUAL dictatorship for 400 years unlike almost every other country in the world

    I totally understand that Parliament can do what it wants, but it is being asked to do what it has never done before. Our constitutional settlement is predicated on the principle that while Parliament is theoretically unconstrained, in practice it is, that there are certain things it will not do. I'd argue that removing human rights from a carefully defined group of people is one such action. If it can and then does do that with regard to refugees, why not other groups too?

    I feel your pain - some things are technically legal but just *feel* wrong. Yet they get away with it

    We'll see if they get away with it. An election is approaching. This government cannot now use Parliament to ban them as the House of Lords can block the required legislation. So the people will decide.

    Some things are legal, other things are not legal. Boris Johnson broke the law. Keir Starmer did not break the law. Let it go. It is done.

    There is a cigarette paper between what Boris was fined for (his wife bringing a birthday cake and beer into his office), what Rishi Sunak was fined for (being there having a glass of water) & what Sir Keir was investigated for (having a beer and curry after work/whilst working). The beer and cake wasn’t considered necessary for work, the beer and curry was.

    Sir Keir wanted them to resign for being investigated but failed to offer his resignation when it happened to him.

    If all that matters is strict legality, then let’s apply that to everything; lobbying, second jobs, MPs expenses etc etc
    Genuine question - are you a moron?

    Lets assume I do something which the law says is illegal. We both agree that its illegal, yes?

    The law is then changed. The thing that was illegal is now legal. You then do the same thing I did. The difference being that following a change in the law, the once illegal thing is now illegal.

    Still with me? Never mind your "cigarette paper" between the two actions, lets have the exact same action. How would you get away with the thing that I didn't? Because the law changed.

    You aren't this dumb to not get this? Are you? You go on to complaining about "strict legality". How else do we apply the law? An example - as a bisexual man I have had sexy time fun with other men. Because I did so after 27th July 1967 it was legal. Had I been around doing that before 27th July 1967 the same sexy time would have been illegal.

    The exact same action. Was illegal. Then became legal because the law changed. Same with Boris vs Starmer. Illegal when Boris did it, legal when STarmer did it because someone (Boris!!!) changed the law.

    Get it? Or are you a moron?
  • Options
    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    algarkirk said:

    algarkirk said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    It is not impossible that there are wider implications. Tom de la Mare KC comments thus today on TwiX:

    One of the practical merits of the British Constitution hitherto is that the limits of the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty have never been explored by the passing of extreme legislation testing the unstated but assumed premises of our constitutional arrangements.

    Those problems are amplified by the other multifold ways in which our Parliament is evidently defective, starting with the abuse of delegated legislation and power transfer to the Executive, against which only the Courts are a safeguard, leading to further constitutional strain.

    Precisely!
    There are a couple of deep issues here.
    One is the question of what courts/lawyers/judges are for. Do they merely check out the law or do they ever make it?

    And secondly, who is the final arbiter? The Supreme Court or Parliament? And can a court simply say 'You can't do that because of reasons'.

    The government can change the law as it sees fit. But the government is not seeking to do that with the Rwanda legislation. It is seeking to disapply it inasmuch as it effects a particular category of people. If it can do it to them (refugees), what is to stop it doing the same to anyone else? It seems to me that we have entered entirely uncharted territory.

    Parliament can do what it likes. You display a fairly astonishing lack of understanding of the UK’s constitutional history

    It is an elected dictatorship, hedged about by convention. This is well known

    Is it flawless? No. Are other systems better? Maybe logically, but we have avoided revolution or ACTUAL dictatorship for 400 years unlike almost every other country in the world

    I totally understand that Parliament can do what it wants, but it is being asked to do what it has never done before. Our constitutional settlement is predicated on the principle that while Parliament is theoretically unconstrained, in practice it is, that there are certain things it will not do. I'd argue that removing human rights from a carefully defined group of people is one such action. If it can and then does do that with regard to refugees, why not other groups too?

    I feel your pain - some things are technically legal but just *feel* wrong. Yet they get away with it

    We'll see if they get away with it. An election is approaching. This government cannot now use Parliament to ban them as the House of Lords can block the required legislation. So the people will decide.

    Some things are legal, other things are not legal. Boris Johnson broke the law. Keir Starmer did not break the law. Let it go. It is done.

    There is a cigarette paper between what Boris was fined for (his wife bringing a birthday cake and beer into his office), what Rishi Sunak was fined for (being there having a glass of water) & what Sir Keir was investigated for (having a beer and curry after work/whilst working). The beer and cake wasn’t considered necessary for work, the beer and curry was.

    Sir Keir wanted them to resign for being investigated but failed to offer his resignation when it happened to him.

    If all that matters is strict legality, then let’s apply that to everything; lobbying, second jobs, MPs expenses etc etc
    Starmer did pledge to resign if given a fixed penalty notice, as did Angela Rayner. As a lawyer, Starmer knew currygate was within the rules.
  • Options
    kinabalu said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Parliament ought to be sovereign, not the supreme court.

    You say - until Parliament passes a law to persecute Andy-JS.
    As it could, if it so wanted. See acts of attainder (not wholly a matter of ancient history - the WW2 cabinet considered using such an Act against leading Nazis as an alternative to post-war trials).
  • Options
    isamisam Posts: 41,033

    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    algarkirk said:

    algarkirk said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    It is not impossible that there are wider implications. Tom de la Mare KC comments thus today on TwiX:

    One of the practical merits of the British Constitution hitherto is that the limits of the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty have never been explored by the passing of extreme legislation testing the unstated but assumed premises of our constitutional arrangements.

    Those problems are amplified by the other multifold ways in which our Parliament is evidently defective, starting with the abuse of delegated legislation and power transfer to the Executive, against which only the Courts are a safeguard, leading to further constitutional strain.

    Precisely!
    There are a couple of deep issues here.
    One is the question of what courts/lawyers/judges are for. Do they merely check out the law or do they ever make it?

    And secondly, who is the final arbiter? The Supreme Court or Parliament? And can a court simply say 'You can't do that because of reasons'.

    The government can change the law as it sees fit. But the government is not seeking to do that with the Rwanda legislation. It is seeking to disapply it inasmuch as it effects a particular category of people. If it can do it to them (refugees), what is to stop it doing the same to anyone else? It seems to me that we have entered entirely uncharted territory.

    Parliament can do what it likes. You display a fairly astonishing lack of understanding of the UK’s constitutional history

    It is an elected dictatorship, hedged about by convention. This is well known

    Is it flawless? No. Are other systems better? Maybe logically, but we have avoided revolution or ACTUAL dictatorship for 400 years unlike almost every other country in the world

    I totally understand that Parliament can do what it wants, but it is being asked to do what it has never done before. Our constitutional settlement is predicated on the principle that while Parliament is theoretically unconstrained, in practice it is, that there are certain things it will not do. I'd argue that removing human rights from a carefully defined group of people is one such action. If it can and then does do that with regard to refugees, why not other groups too?

    I feel your pain - some things are technically legal but just *feel* wrong. Yet they get away with it

    We'll see if they get away with it. An election is approaching. This government cannot now use Parliament to ban them as the House of Lords can block the required legislation. So the people will decide.

    Some things are legal, other things are not legal. Boris Johnson broke the law. Keir Starmer did not break the law. Let it go. It is done.

    There is a cigarette paper between what Boris was fined for (his wife bringing a birthday cake and beer into his office), what Rishi Sunak was fined for (being there having a glass of water) & what Sir Keir was investigated for (having a beer and curry after work/whilst working). The beer and cake wasn’t considered necessary for work, the beer and curry was.

    Sir Keir wanted them to resign for being investigated but failed to offer his resignation when it happened to him.

    If all that matters is strict legality, then let’s apply that to everything; lobbying, second jobs, MPs expenses etc etc
    Genuine question - are you a moron?

    Lets assume I do something which the law says is illegal. We both agree that its illegal, yes?

    The law is then changed. The thing that was illegal is now legal. You then do the same thing I did. The difference being that following a change in the law, the once illegal thing is now illegal.

    Still with me? Never mind your "cigarette paper" between the two actions, lets have the exact same action. How would you get away with the thing that I didn't? Because the law changed.

    You aren't this dumb to not get this? Are you? You go on to complaining about "strict legality". How else do we apply the law? An example - as a bisexual man I have had sexy time fun with other men. Because I did so after 27th July 1967 it was legal. Had I been around doing that before 27th July 1967 the same sexy time would have been illegal.

    The exact same action. Was illegal. Then became legal because the law changed. Same with Boris vs Starmer. Illegal when Boris did it, legal when STarmer did it because someone (Boris!!!) changed the law.

    Get it? Or are you a moron?
    I think you are a moron
  • Options
    Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 33,254
    @adampayne26

    Tory party chair Richard Holden tells the press gallery lunch another Conservative leadership contest before the election would be “insanity”
  • Options
    Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 27,092
    Is this new?

    "Russia hacked hundreds of MPs and civil servants"

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/russia-hacked-hundreds-of-mps-and-civil-servants-wvhrh2cvw
  • Options
    DavidLDavidL Posts: 51,463
    algarkirk said:

    Leon said:

    algarkirk said:

    Leon said:

    algarkirk said:

    algarkirk said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    It is not impossible that there are wider implications. Tom de la Mare KC comments thus today on TwiX:

    One of the practical merits of the British Constitution hitherto is that the limits of the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty have never been explored by the passing of extreme legislation testing the unstated but assumed premises of our constitutional arrangements.

    Those problems are amplified by the other multifold ways in which our Parliament is evidently defective, starting with the abuse of delegated legislation and power transfer to the Executive, against which only the Courts are a safeguard, leading to further constitutional strain.

    Precisely!
    There are a couple of deep issues here.
    One is the question of what courts/lawyers/judges are for. Do they merely check out the law or do they ever make it?

    And secondly, who is the final arbiter? The Supreme Court or Parliament? And can a court simply say 'You can't do that because of reasons'.
    Listen to @david_herdson

    He phrases it succinctly. All this stuff was established in the Civil War and the Bill of Rights (and it is Why Brexit, inter alia). Parliament is sovereign, ultimately it cannot be stopped by courts or lawyers, merely checked, and even then the checks can be overruled. Parliament, as the embodied will of the people, is supreme

    If you don’t like this - and fair enough - campaign for a written constitution which changes this
    Good luck with that argument. Parliament has the absolute power to pass acts of parliament. The courts have the absolute power to say what the law is. That second power is of immense significance. When Sunak says 'I respect the (SC) decision but don't agree with it' he treads dangerously.

    The question implied in what you say has never been tested, nor should it be. Crown, parliament, courts are all bulwarks against arbitrary power and tyranny.
    Parliament is supreme over any court; Parliament IS the ultimate court

    We made an error when we created the UK Supreme Court and named it thus in 2009. It gave less intelligent people the idea it has similar powers to SCOTUS

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_the_United_Kingdom

    “The United Kingdom has a doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty,[6] so the Supreme Court is much more limited in its powers of judicial review than the constitutional or supreme courts of some other countries such as the United States. It cannot overturn any primary legislation made by Parliament. “
    On the issue of 'overturning primary legislation'.

    1) This has never actually been decided, and even if it has, see 4
    2) All primary legislation becomes part of the totality of the body of law made over 800 years. Courts decide how laws interact
    3) Courts (SC in the end) not parliament decide what the law is
    4) The SC can overrule itself.
    I have been resisting the temptation to get involved with this but really:

    1) It has, in legislation. The Courts have the right to overrule secondary legislation and declare it invalid if it does not comply with the terms of the originating Act. The courts have no right to overrule primary legislation. They can, if they wish, issue a declarator of incompatibility (if, for example, the Act was not ECHR compliant) but this does not change the law. It is simply notice to Parliament that they might want to think about it.
    2) Not really. Most Acts overrule their predecessors which are then repealed. There is an assumption that words in the new Act have the same meaning as the earlier Acts unless the new Act specifically says otherwise.
    3) Nope. The job of the Courts is to apply the law, not make it.
    4) True, but irrelevant.
  • Options
    isamisam Posts: 41,033
    edited December 2023

    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    algarkirk said:

    algarkirk said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    It is not impossible that there are wider implications. Tom de la Mare KC comments thus today on TwiX:

    One of the practical merits of the British Constitution hitherto is that the limits of the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty have never been explored by the passing of extreme legislation testing the unstated but assumed premises of our constitutional arrangements.

    Those problems are amplified by the other multifold ways in which our Parliament is evidently defective, starting with the abuse of delegated legislation and power transfer to the Executive, against which only the Courts are a safeguard, leading to further constitutional strain.

    Precisely!
    There are a couple of deep issues here.
    One is the question of what courts/lawyers/judges are for. Do they merely check out the law or do they ever make it?

    And secondly, who is the final arbiter? The Supreme Court or Parliament? And can a court simply say 'You can't do that because of reasons'.

    The government can change the law as it sees fit. But the government is not seeking to do that with the Rwanda legislation. It is seeking to disapply it inasmuch as it effects a particular category of people. If it can do it to them (refugees), what is to stop it doing the same to anyone else? It seems to me that we have entered entirely uncharted territory.

    Parliament can do what it likes. You display a fairly astonishing lack of understanding of the UK’s constitutional history

    It is an elected dictatorship, hedged about by convention. This is well known

    Is it flawless? No. Are other systems better? Maybe logically, but we have avoided revolution or ACTUAL dictatorship for 400 years unlike almost every other country in the world

    I totally understand that Parliament can do what it wants, but it is being asked to do what it has never done before. Our constitutional settlement is predicated on the principle that while Parliament is theoretically unconstrained, in practice it is, that there are certain things it will not do. I'd argue that removing human rights from a carefully defined group of people is one such action. If it can and then does do that with regard to refugees, why not other groups too?

    I feel your pain - some things are technically legal but just *feel* wrong. Yet they get away with it

    We'll see if they get away with it. An election is approaching. This government cannot now use Parliament to ban them as the House of Lords can block the required legislation. So the people will decide.

    Some things are legal, other things are not legal. Boris Johnson broke the law. Keir Starmer did not break the law. Let it go. It is done.

    There is a cigarette paper between what Boris was fined for (his wife bringing a birthday cake and beer into his office), what Rishi Sunak was fined for (being there having a glass of water) & what Sir Keir was investigated for (having a beer and curry after work/whilst working). The beer and cake wasn’t considered necessary for work, the beer and curry was.

    Sir Keir wanted them to resign for being investigated but failed to offer his resignation when it happened to him.

    If all that matters is strict legality, then let’s apply that to everything; lobbying, second jobs, MPs expenses etc etc
    Starmer did pledge to resign if given a fixed penalty notice, as did Angela Rayner. As a lawyer, Starmer knew currygate was within the rules.
    He called for Boris to resign before he was fined, just for being investigated
  • Options
    isamisam Posts: 41,033

    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    algarkirk said:

    algarkirk said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    It is not impossible that there are wider implications. Tom de la Mare KC comments thus today on TwiX:

    One of the practical merits of the British Constitution hitherto is that the limits of the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty have never been explored by the passing of extreme legislation testing the unstated but assumed premises of our constitutional arrangements.

    Those problems are amplified by the other multifold ways in which our Parliament is evidently defective, starting with the abuse of delegated legislation and power transfer to the Executive, against which only the Courts are a safeguard, leading to further constitutional strain.

    Precisely!
    There are a couple of deep issues here.
    One is the question of what courts/lawyers/judges are for. Do they merely check out the law or do they ever make it?

    And secondly, who is the final arbiter? The Supreme Court or Parliament? And can a court simply say 'You can't do that because of reasons'.

    The government can change the law as it sees fit. But the government is not seeking to do that with the Rwanda legislation. It is seeking to disapply it inasmuch as it effects a particular category of people. If it can do it to them (refugees), what is to stop it doing the same to anyone else? It seems to me that we have entered entirely uncharted territory.

    Parliament can do what it likes. You display a fairly astonishing lack of understanding of the UK’s constitutional history

    It is an elected dictatorship, hedged about by convention. This is well known

    Is it flawless? No. Are other systems better? Maybe logically, but we have avoided revolution or ACTUAL dictatorship for 400 years unlike almost every other country in the world

    I totally understand that Parliament can do what it wants, but it is being asked to do what it has never done before. Our constitutional settlement is predicated on the principle that while Parliament is theoretically unconstrained, in practice it is, that there are certain things it will not do. I'd argue that removing human rights from a carefully defined group of people is one such action. If it can and then does do that with regard to refugees, why not other groups too?

    I feel your pain - some things are technically legal but just *feel* wrong. Yet they get away with it

    We'll see if they get away with it. An election is approaching. This government cannot now use Parliament to ban them as the House of Lords can block the required legislation. So the people will decide.

    Some things are legal, other things are not legal. Boris Johnson broke the law. Keir Starmer did not break the law. Let it go. It is done.

    There is a cigarette paper between what Boris was fined for (his wife bringing a birthday cake and beer into his office), what Rishi Sunak was fined for (being there having a glass of water) & what Sir Keir was investigated for (having a beer and curry after work/whilst working). The beer and cake wasn’t considered necessary for work, the beer and curry was.

    Sir Keir wanted them to resign for being investigated but failed to offer his resignation when it happened to him.

    If all that matters is strict legality, then let’s apply that to everything; lobbying, second jobs, MPs expenses etc etc
    This "cigarette paper" claim remains untrue.

    The COVID rules were very different when the event for which Boris and Sunak were fined took place and when Starmer's curry took place.

    The No. 10 "birthday party" brought together people who wouldn't otherwise have come together. Starmer's curry did not. This has significant epidemiological implications.
    The people being Carrie and Sunak?
  • Options
    Nigelb said:

    Selebian said:

    I want to buy my brother in law a really good knife for Christmas

    What's the brand that everyone keeps raving about on here?

    Perhaps I should have been clear that I'm looking for a kitchen or bartender's knife. He's
    a bar manager and home chef from Turin

    Even though when I was four, my sister two years older who once did a shit in her swimming costume in a hotel swimming pool near the Epcot Center, where we were on holiday with our grandparents, and then swam next to me and released the shit from her swimming costume, climbed out of the pool and told my grandparents that I'd shat in the pool

    The pool had to be evacuated

    I had no idea why, but it was blamed on me

    My sister finally owned up when I was 16, she was 18
    These things scar a person. I know of someone who has an ongoing dispute with a sibling on who really broke a TV about 25 years ago (person claims they only took the blame in the end as there was a we're all sitting here until someone owns up situation).
    Being an only child is awesome. You get spoiled rotten plus none of this nonsense.
    On the contrary - you are to blame for everything.
    I was a perfect child. I think the naughtiest thing I ever did was break my grandad’s glasses when I was 9 months.
  • Options
    bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 7,969
    isam said:

    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    algarkirk said:

    algarkirk said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    It is not impossible that there are wider implications. Tom de la Mare KC comments thus today on TwiX:

    One of the practical merits of the British Constitution hitherto is that the limits of the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty have never been explored by the passing of extreme legislation testing the unstated but assumed premises of our constitutional arrangements.

    Those problems are amplified by the other multifold ways in which our Parliament is evidently defective, starting with the abuse of delegated legislation and power transfer to the Executive, against which only the Courts are a safeguard, leading to further constitutional strain.

    Precisely!
    There are a couple of deep issues here.
    One is the question of what courts/lawyers/judges are for. Do they merely check out the law or do they ever make it?

    And secondly, who is the final arbiter? The Supreme Court or Parliament? And can a court simply say 'You can't do that because of reasons'.

    The government can change the law as it sees fit. But the government is not seeking to do that with the Rwanda legislation. It is seeking to disapply it inasmuch as it effects a particular category of people. If it can do it to them (refugees), what is to stop it doing the same to anyone else? It seems to me that we have entered entirely uncharted territory.

    Parliament can do what it likes. You display a fairly astonishing lack of understanding of the UK’s constitutional history

    It is an elected dictatorship, hedged about by convention. This is well known

    Is it flawless? No. Are other systems better? Maybe logically, but we have avoided revolution or ACTUAL dictatorship for 400 years unlike almost every other country in the world

    I totally understand that Parliament can do what it wants, but it is being asked to do what it has never done before. Our constitutional settlement is predicated on the principle that while Parliament is theoretically unconstrained, in practice it is, that there are certain things it will not do. I'd argue that removing human rights from a carefully defined group of people is one such action. If it can and then does do that with regard to refugees, why not other groups too?

    I feel your pain - some things are technically legal but just *feel* wrong. Yet they get away with it

    We'll see if they get away with it. An election is approaching. This government cannot now use Parliament to ban them as the House of Lords can block the required legislation. So the people will decide.

    Some things are legal, other things are not legal. Boris Johnson broke the law. Keir Starmer did not break the law. Let it go. It is done.

    There is a cigarette paper between what Boris was fined for (his wife bringing a birthday cake and beer into his office), what Rishi Sunak was fined for (being there having a glass of water) & what Sir Keir was investigated for (having a beer and curry after work/whilst working). The beer and cake wasn’t considered necessary for work, the beer and curry was.

    Sir Keir wanted them to resign for being investigated but failed to offer his resignation when it happened to him.

    If all that matters is strict legality, then let’s apply that to everything; lobbying, second jobs, MPs expenses etc etc
    Starmer did pledge to resign if given a fixed penalty notice, as did Angela Rayner. As a lawyer, Starmer knew currygate was within the rules.
    He called for Boris to resign before he was fined, just for being investigated
    Maybe that's because there was already enough evidence for everyone to see that Boris had (a) broken the law, (b) overseen a No. 10 with widespread rule-breaking, and (c) lied to Parliament.
  • Options
    OT fun new feature on Betfair. My Bets > Betting Activity > My Profit and Loss
    has a whizzy graph showing your ups and downs. Or you can probably just go to https://profitandloss.betfair.com/ and log in but I've not tested that. (It is probably more fun in a winning period than a losing one.)
  • Options
    LeonLeon Posts: 47,683
    Right. Finals Week on Masterchef. No spoilers!
  • Options
    MattWMattW Posts: 18,831

    I want to buy my brother in law a really good knife for Christmas

    What's the brand that everyone keeps raving about on here?

    What sort of knife are we talking about?

    Kitchen knife - what sort? Wood carving knife? Field craft knife? Pen knife?

    If it's a posh kitchen knife then there are various Japanese specialist knife shops around.

    Or someone mentioned a brand here a couple of days ago.

    If you want something British, I'd say look at the David Mellor company at Hathersage. My parents had one of his carving knives, which I have not seen for years and forgotten about - will have to find it.
    eg https://www.davidmellordesign.com/david-mellor-pride-carving-set
  • Options
    isam said:

    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    algarkirk said:

    algarkirk said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    It is not impossible that there are wider implications. Tom de la Mare KC comments thus today on TwiX:

    One of the practical merits of the British Constitution hitherto is that the limits of the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty have never been explored by the passing of extreme legislation testing the unstated but assumed premises of our constitutional arrangements.

    Those problems are amplified by the other multifold ways in which our Parliament is evidently defective, starting with the abuse of delegated legislation and power transfer to the Executive, against which only the Courts are a safeguard, leading to further constitutional strain.

    Precisely!
    There are a couple of deep issues here.
    One is the question of what courts/lawyers/judges are for. Do they merely check out the law or do they ever make it?

    And secondly, who is the final arbiter? The Supreme Court or Parliament? And can a court simply say 'You can't do that because of reasons'.

    The government can change the law as it sees fit. But the government is not seeking to do that with the Rwanda legislation. It is seeking to disapply it inasmuch as it effects a particular category of people. If it can do it to them (refugees), what is to stop it doing the same to anyone else? It seems to me that we have entered entirely uncharted territory.

    Parliament can do what it likes. You display a fairly astonishing lack of understanding of the UK’s constitutional history

    It is an elected dictatorship, hedged about by convention. This is well known

    Is it flawless? No. Are other systems better? Maybe logically, but we have avoided revolution or ACTUAL dictatorship for 400 years unlike almost every other country in the world

    I totally understand that Parliament can do what it wants, but it is being asked to do what it has never done before. Our constitutional settlement is predicated on the principle that while Parliament is theoretically unconstrained, in practice it is, that there are certain things it will not do. I'd argue that removing human rights from a carefully defined group of people is one such action. If it can and then does do that with regard to refugees, why not other groups too?

    I feel your pain - some things are technically legal but just *feel* wrong. Yet they get away with it

    We'll see if they get away with it. An election is approaching. This government cannot now use Parliament to ban them as the House of Lords can block the required legislation. So the people will decide.

    Some things are legal, other things are not legal. Boris Johnson broke the law. Keir Starmer did not break the law. Let it go. It is done.

    There is a cigarette paper between what Boris was fined for (his wife bringing a birthday cake and beer into his office), what Rishi Sunak was fined for (being there having a glass of water) & what Sir Keir was investigated for (having a beer and curry after work/whilst working). The beer and cake wasn’t considered necessary for work, the beer and curry was.

    Sir Keir wanted them to resign for being investigated but failed to offer his resignation when it happened to him.

    If all that matters is strict legality, then let’s apply that to everything; lobbying, second jobs, MPs expenses etc etc
    Genuine question - are you a moron?

    Lets assume I do something which the law says is illegal. We both agree that its illegal, yes?

    The law is then changed. The thing that was illegal is now legal. You then do the same thing I did. The difference being that following a change in the law, the once illegal thing is now illegal.

    Still with me? Never mind your "cigarette paper" between the two actions, lets have the exact same action. How would you get away with the thing that I didn't? Because the law changed.

    You aren't this dumb to not get this? Are you? You go on to complaining about "strict legality". How else do we apply the law? An example - as a bisexual man I have had sexy time fun with other men. Because I did so after 27th July 1967 it was legal. Had I been around doing that before 27th July 1967 the same sexy time would have been illegal.

    The exact same action. Was illegal. Then became legal because the law changed. Same with Boris vs Starmer. Illegal when Boris did it, legal when STarmer did it because someone (Boris!!!) changed the law.

    Get it? Or are you a moron?
    I think you are a moron
    Why not try addressing the point?
  • Options
    TazTaz Posts: 11,373

    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    algarkirk said:

    algarkirk said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    It is not impossible that there are wider implications. Tom de la Mare KC comments thus today on TwiX:

    One of the practical merits of the British Constitution hitherto is that the limits of the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty have never been explored by the passing of extreme legislation testing the unstated but assumed premises of our constitutional arrangements.

    Those problems are amplified by the other multifold ways in which our Parliament is evidently defective, starting with the abuse of delegated legislation and power transfer to the Executive, against which only the Courts are a safeguard, leading to further constitutional strain.

    Precisely!
    There are a couple of deep issues here.
    One is the question of what courts/lawyers/judges are for. Do they merely check out the law or do they ever make it?

    And secondly, who is the final arbiter? The Supreme Court or Parliament? And can a court simply say 'You can't do that because of reasons'.

    The government can change the law as it sees fit. But the government is not seeking to do that with the Rwanda legislation. It is seeking to disapply it inasmuch as it effects a particular category of people. If it can do it to them (refugees), what is to stop it doing the same to anyone else? It seems to me that we have entered entirely uncharted territory.

    Parliament can do what it likes. You display a fairly astonishing lack of understanding of the UK’s constitutional history

    It is an elected dictatorship, hedged about by convention. This is well known

    Is it flawless? No. Are other systems better? Maybe logically, but we have avoided revolution or ACTUAL dictatorship for 400 years unlike almost every other country in the world

    I totally understand that Parliament can do what it wants, but it is being asked to do what it has never done before. Our constitutional settlement is predicated on the principle that while Parliament is theoretically unconstrained, in practice it is, that there are certain things it will not do. I'd argue that removing human rights from a carefully defined group of people is one such action. If it can and then does do that with regard to refugees, why not other groups too?

    I feel your pain - some things are technically legal but just *feel* wrong. Yet they get away with it

    We'll see if they get away with it. An election is approaching. This government cannot now use Parliament to ban them as the House of Lords can block the required legislation. So the people will decide.

    Some things are legal, other things are not legal. Boris Johnson broke the law. Keir Starmer did not break the law. Let it go. It is done.

    There is a cigarette paper between what Boris was fined for (his wife bringing a birthday cake and beer into his office), what Rishi Sunak was fined for (being there having a glass of water) & what Sir Keir was investigated for (having a beer and curry after work/whilst working). The beer and cake wasn’t considered necessary for work, the beer and curry was.

    Sir Keir wanted them to resign for being investigated but failed to offer his resignation when it happened to him.

    If all that matters is strict legality, then let’s apply that to everything; lobbying, second jobs, MPs expenses etc etc
    Starmer did pledge to resign if given a fixed penalty notice, as did Angela Rayner. As a lawyer, Starmer knew currygate was within the rules.
    Exactly. Otherwise he would not have made such a pledge.
  • Options
    Leon said:

    Right. Finals Week on Masterchef. No spoilers!

    Last night, tonight and tomorrow. Last night had a Monty Python moment, icymi.
  • Options
    bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 7,969
    isam said:

    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    algarkirk said:

    algarkirk said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    It is not impossible that there are wider implications. Tom de la Mare KC comments thus today on TwiX:

    One of the practical merits of the British Constitution hitherto is that the limits of the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty have never been explored by the passing of extreme legislation testing the unstated but assumed premises of our constitutional arrangements.

    Those problems are amplified by the other multifold ways in which our Parliament is evidently defective, starting with the abuse of delegated legislation and power transfer to the Executive, against which only the Courts are a safeguard, leading to further constitutional strain.

    Precisely!
    There are a couple of deep issues here.
    One is the question of what courts/lawyers/judges are for. Do they merely check out the law or do they ever make it?

    And secondly, who is the final arbiter? The Supreme Court or Parliament? And can a court simply say 'You can't do that because of reasons'.

    The government can change the law as it sees fit. But the government is not seeking to do that with the Rwanda legislation. It is seeking to disapply it inasmuch as it effects a particular category of people. If it can do it to them (refugees), what is to stop it doing the same to anyone else? It seems to me that we have entered entirely uncharted territory.

    Parliament can do what it likes. You display a fairly astonishing lack of understanding of the UK’s constitutional history

    It is an elected dictatorship, hedged about by convention. This is well known

    Is it flawless? No. Are other systems better? Maybe logically, but we have avoided revolution or ACTUAL dictatorship for 400 years unlike almost every other country in the world

    I totally understand that Parliament can do what it wants, but it is being asked to do what it has never done before. Our constitutional settlement is predicated on the principle that while Parliament is theoretically unconstrained, in practice it is, that there are certain things it will not do. I'd argue that removing human rights from a carefully defined group of people is one such action. If it can and then does do that with regard to refugees, why not other groups too?

    I feel your pain - some things are technically legal but just *feel* wrong. Yet they get away with it

    We'll see if they get away with it. An election is approaching. This government cannot now use Parliament to ban them as the House of Lords can block the required legislation. So the people will decide.

    Some things are legal, other things are not legal. Boris Johnson broke the law. Keir Starmer did not break the law. Let it go. It is done.

    There is a cigarette paper between what Boris was fined for (his wife bringing a birthday cake and beer into his office), what Rishi Sunak was fined for (being there having a glass of water) & what Sir Keir was investigated for (having a beer and curry after work/whilst working). The beer and cake wasn’t considered necessary for work, the beer and curry was.

    Sir Keir wanted them to resign for being investigated but failed to offer his resignation when it happened to him.

    If all that matters is strict legality, then let’s apply that to everything; lobbying, second jobs, MPs expenses etc etc
    This "cigarette paper" claim remains untrue.

    The COVID rules were very different when the event for which Boris and Sunak were fined took place and when Starmer's curry took place.

    The No. 10 "birthday party" brought together people who wouldn't otherwise have come together. Starmer's curry did not. This has significant epidemiological implications.
    The people being Carrie and Sunak?
    I don't think No. 10 ever provided full details of who attended. The "birthday party" was before a Cabinet meeting, so, indeed, Carrie Johnson had no legal (work) reason to be there. Lulu Lytle was also reported to be there and the same applies to her.
  • Options
    kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,429
    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    l

    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    Can you tell me the last time the UK government legislated to allow itself to break the law? Not to change the law, but to break it?

    The current constitutional settlement wrests on the notion that there are some things the government won’t do even if, in theory, it can. I’d suggest that a couple of those are legislating to remove all human rights from a defined group of people and legislating to allow the government to break the law. That goes beyond politics, although only politics can resolve it - if the government does not legislate that away.

    Well, your lot decided to try and cancel democracy by annulling a referendum - Britain’s biggest ever vote - before the result was even enacted. So frankly you can fuck off with this pious bullshit

    Not least because Sir Kir Royale was a leading “2nd voter”

    My lot?

    I did not vote Labour in December 2019. However, I did think that MPs elected on a manifesto promise to oppose a No Deal Brexit were perfectly entitled to seek to prevent one. The MPs that did not have such a right were the Tory ones.

    Sir Keir wanted a second referendum even if the PM and the EU agreed a deal before the 2019 GE; one of the options had to be remain, and he would campaign for Remain

    And Labour put that case to the British people and was roundly defeated.

    Yes, but you can’t get away with that, sorry.

    Sir Keir wanted a second referendum with remain an option, in which he would campaign for remain when there was no GE in the offing

    This is despite being elected in 2017 after saying respecting the result was ‘an important point of principle’
    Starmer did not get what he wanted. But what he wanted was to put his case to the British people, not impose an outcome on them.

    He said in the 2017 GE campaign

    We’ve got to do this from a position of principle.
    Did we agree agree that we’d put this out to the public for a vote? Yes
    Did we agree that we’d accept that vote? Yes
    Have we got to accept that result? Yes
    So the first position is a matter of principle; Having done this, having got a result, we’ve got to accept it, & simply saying ‘well it’s better for us electorally if we do this or do that’ doesn’t help”


    Then in 2019 when the Tories were between Prime Ministers, he said

    I’m really pleased that whatever outcome the next Prime Minister puts before us, whether that’s a deal of some sort, or no deal, we’ve agreed that it must be subject to another referendum, & in that referendum Remain must be an option and Labour will be campaigning for Remain

    That’s a really important point of principle ”

    So he did want to re run the referendum without a GE.
    After saying that would be wrong.
    And both were matters of principle
    This doesn't look like someone who has taken my well-meant advice to not obsess about SKS.
    You don’t like it, and you want him to shut up, because you know @isam is completely right
    It's become such a boring point now that I can't be bothered with it. The far more important thing - as I've said to isam - is he doesn't fall into a deep hole of (for want of a better term) 'StarmerDerangementSyndrome'. I know what that's like (the Johnson variety), obsessive dislike of a prominent politician, it eats you up, brings out the worst in you, stops you living properly. It'll be even worse for isam because me and BJ only had 3 years whereas he could be looking at a decade of Keir as our PM, as his PM. So that's 10 years of misery-guts negativity and nitpicking. I don't want that for him.
  • Options
    TazTaz Posts: 11,373
    edited December 2023
    >

    isam said:

    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    algarkirk said:

    algarkirk said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    It is not impossible that there are wider implications. Tom de la Mare KC comments thus today on TwiX:

    One of the practical merits of the British Constitution hitherto is that the limits of the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty have never been explored by the passing of extreme legislation testing the unstated but assumed premises of our constitutional arrangements.

    Those problems are amplified by the other multifold ways in which our Parliament is evidently defective, starting with the abuse of delegated legislation and power transfer to the Executive, against which only the Courts are a safeguard, leading to further constitutional strain.

    Precisely!
    There are a couple of deep issues here.
    One is the question of what courts/lawyers/judges are for. Do they merely check out the law or do they ever make it?

    And secondly, who is the final arbiter? The Supreme Court or Parliament? And can a court simply say 'You can't do that because of reasons'.

    The government can change the law as it sees fit. But the government is not seeking to do that with the Rwanda legislation. It is seeking to disapply it inasmuch as it effects a particular category of people. If it can do it to them (refugees), what is to stop it doing the same to anyone else? It seems to me that we have entered entirely uncharted territory.

    Parliament can do what it likes. You display a fairly astonishing lack of understanding of the UK’s constitutional history

    It is an elected dictatorship, hedged about by convention. This is well known

    Is it flawless? No. Are other systems better? Maybe logically, but we have avoided revolution or ACTUAL dictatorship for 400 years unlike almost every other country in the world

    I totally understand that Parliament can do what it wants, but it is being asked to do what it has never done before. Our constitutional settlement is predicated on the principle that while Parliament is theoretically unconstrained, in practice it is, that there are certain things it will not do. I'd argue that removing human rights from a carefully defined group of people is one such action. If it can and then does do that with regard to refugees, why not other groups too?

    I feel your pain - some things are technically legal but just *feel* wrong. Yet they get away with it

    We'll see if they get away with it. An election is approaching. This government cannot now use Parliament to ban them as the House of Lords can block the required legislation. So the people will decide.

    Some things are legal, other things are not legal. Boris Johnson broke the law. Keir Starmer did not break the law. Let it go. It is done.

    There is a cigarette paper between what Boris was fined for (his wife bringing a birthday cake and beer into his office), what Rishi Sunak was fined for (being there having a glass of water) & what Sir Keir was investigated for (having a beer and curry after work/whilst working). The beer and cake wasn’t considered necessary for work, the beer and curry was.

    Sir Keir wanted them to resign for being investigated but failed to offer his resignation when it happened to him.

    If all that matters is strict legality, then let’s apply that to everything; lobbying, second jobs, MPs expenses etc etc
    Genuine question - are you a moron?

    Lets assume I do something which the law says is illegal. We both agree that its illegal, yes?

    The law is then changed. The thing that was illegal is now legal. You then do the same thing I did. The difference being that following a change in the law, the once illegal thing is now illegal.

    Still with me? Never mind your "cigarette paper" between the two actions, lets have the exact same action. How would you get away with the thing that I didn't? Because the law changed.

    You aren't this dumb to not get this? Are you? You go on to complaining about "strict legality". How else do we apply the law? An example - as a bisexual man I have had sexy time fun with other men. Because I did so after 27th July 1967 it was legal. Had I been around doing that before 27th July 1967 the same sexy time would have been illegal.

    The exact same action. Was illegal. Then became legal because the law changed. Same with Boris vs Starmer. Illegal when Boris did it, legal when STarmer did it because someone (Boris!!!) changed the law.

    Get it? Or are you a moron?
    I think you are a moron
    Why not try addressing the point?
    You’re an intelligent guy. You often have something interesting to add to a debate.

    Why resort to a personal attacks. You’re not like that drunk Ishmael.
  • Options
    SandpitSandpit Posts: 50,003

    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    algarkirk said:

    algarkirk said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    It is not impossible that there are wider implications. Tom de la Mare KC comments thus today on TwiX:

    One of the practical merits of the British Constitution hitherto is that the limits of the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty have never been explored by the passing of extreme legislation testing the unstated but assumed premises of our constitutional arrangements.

    Those problems are amplified by the other multifold ways in which our Parliament is evidently defective, starting with the abuse of delegated legislation and power transfer to the Executive, against which only the Courts are a safeguard, leading to further constitutional strain.

    Precisely!
    There are a couple of deep issues here.
    One is the question of what courts/lawyers/judges are for. Do they merely check out the law or do they ever make it?

    And secondly, who is the final arbiter? The Supreme Court or Parliament? And can a court simply say 'You can't do that because of reasons'.

    The government can change the law as it sees fit. But the government is not seeking to do that with the Rwanda legislation. It is seeking to disapply it inasmuch as it effects a particular category of people. If it can do it to them (refugees), what is to stop it doing the same to anyone else? It seems to me that we have entered entirely uncharted territory.

    Parliament can do what it likes. You display a fairly astonishing lack of understanding of the UK’s constitutional history

    It is an elected dictatorship, hedged about by convention. This is well known

    Is it flawless? No. Are other systems better? Maybe logically, but we have avoided revolution or ACTUAL dictatorship for 400 years unlike almost every other country in the world

    I totally understand that Parliament can do what it wants, but it is being asked to do what it has never done before. Our constitutional settlement is predicated on the principle that while Parliament is theoretically unconstrained, in practice it is, that there are certain things it will not do. I'd argue that removing human rights from a carefully defined group of people is one such action. If it can and then does do that with regard to refugees, why not other groups too?

    I feel your pain - some things are technically legal but just *feel* wrong. Yet they get away with it

    We'll see if they get away with it. An election is approaching. This government cannot now use Parliament to ban them as the House of Lords can block the required legislation. So the people will decide.

    Some things are legal, other things are not legal. Boris Johnson broke the law. Keir Starmer did not break the law. Let it go. It is done.

    There is a cigarette paper between what Boris was fined for (his wife bringing a birthday cake and beer into his office), what Rishi Sunak was fined for (being there having a glass of water) & what Sir Keir was investigated for (having a beer and curry after work/whilst working). The beer and cake wasn’t considered necessary for work, the beer and curry was.

    Sir Keir wanted them to resign for being investigated but failed to offer his resignation when it happened to him.

    If all that matters is strict legality, then let’s apply that to everything; lobbying, second jobs, MPs expenses etc etc
    Starmer did pledge to resign if given a fixed penalty notice, as did Angela Rayner. As a lawyer, Starmer knew currygate was within the rules.
    More importantly, the police knew that (unlike the government infringements) he’d be taking an FPN all the way up to the Supreme Court.
  • Options
    isam said:

    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    algarkirk said:

    algarkirk said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    It is not impossible that there are wider implications. Tom de la Mare KC comments thus today on TwiX:

    One of the practical merits of the British Constitution hitherto is that the limits of the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty have never been explored by the passing of extreme legislation testing the unstated but assumed premises of our constitutional arrangements.

    Those problems are amplified by the other multifold ways in which our Parliament is evidently defective, starting with the abuse of delegated legislation and power transfer to the Executive, against which only the Courts are a safeguard, leading to further constitutional strain.

    Precisely!
    There are a couple of deep issues here.
    One is the question of what courts/lawyers/judges are for. Do they merely check out the law or do they ever make it?

    And secondly, who is the final arbiter? The Supreme Court or Parliament? And can a court simply say 'You can't do that because of reasons'.

    The government can change the law as it sees fit. But the government is not seeking to do that with the Rwanda legislation. It is seeking to disapply it inasmuch as it effects a particular category of people. If it can do it to them (refugees), what is to stop it doing the same to anyone else? It seems to me that we have entered entirely uncharted territory.

    Parliament can do what it likes. You display a fairly astonishing lack of understanding of the UK’s constitutional history

    It is an elected dictatorship, hedged about by convention. This is well known

    Is it flawless? No. Are other systems better? Maybe logically, but we have avoided revolution or ACTUAL dictatorship for 400 years unlike almost every other country in the world

    I totally understand that Parliament can do what it wants, but it is being asked to do what it has never done before. Our constitutional settlement is predicated on the principle that while Parliament is theoretically unconstrained, in practice it is, that there are certain things it will not do. I'd argue that removing human rights from a carefully defined group of people is one such action. If it can and then does do that with regard to refugees, why not other groups too?

    I feel your pain - some things are technically legal but just *feel* wrong. Yet they get away with it

    We'll see if they get away with it. An election is approaching. This government cannot now use Parliament to ban them as the House of Lords can block the required legislation. So the people will decide.

    Some things are legal, other things are not legal. Boris Johnson broke the law. Keir Starmer did not break the law. Let it go. It is done.

    There is a cigarette paper between what Boris was fined for (his wife bringing a birthday cake and beer into his office), what Rishi Sunak was fined for (being there having a glass of water) & what Sir Keir was investigated for (having a beer and curry after work/whilst working). The beer and cake wasn’t considered necessary for work, the beer and curry was.

    Sir Keir wanted them to resign for being investigated but failed to offer his resignation when it happened to him.

    If all that matters is strict legality, then let’s apply that to everything; lobbying, second jobs, MPs expenses etc etc
    Starmer did pledge to resign if given a fixed penalty notice, as did Angela Rayner. As a lawyer, Starmer knew currygate was within the rules.
    He called for Boris to resign before he was fined, just for being investigated
    Your persistance on this is in some way admirable but in other ways quite bizarre.

    Even if you maintain your current rate of intensity in presenting your argument, you might perhaps convince 1 person on this every couple of years, possibly. People made their minds up at the time and won't shift them now.
  • Options
    TazTaz Posts: 11,373
    >

    Leon said:

    Right. Finals Week on Masterchef. No spoilers!

    Last night, tonight and tomorrow. Last night had a Monty Python moment, icymi.
    Did we. I watched it and didn’t spot one. Mind you I dropped off for about ten minutes.

    Anyway that ginger lad they love him. He could serve up a tin of tomato soup, poached egg on toast and a taste the difference tiramisu and they’d rave about it.
  • Options
    isamisam Posts: 41,033

    isam said:

    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    algarkirk said:

    algarkirk said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    It is not impossible that there are wider implications. Tom de la Mare KC comments thus today on TwiX:

    One of the practical merits of the British Constitution hitherto is that the limits of the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty have never been explored by the passing of extreme legislation testing the unstated but assumed premises of our constitutional arrangements.

    Those problems are amplified by the other multifold ways in which our Parliament is evidently defective, starting with the abuse of delegated legislation and power transfer to the Executive, against which only the Courts are a safeguard, leading to further constitutional strain.

    Precisely!
    There are a couple of deep issues here.
    One is the question of what courts/lawyers/judges are for. Do they merely check out the law or do they ever make it?

    And secondly, who is the final arbiter? The Supreme Court or Parliament? And can a court simply say 'You can't do that because of reasons'.

    The government can change the law as it sees fit. But the government is not seeking to do that with the Rwanda legislation. It is seeking to disapply it inasmuch as it effects a particular category of people. If it can do it to them (refugees), what is to stop it doing the same to anyone else? It seems to me that we have entered entirely uncharted territory.

    Parliament can do what it likes. You display a fairly astonishing lack of understanding of the UK’s constitutional history

    It is an elected dictatorship, hedged about by convention. This is well known

    Is it flawless? No. Are other systems better? Maybe logically, but we have avoided revolution or ACTUAL dictatorship for 400 years unlike almost every other country in the world

    I totally understand that Parliament can do what it wants, but it is being asked to do what it has never done before. Our constitutional settlement is predicated on the principle that while Parliament is theoretically unconstrained, in practice it is, that there are certain things it will not do. I'd argue that removing human rights from a carefully defined group of people is one such action. If it can and then does do that with regard to refugees, why not other groups too?

    I feel your pain - some things are technically legal but just *feel* wrong. Yet they get away with it

    We'll see if they get away with it. An election is approaching. This government cannot now use Parliament to ban them as the House of Lords can block the required legislation. So the people will decide.

    Some things are legal, other things are not legal. Boris Johnson broke the law. Keir Starmer did not break the law. Let it go. It is done.

    There is a cigarette paper between what Boris was fined for (his wife bringing a birthday cake and beer into his office), what Rishi Sunak was fined for (being there having a glass of water) & what Sir Keir was investigated for (having a beer and curry after work/whilst working). The beer and cake wasn’t considered necessary for work, the beer and curry was.

    Sir Keir wanted them to resign for being investigated but failed to offer his resignation when it happened to him.

    If all that matters is strict legality, then let’s apply that to everything; lobbying, second jobs, MPs expenses etc etc
    Starmer did pledge to resign if given a fixed penalty notice, as did Angela Rayner. As a lawyer, Starmer knew currygate was within the rules.
    He called for Boris to resign before he was fined, just for being investigated
    Maybe that's because there was already enough evidence for everyone to see that Boris had (a) broken the law, (b) overseen a No. 10 with widespread rule-breaking, and (c) lied to Parliament.
    Ah I see
  • Options
    SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 20,764
    isam said:

    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    algarkirk said:

    algarkirk said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    It is not impossible that there are wider implications. Tom de la Mare KC comments thus today on TwiX:

    One of the practical merits of the British Constitution hitherto is that the limits of the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty have never been explored by the passing of extreme legislation testing the unstated but assumed premises of our constitutional arrangements.

    Those problems are amplified by the other multifold ways in which our Parliament is evidently defective, starting with the abuse of delegated legislation and power transfer to the Executive, against which only the Courts are a safeguard, leading to further constitutional strain.

    Precisely!
    There are a couple of deep issues here.
    One is the question of what courts/lawyers/judges are for. Do they merely check out the law or do they ever make it?

    And secondly, who is the final arbiter? The Supreme Court or Parliament? And can a court simply say 'You can't do that because of reasons'.

    The government can change the law as it sees fit. But the government is not seeking to do that with the Rwanda legislation. It is seeking to disapply it inasmuch as it effects a particular category of people. If it can do it to them (refugees), what is to stop it doing the same to anyone else? It seems to me that we have entered entirely uncharted territory.

    Parliament can do what it likes. You display a fairly astonishing lack of understanding of the UK’s constitutional history

    It is an elected dictatorship, hedged about by convention. This is well known

    Is it flawless? No. Are other systems better? Maybe logically, but we have avoided revolution or ACTUAL dictatorship for 400 years unlike almost every other country in the world

    I totally understand that Parliament can do what it wants, but it is being asked to do what it has never done before. Our constitutional settlement is predicated on the principle that while Parliament is theoretically unconstrained, in practice it is, that there are certain things it will not do. I'd argue that removing human rights from a carefully defined group of people is one such action. If it can and then does do that with regard to refugees, why not other groups too?

    I feel your pain - some things are technically legal but just *feel* wrong. Yet they get away with it

    We'll see if they get away with it. An election is approaching. This government cannot now use Parliament to ban them as the House of Lords can block the required legislation. So the people will decide.

    Some things are legal, other things are not legal. Boris Johnson broke the law. Keir Starmer did not break the law. Let it go. It is done.

    There is a cigarette paper between what Boris was fined for (his wife bringing a birthday cake and beer into his office), what Rishi Sunak was fined for (being there having a glass of water) & what Sir Keir was investigated for (having a beer and curry after work/whilst working). The beer and cake wasn’t considered necessary for work, the beer and curry was.

    Sir Keir wanted them to resign for being investigated but failed to offer his resignation when it happened to him.

    If all that matters is strict legality, then let’s apply that to everything; lobbying, second jobs, MPs expenses etc etc
    This "cigarette paper" claim remains untrue.

    The COVID rules were very different when the event for which Boris and Sunak were fined took place and when Starmer's curry took place.

    The No. 10 "birthday party" brought together people who wouldn't otherwise have come together. Starmer's curry did not. This has significant epidemiological implications.
    The people being Carrie and Sunak?
    Don't forget the interior designer. She popped in to the cabinet room for a slice, did she not?
  • Options
    SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 20,764
    Leon said:

    Right. Finals Week on Masterchef. No spoilers!

    Finals Plural. How many finals are there?
  • Options
    nico679nico679 Posts: 5,091
    isam said:

    isam said:

    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    algarkirk said:

    algarkirk said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    It is not impossible that there are wider implications. Tom de la Mare KC comments thus today on TwiX:

    One of the practical merits of the British Constitution hitherto is that the limits of the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty have never been explored by the passing of extreme legislation testing the unstated but assumed premises of our constitutional arrangements.

    Those problems are amplified by the other multifold ways in which our Parliament is evidently defective, starting with the abuse of delegated legislation and power transfer to the Executive, against which only the Courts are a safeguard, leading to further constitutional strain.

    Precisely!
    There are a couple of deep issues here.
    One is the question of what courts/lawyers/judges are for. Do they merely check out the law or do they ever make it?

    And secondly, who is the final arbiter? The Supreme Court or Parliament? And can a court simply say 'You can't do that because of reasons'.

    The government can change the law as it sees fit. But the government is not seeking to do that with the Rwanda legislation. It is seeking to disapply it inasmuch as it effects a particular category of people. If it can do it to them (refugees), what is to stop it doing the same to anyone else? It seems to me that we have entered entirely uncharted territory.

    Parliament can do what it likes. You display a fairly astonishing lack of understanding of the UK’s constitutional history

    It is an elected dictatorship, hedged about by convention. This is well known

    Is it flawless? No. Are other systems better? Maybe logically, but we have avoided revolution or ACTUAL dictatorship for 400 years unlike almost every other country in the world

    I totally understand that Parliament can do what it wants, but it is being asked to do what it has never done before. Our constitutional settlement is predicated on the principle that while Parliament is theoretically unconstrained, in practice it is, that there are certain things it will not do. I'd argue that removing human rights from a carefully defined group of people is one such action. If it can and then does do that with regard to refugees, why not other groups too?

    I feel your pain - some things are technically legal but just *feel* wrong. Yet they get away with it

    We'll see if they get away with it. An election is approaching. This government cannot now use Parliament to ban them as the House of Lords can block the required legislation. So the people will decide.

    Some things are legal, other things are not legal. Boris Johnson broke the law. Keir Starmer did not break the law. Let it go. It is done.

    There is a cigarette paper between what Boris was fined for (his wife bringing a birthday cake and beer into his office), what Rishi Sunak was fined for (being there having a glass of water) & what Sir Keir was investigated for (having a beer and curry after work/whilst working). The beer and cake wasn’t considered necessary for work, the beer and curry was.

    Sir Keir wanted them to resign for being investigated but failed to offer his resignation when it happened to him.

    If all that matters is strict legality, then let’s apply that to everything; lobbying, second jobs, MPs expenses etc etc
    Starmer did pledge to resign if given a fixed penalty notice, as did Angela Rayner. As a lawyer, Starmer knew currygate was within the rules.
    He called for Boris to resign before he was fined, just for being investigated
    Maybe that's because there was already enough evidence for everyone to see that Boris had (a) broken the law, (b) overseen a No. 10 with widespread rule-breaking, and (c) lied to Parliament.
    Ah I see
    Do you not think that perhaps you’re becoming a little too obsessed with this ?

    I wonder what you’d say if the reverse had occurred and it was Johnson having the curry and beer . I’m not a big fan of Starmer but he legally didn’t break any rules . That’s it .
  • Options
    geoffwgeoffw Posts: 8,186
    isam said:

    isam said:

    l

    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    Can you tell me the last time the UK government legislated to allow itself to break the law? Not to change the law, but to break it?

    The current constitutional settlement wrests on the notion that there are some things the government won’t do even if, in theory, it can. I’d suggest that a couple of those are legislating to remove all human rights from a defined group of people and legislating to allow the government to break the law. That goes beyond politics, although only politics can resolve it - if the government does not legislate that away.

    Well, your lot decided to try and cancel democracy by annulling a referendum - Britain’s biggest ever vote - before the result was even enacted. So frankly you can fuck off with this pious bullshit

    Not least because Sir Kir Royale was a leading “2nd voter”

    My lot?

    I did not vote Labour in December 2019. However, I did think that MPs elected on a manifesto promise to oppose a No Deal Brexit were perfectly entitled to seek to prevent one. The MPs that did not have such a right were the Tory ones.

    Sir Keir wanted a second referendum even if the PM and the EU agreed a deal before the 2019 GE; one of the options had to be remain, and he would campaign for Remain

    And Labour put that case to the British people and was roundly defeated.

    Yes, but you can’t get away with that, sorry.

    Sir Keir wanted a second referendum with remain an option, in which he would campaign for remain when there was no GE in the offing

    This is despite being elected in 2017 after saying respecting the result was ‘an important point of principle’
    Starmer did not get what he wanted. But what he wanted was to put his case to the British people, not impose an outcome on them.

    He said in the 2017 GE campaign

    “We’ve got to do this from a position of principle.
    Did we agree agree that we’d put this out to the public for a vote? Yes
    Did we agree that we’d accept that vote? Yes
    Have we got to accept that result? Yes
    So the first position is a matter of principle; Having done this, having got a result, we’ve got to accept it, & simply saying ‘well it’s better for us electorally if we do this it do that’ doesn’t help”

    Then in 2019 when the Tories were between Prime Ministers, he said

    “I’m really pleased that whatever outcome the next Prime Minister puts before us, whether that’s a deal of some sort, or no deal, we’ve agreed that it must be subject to another referendum, & in that referendum Remain must be an option and Labour will be campaigning for Remain

    That’s a really important point of principle ”

    So he did want to re run the referendum without a GE.
    After saying that would be wrong.
    And both were matters of principle

    Politician changes mind shock!

    “Changes principles” I think you mean

    "Look here, these are my principles.
    If you don't like them I have others"

  • Options
    Taz said:

    >

    Leon said:

    Right. Finals Week on Masterchef. No spoilers!

    Last night, tonight and tomorrow. Last night had a Monty Python moment, icymi.
    Did we. I watched it and didn’t spot one. Mind you I dropped off for about ten minutes.

    Anyway that ginger lad they love him. He could serve up a tin of tomato soup, poached egg on toast and a taste the difference tiramisu and they’d rave about it.
    Kasae, the Australian chef, missed it too but I'm fairly sure Gregg was teeing her up when he asked about her ingredients: and "what's a wattle?" It is, of course, the national flower of Australia.

    This is a wattle, the emblem of our land;
    You can stick it in a bottle; you can hold it in your hand.
  • Options

    isam said:

    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    algarkirk said:

    algarkirk said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    It is not impossible that there are wider implications. Tom de la Mare KC comments thus today on TwiX:

    One of the practical merits of the British Constitution hitherto is that the limits of the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty have never been explored by the passing of extreme legislation testing the unstated but assumed premises of our constitutional arrangements.

    Those problems are amplified by the other multifold ways in which our Parliament is evidently defective, starting with the abuse of delegated legislation and power transfer to the Executive, against which only the Courts are a safeguard, leading to further constitutional strain.

    Precisely!
    There are a couple of deep issues here.
    One is the question of what courts/lawyers/judges are for. Do they merely check out the law or do they ever make it?

    And secondly, who is the final arbiter? The Supreme Court or Parliament? And can a court simply say 'You can't do that because of reasons'.

    The government can change the law as it sees fit. But the government is not seeking to do that with the Rwanda legislation. It is seeking to disapply it inasmuch as it effects a particular category of people. If it can do it to them (refugees), what is to stop it doing the same to anyone else? It seems to me that we have entered entirely uncharted territory.

    Parliament can do what it likes. You display a fairly astonishing lack of understanding of the UK’s constitutional history

    It is an elected dictatorship, hedged about by convention. This is well known

    Is it flawless? No. Are other systems better? Maybe logically, but we have avoided revolution or ACTUAL dictatorship for 400 years unlike almost every other country in the world

    I totally understand that Parliament can do what it wants, but it is being asked to do what it has never done before. Our constitutional settlement is predicated on the principle that while Parliament is theoretically unconstrained, in practice it is, that there are certain things it will not do. I'd argue that removing human rights from a carefully defined group of people is one such action. If it can and then does do that with regard to refugees, why not other groups too?

    I feel your pain - some things are technically legal but just *feel* wrong. Yet they get away with it

    We'll see if they get away with it. An election is approaching. This government cannot now use Parliament to ban them as the House of Lords can block the required legislation. So the people will decide.

    Some things are legal, other things are not legal. Boris Johnson broke the law. Keir Starmer did not break the law. Let it go. It is done.

    There is a cigarette paper between what Boris was fined for (his wife bringing a birthday cake and beer into his office), what Rishi Sunak was fined for (being there having a glass of water) & what Sir Keir was investigated for (having a beer and curry after work/whilst working). The beer and cake wasn’t considered necessary for work, the beer and curry was.

    Sir Keir wanted them to resign for being investigated but failed to offer his resignation when it happened to him.

    If all that matters is strict legality, then let’s apply that to everything; lobbying, second jobs, MPs expenses etc etc
    This "cigarette paper" claim remains untrue.

    The COVID rules were very different when the event for which Boris and Sunak were fined took place and when Starmer's curry took place.

    The No. 10 "birthday party" brought together people who wouldn't otherwise have come together. Starmer's curry did not. This has significant epidemiological implications.
    The people being Carrie and Sunak?
    I don't think No. 10 ever provided full details of who attended. The "birthday party" was before a Cabinet meeting, so, indeed, Carrie Johnson had no legal (work) reason to be there. Lulu Lytle was also reported to be there and the same applies to her.
    In political terms though, Joe Public would have forgiven Johnson had his *only* offence been cakegate. Although that's what he was fined for, it was a pretty marginal transgression of the rules. By contrast, the boozy parties in No 10, although not directly involving Johnson, did him far more damage. His lying about knowing about them did him even more.
  • Options
    Taz said:

    >

    isam said:

    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    algarkirk said:

    algarkirk said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    It is not impossible that there are wider implications. Tom de la Mare KC comments thus today on TwiX:

    One of the practical merits of the British Constitution hitherto is that the limits of the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty have never been explored by the passing of extreme legislation testing the unstated but assumed premises of our constitutional arrangements.

    Those problems are amplified by the other multifold ways in which our Parliament is evidently defective, starting with the abuse of delegated legislation and power transfer to the Executive, against which only the Courts are a safeguard, leading to further constitutional strain.

    Precisely!
    There are a couple of deep issues here.
    One is the question of what courts/lawyers/judges are for. Do they merely check out the law or do they ever make it?

    And secondly, who is the final arbiter? The Supreme Court or Parliament? And can a court simply say 'You can't do that because of reasons'.

    The government can change the law as it sees fit. But the government is not seeking to do that with the Rwanda legislation. It is seeking to disapply it inasmuch as it effects a particular category of people. If it can do it to them (refugees), what is to stop it doing the same to anyone else? It seems to me that we have entered entirely uncharted territory.

    Parliament can do what it likes. You display a fairly astonishing lack of understanding of the UK’s constitutional history

    It is an elected dictatorship, hedged about by convention. This is well known

    Is it flawless? No. Are other systems better? Maybe logically, but we have avoided revolution or ACTUAL dictatorship for 400 years unlike almost every other country in the world

    I totally understand that Parliament can do what it wants, but it is being asked to do what it has never done before. Our constitutional settlement is predicated on the principle that while Parliament is theoretically unconstrained, in practice it is, that there are certain things it will not do. I'd argue that removing human rights from a carefully defined group of people is one such action. If it can and then does do that with regard to refugees, why not other groups too?

    I feel your pain - some things are technically legal but just *feel* wrong. Yet they get away with it

    We'll see if they get away with it. An election is approaching. This government cannot now use Parliament to ban them as the House of Lords can block the required legislation. So the people will decide.

    Some things are legal, other things are not legal. Boris Johnson broke the law. Keir Starmer did not break the law. Let it go. It is done.

    There is a cigarette paper between what Boris was fined for (his wife bringing a birthday cake and beer into his office), what Rishi Sunak was fined for (being there having a glass of water) & what Sir Keir was investigated for (having a beer and curry after work/whilst working). The beer and cake wasn’t considered necessary for work, the beer and curry was.

    Sir Keir wanted them to resign for being investigated but failed to offer his resignation when it happened to him.

    If all that matters is strict legality, then let’s apply that to everything; lobbying, second jobs, MPs expenses etc etc
    Genuine question - are you a moron?

    Lets assume I do something which the law says is illegal. We both agree that its illegal, yes?

    The law is then changed. The thing that was illegal is now legal. You then do the same thing I did. The difference being that following a change in the law, the once illegal thing is now illegal.

    Still with me? Never mind your "cigarette paper" between the two actions, lets have the exact same action. How would you get away with the thing that I didn't? Because the law changed.

    You aren't this dumb to not get this? Are you? You go on to complaining about "strict legality". How else do we apply the law? An example - as a bisexual man I have had sexy time fun with other men. Because I did so after 27th July 1967 it was legal. Had I been around doing that before 27th July 1967 the same sexy time would have been illegal.

    The exact same action. Was illegal. Then became legal because the law changed. Same with Boris vs Starmer. Illegal when Boris did it, legal when STarmer did it because someone (Boris!!!) changed the law.

    Get it? Or are you a moron?
    I think you are a moron
    Why not try addressing the point?
    You’re an intelligent guy. You often have something interesting to add to a debate.

    Why resort to a personal attacks. You’re not like that drunk Ishmael.
    I asked a question, I didn't make a statement.

    And its a valid question which he is desperate to avoid because it demolishes his guff about Starmer.
  • Options
    isamisam Posts: 41,033
    nico679 said:

    isam said:

    isam said:

    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    algarkirk said:

    algarkirk said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    It is not impossible that there are wider implications. Tom de la Mare KC comments thus today on TwiX:

    One of the practical merits of the British Constitution hitherto is that the limits of the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty have never been explored by the passing of extreme legislation testing the unstated but assumed premises of our constitutional arrangements.

    Those problems are amplified by the other multifold ways in which our Parliament is evidently defective, starting with the abuse of delegated legislation and power transfer to the Executive, against which only the Courts are a safeguard, leading to further constitutional strain.

    Precisely!
    There are a couple of deep issues here.
    One is the question of what courts/lawyers/judges are for. Do they merely check out the law or do they ever make it?

    And secondly, who is the final arbiter? The Supreme Court or Parliament? And can a court simply say 'You can't do that because of reasons'.

    The government can change the law as it sees fit. But the government is not seeking to do that with the Rwanda legislation. It is seeking to disapply it inasmuch as it effects a particular category of people. If it can do it to them (refugees), what is to stop it doing the same to anyone else? It seems to me that we have entered entirely uncharted territory.

    Parliament can do what it likes. You display a fairly astonishing lack of understanding of the UK’s constitutional history

    It is an elected dictatorship, hedged about by convention. This is well known

    Is it flawless? No. Are other systems better? Maybe logically, but we have avoided revolution or ACTUAL dictatorship for 400 years unlike almost every other country in the world

    I totally understand that Parliament can do what it wants, but it is being asked to do what it has never done before. Our constitutional settlement is predicated on the principle that while Parliament is theoretically unconstrained, in practice it is, that there are certain things it will not do. I'd argue that removing human rights from a carefully defined group of people is one such action. If it can and then does do that with regard to refugees, why not other groups too?

    I feel your pain - some things are technically legal but just *feel* wrong. Yet they get away with it

    We'll see if they get away with it. An election is approaching. This government cannot now use Parliament to ban them as the House of Lords can block the required legislation. So the people will decide.

    Some things are legal, other things are not legal. Boris Johnson broke the law. Keir Starmer did not break the law. Let it go. It is done.

    There is a cigarette paper between what Boris was fined for (his wife bringing a birthday cake and beer into his office), what Rishi Sunak was fined for (being there having a glass of water) & what Sir Keir was investigated for (having a beer and curry after work/whilst working). The beer and cake wasn’t considered necessary for work, the beer and curry was.

    Sir Keir wanted them to resign for being investigated but failed to offer his resignation when it happened to him.

    If all that matters is strict legality, then let’s apply that to everything; lobbying, second jobs, MPs expenses etc etc
    Starmer did pledge to resign if given a fixed penalty notice, as did Angela Rayner. As a lawyer, Starmer knew currygate was within the rules.
    He called for Boris to resign before he was fined, just for being investigated
    Maybe that's because there was already enough evidence for everyone to see that Boris had (a) broken the law, (b) overseen a No. 10 with widespread rule-breaking, and (c) lied to Parliament.
    Ah I see
    Do you not think that perhaps you’re becoming a little too obsessed with this ?

    I wonder what you’d say if the reverse had occurred and it was Johnson having the curry and beer . I’m not a big fan of Starmer but he legally didn’t break any rules . That’s it .
    I don’t actually care that he did have the curry even if it were ‘illegal’, like I didn’t care if no 10 staff ate together in 2010. The rules were overblown and unnecessary.
  • Options
    JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 39,165
    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    l

    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    Can you tell me the last time the UK government legislated to allow itself to break the law? Not to change the law, but to break it?

    The current constitutional settlement wrests on the notion that there are some things the government won’t do even if, in theory, it can. I’d suggest that a couple of those are legislating to remove all human rights from a defined group of people and legislating to allow the government to break the law. That goes beyond politics, although only politics can resolve it - if the government does not legislate that away.

    Well, your lot decided to try and cancel democracy by annulling a referendum - Britain’s biggest ever vote - before the result was even enacted. So frankly you can fuck off with this pious bullshit

    Not least because Sir Kir Royale was a leading “2nd voter”

    My lot?

    I did not vote Labour in December 2019. However, I did think that MPs elected on a manifesto promise to oppose a No Deal Brexit were perfectly entitled to seek to prevent one. The MPs that did not have such a right were the Tory ones.

    Sir Keir wanted a second referendum even if the PM and the EU agreed a deal before the 2019 GE; one of the options had to be remain, and he would campaign for Remain

    And Labour put that case to the British people and was roundly defeated.

    Yes, but you can’t get away with that, sorry.

    Sir Keir wanted a second referendum with remain an option, in which he would campaign for remain when there was no GE in the offing

    This is despite being elected in 2017 after saying respecting the result was ‘an important point of principle’
    Starmer did not get what he wanted. But what he wanted was to put his case to the British people, not impose an outcome on them.

    He said in the 2017 GE campaign

    We’ve got to do this from a position of principle.
    Did we agree agree that we’d put this out to the public for a vote? Yes
    Did we agree that we’d accept that vote? Yes
    Have we got to accept that result? Yes
    So the first position is a matter of principle; Having done this, having got a result, we’ve got to accept it, & simply saying ‘well it’s better for us electorally if we do this or do that’ doesn’t help”


    Then in 2019 when the Tories were between Prime Ministers, he said

    I’m really pleased that whatever outcome the next Prime Minister puts before us, whether that’s a deal of some sort, or no deal, we’ve agreed that it must be subject to another referendum, & in that referendum Remain must be an option and Labour will be campaigning for Remain

    That’s a really important point of principle ”

    So he did want to re run the referendum without a GE.
    After saying that would be wrong.
    And both were matters of principle
    This doesn't look like someone who has taken my well-meant advice to not obsess about SKS.
    You don’t like it, and you want him to shut up, because you know @isam is completely right
    It's become such a boring point now that I can't be bothered with it. The far more important thing - as I've said to isam - is he doesn't fall into a deep hole of (for want of a better term) 'StarmerDerangementSyndrome'. I know what that's like (the Johnson variety), obsessive dislike of a prominent politician, it eats you up, brings out the worst in you, stops you living properly. It'll be even worse for isam because me and BJ only had 3 years whereas he could be looking at a decade of Keir as our PM, as his PM. So that's 10 years of misery-guts negativity and nitpicking. I don't want that for him.
    The problem is when something like Starmer Derangement Syndrome (or BDS, or CDS...) gets called even when the criticism has some validity. In other words, when the fanbois are so fanboish they cannot even see when their guy has done something wrong.

    Remember the way some defended Corbyn when he was Labour leader, even when it was obvious he was utterly wrong?

    I was a firm, and early, critic of Boris on here, but I now find myself in the somewhat odd position of occasionally defending him against people who were lauding him back in 2016/7.
  • Options
    isam said:

    isam said:

    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    algarkirk said:

    algarkirk said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    It is not impossible that there are wider implications. Tom de la Mare KC comments thus today on TwiX:

    One of the practical merits of the British Constitution hitherto is that the limits of the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty have never been explored by the passing of extreme legislation testing the unstated but assumed premises of our constitutional arrangements.

    Those problems are amplified by the other multifold ways in which our Parliament is evidently defective, starting with the abuse of delegated legislation and power transfer to the Executive, against which only the Courts are a safeguard, leading to further constitutional strain.

    Precisely!
    There are a couple of deep issues here.
    One is the question of what courts/lawyers/judges are for. Do they merely check out the law or do they ever make it?

    And secondly, who is the final arbiter? The Supreme Court or Parliament? And can a court simply say 'You can't do that because of reasons'.

    The government can change the law as it sees fit. But the government is not seeking to do that with the Rwanda legislation. It is seeking to disapply it inasmuch as it effects a particular category of people. If it can do it to them (refugees), what is to stop it doing the same to anyone else? It seems to me that we have entered entirely uncharted territory.

    Parliament can do what it likes. You display a fairly astonishing lack of understanding of the UK’s constitutional history

    It is an elected dictatorship, hedged about by convention. This is well known

    Is it flawless? No. Are other systems better? Maybe logically, but we have avoided revolution or ACTUAL dictatorship for 400 years unlike almost every other country in the world

    I totally understand that Parliament can do what it wants, but it is being asked to do what it has never done before. Our constitutional settlement is predicated on the principle that while Parliament is theoretically unconstrained, in practice it is, that there are certain things it will not do. I'd argue that removing human rights from a carefully defined group of people is one such action. If it can and then does do that with regard to refugees, why not other groups too?

    I feel your pain - some things are technically legal but just *feel* wrong. Yet they get away with it

    We'll see if they get away with it. An election is approaching. This government cannot now use Parliament to ban them as the House of Lords can block the required legislation. So the people will decide.

    Some things are legal, other things are not legal. Boris Johnson broke the law. Keir Starmer did not break the law. Let it go. It is done.

    There is a cigarette paper between what Boris was fined for (his wife bringing a birthday cake and beer into his office), what Rishi Sunak was fined for (being there having a glass of water) & what Sir Keir was investigated for (having a beer and curry after work/whilst working). The beer and cake wasn’t considered necessary for work, the beer and curry was.

    Sir Keir wanted them to resign for being investigated but failed to offer his resignation when it happened to him.

    If all that matters is strict legality, then let’s apply that to everything; lobbying, second jobs, MPs expenses etc etc
    Starmer did pledge to resign if given a fixed penalty notice, as did Angela Rayner. As a lawyer, Starmer knew currygate was within the rules.
    He called for Boris to resign before he was fined, just for being investigated
    Maybe that's because there was already enough evidence for everyone to see that Boris had (a) broken the law, (b) overseen a No. 10 with widespread rule-breaking, and (c) lied to Parliament.
    Ah I see
    All three of which are now established facts...
  • Options
    isamisam Posts: 41,033

    Taz said:

    >

    isam said:

    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    algarkirk said:

    algarkirk said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    It is not impossible that there are wider implications. Tom de la Mare KC comments thus today on TwiX:

    One of the practical merits of the British Constitution hitherto is that the limits of the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty have never been explored by the passing of extreme legislation testing the unstated but assumed premises of our constitutional arrangements.

    Those problems are amplified by the other multifold ways in which our Parliament is evidently defective, starting with the abuse of delegated legislation and power transfer to the Executive, against which only the Courts are a safeguard, leading to further constitutional strain.

    Precisely!
    There are a couple of deep issues here.
    One is the question of what courts/lawyers/judges are for. Do they merely check out the law or do they ever make it?

    And secondly, who is the final arbiter? The Supreme Court or Parliament? And can a court simply say 'You can't do that because of reasons'.

    The government can change the law as it sees fit. But the government is not seeking to do that with the Rwanda legislation. It is seeking to disapply it inasmuch as it effects a particular category of people. If it can do it to them (refugees), what is to stop it doing the same to anyone else? It seems to me that we have entered entirely uncharted territory.

    Parliament can do what it likes. You display a fairly astonishing lack of understanding of the UK’s constitutional history

    It is an elected dictatorship, hedged about by convention. This is well known

    Is it flawless? No. Are other systems better? Maybe logically, but we have avoided revolution or ACTUAL dictatorship for 400 years unlike almost every other country in the world

    I totally understand that Parliament can do what it wants, but it is being asked to do what it has never done before. Our constitutional settlement is predicated on the principle that while Parliament is theoretically unconstrained, in practice it is, that there are certain things it will not do. I'd argue that removing human rights from a carefully defined group of people is one such action. If it can and then does do that with regard to refugees, why not other groups too?

    I feel your pain - some things are technically legal but just *feel* wrong. Yet they get away with it

    We'll see if they get away with it. An election is approaching. This government cannot now use Parliament to ban them as the House of Lords can block the required legislation. So the people will decide.

    Some things are legal, other things are not legal. Boris Johnson broke the law. Keir Starmer did not break the law. Let it go. It is done.

    There is a cigarette paper between what Boris was fined for (his wife bringing a birthday cake and beer into his office), what Rishi Sunak was fined for (being there having a glass of water) & what Sir Keir was investigated for (having a beer and curry after work/whilst working). The beer and cake wasn’t considered necessary for work, the beer and curry was.

    Sir Keir wanted them to resign for being investigated but failed to offer his resignation when it happened to him.

    If all that matters is strict legality, then let’s apply that to everything; lobbying, second jobs, MPs expenses etc etc
    Genuine question - are you a moron?

    Lets assume I do something which the law says is illegal. We both agree that its illegal, yes?

    The law is then changed. The thing that was illegal is now legal. You then do the same thing I did. The difference being that following a change in the law, the once illegal thing is now illegal.

    Still with me? Never mind your "cigarette paper" between the two actions, lets have the exact same action. How would you get away with the thing that I didn't? Because the law changed.

    You aren't this dumb to not get this? Are you? You go on to complaining about "strict legality". How else do we apply the law? An example - as a bisexual man I have had sexy time fun with other men. Because I did so after 27th July 1967 it was legal. Had I been around doing that before 27th July 1967 the same sexy time would have been illegal.

    The exact same action. Was illegal. Then became legal because the law changed. Same with Boris vs Starmer. Illegal when Boris did it, legal when STarmer did it because someone (Boris!!!) changed the law.

    Get it? Or are you a moron?
    I think you are a moron
    Why not try addressing the point?
    You’re an intelligent guy. You often have something interesting to add to a debate.

    Why resort to a personal attacks. You’re not like that drunk Ishmael.
    I asked a question, I didn't make a statement.

    And its a valid question which he is desperate to avoid because it demolishes his guff about Starmer.
    If you think you’re going to talk down to me like that and get anything other than insults back, you really are the moron
  • Options
    bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 7,969
    isam said:

    nico679 said:

    isam said:

    isam said:

    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    algarkirk said:

    algarkirk said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    It is not impossible that there are wider implications. Tom de la Mare KC comments thus today on TwiX:

    One of the practical merits of the British Constitution hitherto is that the limits of the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty have never been explored by the passing of extreme legislation testing the unstated but assumed premises of our constitutional arrangements.

    Those problems are amplified by the other multifold ways in which our Parliament is evidently defective, starting with the abuse of delegated legislation and power transfer to the Executive, against which only the Courts are a safeguard, leading to further constitutional strain.

    Precisely!
    There are a couple of deep issues here.
    One is the question of what courts/lawyers/judges are for. Do they merely check out the law or do they ever make it?

    And secondly, who is the final arbiter? The Supreme Court or Parliament? And can a court simply say 'You can't do that because of reasons'.

    The government can change the law as it sees fit. But the government is not seeking to do that with the Rwanda legislation. It is seeking to disapply it inasmuch as it effects a particular category of people. If it can do it to them (refugees), what is to stop it doing the same to anyone else? It seems to me that we have entered entirely uncharted territory.

    Parliament can do what it likes. You display a fairly astonishing lack of understanding of the UK’s constitutional history

    It is an elected dictatorship, hedged about by convention. This is well known

    Is it flawless? No. Are other systems better? Maybe logically, but we have avoided revolution or ACTUAL dictatorship for 400 years unlike almost every other country in the world

    I totally understand that Parliament can do what it wants, but it is being asked to do what it has never done before. Our constitutional settlement is predicated on the principle that while Parliament is theoretically unconstrained, in practice it is, that there are certain things it will not do. I'd argue that removing human rights from a carefully defined group of people is one such action. If it can and then does do that with regard to refugees, why not other groups too?

    I feel your pain - some things are technically legal but just *feel* wrong. Yet they get away with it

    We'll see if they get away with it. An election is approaching. This government cannot now use Parliament to ban them as the House of Lords can block the required legislation. So the people will decide.

    Some things are legal, other things are not legal. Boris Johnson broke the law. Keir Starmer did not break the law. Let it go. It is done.

    There is a cigarette paper between what Boris was fined for (his wife bringing a birthday cake and beer into his office), what Rishi Sunak was fined for (being there having a glass of water) & what Sir Keir was investigated for (having a beer and curry after work/whilst working). The beer and cake wasn’t considered necessary for work, the beer and curry was.

    Sir Keir wanted them to resign for being investigated but failed to offer his resignation when it happened to him.

    If all that matters is strict legality, then let’s apply that to everything; lobbying, second jobs, MPs expenses etc etc
    Starmer did pledge to resign if given a fixed penalty notice, as did Angela Rayner. As a lawyer, Starmer knew currygate was within the rules.
    He called for Boris to resign before he was fined, just for being investigated
    Maybe that's because there was already enough evidence for everyone to see that Boris had (a) broken the law, (b) overseen a No. 10 with widespread rule-breaking, and (c) lied to Parliament.
    Ah I see
    Do you not think that perhaps you’re becoming a little too obsessed with this ?

    I wonder what you’d say if the reverse had occurred and it was Johnson having the curry and beer . I’m not a big fan of Starmer but he legally didn’t break any rules . That’s it .
    I don’t actually care that he did have the curry even if it were ‘illegal’, like I didn’t care if no 10 staff ate together in 2010. The rules were overblown and unnecessary.
    If only we knew who was responsible for those rules! Then we could blame the real villain of the piece.
  • Options
    isamisam Posts: 41,033

    isam said:

    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    algarkirk said:

    algarkirk said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    It is not impossible that there are wider implications. Tom de la Mare KC comments thus today on TwiX:

    One of the practical merits of the British Constitution hitherto is that the limits of the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty have never been explored by the passing of extreme legislation testing the unstated but assumed premises of our constitutional arrangements.

    Those problems are amplified by the other multifold ways in which our Parliament is evidently defective, starting with the abuse of delegated legislation and power transfer to the Executive, against which only the Courts are a safeguard, leading to further constitutional strain.

    Precisely!
    There are a couple of deep issues here.
    One is the question of what courts/lawyers/judges are for. Do they merely check out the law or do they ever make it?

    And secondly, who is the final arbiter? The Supreme Court or Parliament? And can a court simply say 'You can't do that because of reasons'.

    The government can change the law as it sees fit. But the government is not seeking to do that with the Rwanda legislation. It is seeking to disapply it inasmuch as it effects a particular category of people. If it can do it to them (refugees), what is to stop it doing the same to anyone else? It seems to me that we have entered entirely uncharted territory.

    Parliament can do what it likes. You display a fairly astonishing lack of understanding of the UK’s constitutional history

    It is an elected dictatorship, hedged about by convention. This is well known

    Is it flawless? No. Are other systems better? Maybe logically, but we have avoided revolution or ACTUAL dictatorship for 400 years unlike almost every other country in the world

    I totally understand that Parliament can do what it wants, but it is being asked to do what it has never done before. Our constitutional settlement is predicated on the principle that while Parliament is theoretically unconstrained, in practice it is, that there are certain things it will not do. I'd argue that removing human rights from a carefully defined group of people is one such action. If it can and then does do that with regard to refugees, why not other groups too?

    I feel your pain - some things are technically legal but just *feel* wrong. Yet they get away with it

    We'll see if they get away with it. An election is approaching. This government cannot now use Parliament to ban them as the House of Lords can block the required legislation. So the people will decide.

    Some things are legal, other things are not legal. Boris Johnson broke the law. Keir Starmer did not break the law. Let it go. It is done.

    There is a cigarette paper between what Boris was fined for (his wife bringing a birthday cake and beer into his office), what Rishi Sunak was fined for (being there having a glass of water) & what Sir Keir was investigated for (having a beer and curry after work/whilst working). The beer and cake wasn’t considered necessary for work, the beer and curry was.

    Sir Keir wanted them to resign for being investigated but failed to offer his resignation when it happened to him.

    If all that matters is strict legality, then let’s apply that to everything; lobbying, second jobs, MPs expenses etc etc
    Starmer did pledge to resign if given a fixed penalty notice, as did Angela Rayner. As a lawyer, Starmer knew currygate was within the rules.
    He called for Boris to resign before he was fined, just for being investigated
    Your persistance on this is in some way admirable but in other ways quite bizarre.

    Even if you maintain your current rate of intensity in presenting your argument, you might perhaps convince 1 person on this every couple of years, possibly. People made their minds up at the time and won't shift them now.
    There have been plenty of things I’ve swam against the tide about on here, and been proven right, so I don’t mind the graft. You’re right no one will change their mind though, I’m not expecting anyone to
  • Options

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    l

    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    Can you tell me the last time the UK government legislated to allow itself to break the law? Not to change the law, but to break it?

    The current constitutional settlement wrests on the notion that there are some things the government won’t do even if, in theory, it can. I’d suggest that a couple of those are legislating to remove all human rights from a defined group of people and legislating to allow the government to break the law. That goes beyond politics, although only politics can resolve it - if the government does not legislate that away.

    Well, your lot decided to try and cancel democracy by annulling a referendum - Britain’s biggest ever vote - before the result was even enacted. So frankly you can fuck off with this pious bullshit

    Not least because Sir Kir Royale was a leading “2nd voter”

    My lot?

    I did not vote Labour in December 2019. However, I did think that MPs elected on a manifesto promise to oppose a No Deal Brexit were perfectly entitled to seek to prevent one. The MPs that did not have such a right were the Tory ones.

    Sir Keir wanted a second referendum even if the PM and the EU agreed a deal before the 2019 GE; one of the options had to be remain, and he would campaign for Remain

    And Labour put that case to the British people and was roundly defeated.

    Yes, but you can’t get away with that, sorry.

    Sir Keir wanted a second referendum with remain an option, in which he would campaign for remain when there was no GE in the offing

    This is despite being elected in 2017 after saying respecting the result was ‘an important point of principle’
    Starmer did not get what he wanted. But what he wanted was to put his case to the British people, not impose an outcome on them.

    He said in the 2017 GE campaign

    We’ve got to do this from a position of principle.
    Did we agree agree that we’d put this out to the public for a vote? Yes
    Did we agree that we’d accept that vote? Yes
    Have we got to accept that result? Yes
    So the first position is a matter of principle; Having done this, having got a result, we’ve got to accept it, & simply saying ‘well it’s better for us electorally if we do this or do that’ doesn’t help”


    Then in 2019 when the Tories were between Prime Ministers, he said

    I’m really pleased that whatever outcome the next Prime Minister puts before us, whether that’s a deal of some sort, or no deal, we’ve agreed that it must be subject to another referendum, & in that referendum Remain must be an option and Labour will be campaigning for Remain

    That’s a really important point of principle ”

    So he did want to re run the referendum without a GE.
    After saying that would be wrong.
    And both were matters of principle
    This doesn't look like someone who has taken my well-meant advice to not obsess about SKS.
    You don’t like it, and you want him to shut up, because you know @isam is completely right
    It's become such a boring point now that I can't be bothered with it. The far more important thing - as I've said to isam - is he doesn't fall into a deep hole of (for want of a better term) 'StarmerDerangementSyndrome'. I know what that's like (the Johnson variety), obsessive dislike of a prominent politician, it eats you up, brings out the worst in you, stops you living properly. It'll be even worse for isam because me and BJ only had 3 years whereas he could be looking at a decade of Keir as our PM, as his PM. So that's 10 years of misery-guts negativity and nitpicking. I don't want that for him.
    The problem is when something like Starmer Derangement Syndrome (or BDS, or CDS...) gets called even when the criticism has some validity. In other words, when the fanbois are so fanboish they cannot even see when their guy has done something wrong.

    Remember the way some defended Corbyn when he was Labour leader, even when it was obvious he was utterly wrong?

    I was a firm, and early, critic of Boris on here, but I now find myself in the somewhat odd position of occasionally defending him against people who were lauding him back in 2016/7.
    All politicians do Bad Things. Especially the ones we like. The oddity around Currygate was that the motivation seemed essentially to be revenge for the fact that Boris got caught. If they proved that Starmer had done the same then Boris wasn't bad after all.

    I can't even argue that the Starmer event was ill-advised. If you recall there were various photos released of politicians of all parties doing similar during the campaign - and do what, the law had been changed. The absurdity was that after the GOTCHA moment fizzled they kept going at it and at it and at it. isam still is. Baffling.

    We can all point at laws we disagree with. But disagreeing with a law doesn't disapply it...
  • Options
    TazTaz Posts: 11,373

    Taz said:

    >

    Leon said:

    Right. Finals Week on Masterchef. No spoilers!

    Last night, tonight and tomorrow. Last night had a Monty Python moment, icymi.
    Did we. I watched it and didn’t spot one. Mind you I dropped off for about ten minutes.

    Anyway that ginger lad they love him. He could serve up a tin of tomato soup, poached egg on toast and a taste the difference tiramisu and they’d rave about it.
    Kasae, the Australian chef, missed it too but I'm fairly sure Gregg was teeing her up when he asked about her ingredients: and "what's a wattle?" It is, of course, the national flower of Australia.

    This is a wattle, the emblem of our land;
    You can stick it in a bottle; you can hold it in your hand.
    Oooh, now I need to catch up what I missed on IPlayer. That’s ace.
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,999

    Nigelb said:

    Selebian said:

    I want to buy my brother in law a really good knife for Christmas

    What's the brand that everyone keeps raving about on here?

    Perhaps I should have been clear that I'm looking for a kitchen or bartender's knife. He's
    a bar manager and home chef from Turin

    Even though when I was four, my sister two years older who once did a shit in her swimming costume in a hotel swimming pool near the Epcot Center, where we were on holiday with our grandparents, and then swam next to me and released the shit from her swimming costume, climbed out of the pool and told my grandparents that I'd shat in the pool

    The pool had to be evacuated

    I had no idea why, but it was blamed on me

    My sister finally owned up when I was 16, she was 18
    These things scar a person. I know of someone who has an ongoing dispute with a sibling on who really broke a TV about 25 years ago (person claims they only took the blame in the end as there was a we're all sitting here until someone owns up situation).
    Being an only child is awesome. You get spoiled rotten plus none of this nonsense.
    On the contrary - you are to blame for everything.
    I was a perfect child. I think the naughtiest thing I ever did was break my grandad’s glasses when I was 9 months.
    Discovering at an early age that justice is blind ?
  • Options
    isam said:

    Taz said:

    >

    isam said:

    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    algarkirk said:

    algarkirk said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    It is not impossible that there are wider implications. Tom de la Mare KC comments thus today on TwiX:

    One of the practical merits of the British Constitution hitherto is that the limits of the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty have never been explored by the passing of extreme legislation testing the unstated but assumed premises of our constitutional arrangements.

    Those problems are amplified by the other multifold ways in which our Parliament is evidently defective, starting with the abuse of delegated legislation and power transfer to the Executive, against which only the Courts are a safeguard, leading to further constitutional strain.

    Precisely!
    There are a couple of deep issues here.
    One is the question of what courts/lawyers/judges are for. Do they merely check out the law or do they ever make it?

    And secondly, who is the final arbiter? The Supreme Court or Parliament? And can a court simply say 'You can't do that because of reasons'.

    The government can change the law as it sees fit. But the government is not seeking to do that with the Rwanda legislation. It is seeking to disapply it inasmuch as it effects a particular category of people. If it can do it to them (refugees), what is to stop it doing the same to anyone else? It seems to me that we have entered entirely uncharted territory.

    Parliament can do what it likes. You display a fairly astonishing lack of understanding of the UK’s constitutional history

    It is an elected dictatorship, hedged about by convention. This is well known

    Is it flawless? No. Are other systems better? Maybe logically, but we have avoided revolution or ACTUAL dictatorship for 400 years unlike almost every other country in the world

    I totally understand that Parliament can do what it wants, but it is being asked to do what it has never done before. Our constitutional settlement is predicated on the principle that while Parliament is theoretically unconstrained, in practice it is, that there are certain things it will not do. I'd argue that removing human rights from a carefully defined group of people is one such action. If it can and then does do that with regard to refugees, why not other groups too?

    I feel your pain - some things are technically legal but just *feel* wrong. Yet they get away with it

    We'll see if they get away with it. An election is approaching. This government cannot now use Parliament to ban them as the House of Lords can block the required legislation. So the people will decide.

    Some things are legal, other things are not legal. Boris Johnson broke the law. Keir Starmer did not break the law. Let it go. It is done.

    There is a cigarette paper between what Boris was fined for (his wife bringing a birthday cake and beer into his office), what Rishi Sunak was fined for (being there having a glass of water) & what Sir Keir was investigated for (having a beer and curry after work/whilst working). The beer and cake wasn’t considered necessary for work, the beer and curry was.

    Sir Keir wanted them to resign for being investigated but failed to offer his resignation when it happened to him.

    If all that matters is strict legality, then let’s apply that to everything; lobbying, second jobs, MPs expenses etc etc
    Genuine question - are you a moron?

    Lets assume I do something which the law says is illegal. We both agree that its illegal, yes?

    The law is then changed. The thing that was illegal is now legal. You then do the same thing I did. The difference being that following a change in the law, the once illegal thing is now illegal.

    Still with me? Never mind your "cigarette paper" between the two actions, lets have the exact same action. How would you get away with the thing that I didn't? Because the law changed.

    You aren't this dumb to not get this? Are you? You go on to complaining about "strict legality". How else do we apply the law? An example - as a bisexual man I have had sexy time fun with other men. Because I did so after 27th July 1967 it was legal. Had I been around doing that before 27th July 1967 the same sexy time would have been illegal.

    The exact same action. Was illegal. Then became legal because the law changed. Same with Boris vs Starmer. Illegal when Boris did it, legal when STarmer did it because someone (Boris!!!) changed the law.

    Get it? Or are you a moron?
    I think you are a moron
    Why not try addressing the point?
    You’re an intelligent guy. You often have something interesting to add to a debate.

    Why resort to a personal attacks. You’re not like that drunk Ishmael.
    I asked a question, I didn't make a statement.

    And its a valid question which he is desperate to avoid because it demolishes his guff about Starmer.
    If you think you’re going to talk down to me like that and get anything other than insults back, you really are the moron
    Talk down at you? You're talking down at yourself! You either understand what laws are or you don't. I assume that you do. But keep posting that you don't. I am happy to accept that you aren't a moron. But you are acting in a moronic way, so I had to ask as the only way to try and get the basic principle of what "legal" and "illegal" are on the table.

    You aren't the only one who does this kind of performance. All the Just Stop Oil lot insist that the law should be disapplied to them as well, on the simple basis that they disagree wit it and consider it unfair. They know how the law works is as well as you or I, and yet keep on doing the same thing...
  • Options
    isam said:

    isam said:

    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    algarkirk said:

    algarkirk said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    It is not impossible that there are wider implications. Tom de la Mare KC comments thus today on TwiX:

    One of the practical merits of the British Constitution hitherto is that the limits of the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty have never been explored by the passing of extreme legislation testing the unstated but assumed premises of our constitutional arrangements.

    Those problems are amplified by the other multifold ways in which our Parliament is evidently defective, starting with the abuse of delegated legislation and power transfer to the Executive, against which only the Courts are a safeguard, leading to further constitutional strain.

    Precisely!
    There are a couple of deep issues here.
    One is the question of what courts/lawyers/judges are for. Do they merely check out the law or do they ever make it?

    And secondly, who is the final arbiter? The Supreme Court or Parliament? And can a court simply say 'You can't do that because of reasons'.

    The government can change the law as it sees fit. But the government is not seeking to do that with the Rwanda legislation. It is seeking to disapply it inasmuch as it effects a particular category of people. If it can do it to them (refugees), what is to stop it doing the same to anyone else? It seems to me that we have entered entirely uncharted territory.

    Parliament can do what it likes. You display a fairly astonishing lack of understanding of the UK’s constitutional history

    It is an elected dictatorship, hedged about by convention. This is well known

    Is it flawless? No. Are other systems better? Maybe logically, but we have avoided revolution or ACTUAL dictatorship for 400 years unlike almost every other country in the world

    I totally understand that Parliament can do what it wants, but it is being asked to do what it has never done before. Our constitutional settlement is predicated on the principle that while Parliament is theoretically unconstrained, in practice it is, that there are certain things it will not do. I'd argue that removing human rights from a carefully defined group of people is one such action. If it can and then does do that with regard to refugees, why not other groups too?

    I feel your pain - some things are technically legal but just *feel* wrong. Yet they get away with it

    We'll see if they get away with it. An election is approaching. This government cannot now use Parliament to ban them as the House of Lords can block the required legislation. So the people will decide.

    Some things are legal, other things are not legal. Boris Johnson broke the law. Keir Starmer did not break the law. Let it go. It is done.

    There is a cigarette paper between what Boris was fined for (his wife bringing a birthday cake and beer into his office), what Rishi Sunak was fined for (being there having a glass of water) & what Sir Keir was investigated for (having a beer and curry after work/whilst working). The beer and cake wasn’t considered necessary for work, the beer and curry was.

    Sir Keir wanted them to resign for being investigated but failed to offer his resignation when it happened to him.

    If all that matters is strict legality, then let’s apply that to everything; lobbying, second jobs, MPs expenses etc etc
    Starmer did pledge to resign if given a fixed penalty notice, as did Angela Rayner. As a lawyer, Starmer knew currygate was within the rules.
    He called for Boris to resign before he was fined, just for being investigated
    Your persistance on this is in some way admirable but in other ways quite bizarre.

    Even if you maintain your current rate of intensity in presenting your argument, you might perhaps convince 1 person on this every couple of years, possibly. People made their minds up at the time and won't shift them now.
    There have been plenty of things I’ve swam against the tide about on here, and been proven right, so I don’t mind the graft. You’re right no one will change their mind though, I’m not expecting anyone to
    Question - how will you "swimming against the tide" prove you right in the long term? Will the intervening law change between 2020 and 2021 somehow be undone?

    A action. Which was legal. Was made illegal. And then made legal again. It isn't complicated.
  • Options
    TazTaz Posts: 11,373
    edited December 2023
    isam said:

    Taz said:

    >

    isam said:

    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    algarkirk said:

    algarkirk said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    It is not impossible that there are wider implications. Tom de la Mare KC comments thus today on TwiX:

    One of the practical merits of the British Constitution hitherto is that the limits of the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty have never been explored by the passing of extreme legislation testing the unstated but assumed premises of our constitutional arrangements.

    Those problems are amplified by the other multifold ways in which our Parliament is evidently defective, starting with the abuse of delegated legislation and power transfer to the Executive, against which only the Courts are a safeguard, leading to further constitutional strain.

    Precisely!
    There are a couple of deep issues here.
    One is the question of what courts/lawyers/judges are for. Do they merely check out the law or do they ever make it?

    And secondly, who is the final arbiter? The Supreme Court or Parliament? And can a court simply say 'You can't do that because of reasons'.

    The government can change the law as it sees fit. But the government is not seeking to do that with the Rwanda legislation. It is seeking to disapply it inasmuch as it effects a particular category of people. If it can do it to them (refugees), what is to stop it doing the same to anyone else? It seems to me that we have entered entirely uncharted territory.

    Parliament can do what it likes. You display a fairly astonishing lack of understanding of the UK’s constitutional history

    It is an elected dictatorship, hedged about by convention. This is well known

    Is it flawless? No. Are other systems better? Maybe logically, but we have avoided revolution or ACTUAL dictatorship for 400 years unlike almost every other country in the world

    I totally understand that Parliament can do what it wants, but it is being asked to do what it has never done before. Our constitutional settlement is predicated on the principle that while Parliament is theoretically unconstrained, in practice it is, that there are certain things it will not do. I'd argue that removing human rights from a carefully defined group of people is one such action. If it can and then does do that with regard to refugees, why not other groups too?

    I feel your pain - some things are technically legal but just *feel* wrong. Yet they get away with it

    We'll see if they get away with it. An election is approaching. This government cannot now use Parliament to ban them as the House of Lords can block the required legislation. So the people will decide.

    Some things are legal, other things are not legal. Boris Johnson broke the law. Keir Starmer did not break the law. Let it go. It is done.

    There is a cigarette paper between what Boris was fined for (his wife bringing a birthday cake and beer into his office), what Rishi Sunak was fined for (being there having a glass of water) & what Sir Keir was investigated for (having a beer and curry after work/whilst working). The beer and cake wasn’t considered necessary for work, the beer and curry was.

    Sir Keir wanted them to resign for being investigated but failed to offer his resignation when it happened to him.

    If all that matters is strict legality, then let’s apply that to everything; lobbying, second jobs, MPs expenses etc etc
    Genuine question - are you a moron?

    Lets assume I do something which the law says is illegal. We both agree that its illegal, yes?

    The law is then changed. The thing that was illegal is now legal. You then do the same thing I did. The difference being that following a change in the law, the once illegal thing is now illegal.

    Still with me? Never mind your "cigarette paper" between the two actions, lets have the exact same action. How would you get away with the thing that I didn't? Because the law changed.

    You aren't this dumb to not get this? Are you? You go on to complaining about "strict legality". How else do we apply the law? An example - as a bisexual man I have had sexy time fun with other men. Because I did so after 27th July 1967 it was legal. Had I been around doing that before 27th July 1967 the same sexy time would have been illegal.

    The exact same action. Was illegal. Then became legal because the law changed. Same with Boris vs Starmer. Illegal when Boris did it, legal when STarmer did it because someone (Boris!!!) changed the law.

    Get it? Or are you a moron?
    I think you are a moron
    Why not try addressing the point?
    You’re an intelligent guy. You often have something interesting to add to a debate.

    Why resort to a personal attacks. You’re not like that drunk Ishmael.
    I asked a question, I didn't make a statement.

    And its a valid question which he is desperate to avoid because it demolishes his guff about Starmer.
    If you think you’re going to talk down to me like that and get anything other than insults back, you really are the moron
    Mate, a few hours ago you were talking about a mate of yours who dropped down dead at 48 and you spent yesterday arguing about beergate.

    Life is too short for vitriol.
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    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    Selebian said:

    I want to buy my brother in law a really good knife for Christmas

    What's the brand that everyone keeps raving about on here?

    Perhaps I should have been clear that I'm looking for a kitchen or bartender's knife. He's
    a bar manager and home chef from Turin

    Even though when I was four, my sister two years older who once did a shit in her swimming costume in a hotel swimming pool near the Epcot Center, where we were on holiday with our grandparents, and then swam next to me and released the shit from her swimming costume, climbed out of the pool and told my grandparents that I'd shat in the pool

    The pool had to be evacuated

    I had no idea why, but it was blamed on me

    My sister finally owned up when I was 16, she was 18
    These things scar a person. I know of someone who has an ongoing dispute with a sibling on who really broke a TV about 25 years ago (person claims they only took the blame in the end as there was a we're all sitting here until someone owns up situation).
    Being an only child is awesome. You get spoiled rotten plus none of this nonsense.
    On the contrary - you are to blame for everything.
    I was a perfect child. I think the naughtiest thing I ever did was break my grandad’s glasses when I was 9 months.
    Discovering at an early age that justice is blind ?
    I actually I did a much naughtier thing when I was 2.

    Playing hide and go seek with my mother I decided to hide in the washing machine, it is the only time in childhood my mother ever hit me. It explains my life long hatred of washing and ironing.
  • Options
    TazTaz Posts: 11,373
    edited December 2023

    Leon said:

    Right. Finals Week on Masterchef. No spoilers!

    Finals Plural. How many finals are there?
    They pad the whole thing out for weeks.

    Tonight’s episode no one will leave they just go and cook somewhere abroad.
  • Options
    FairlieredFairliered Posts: 4,036
    Andy_JS said:

    Is this new?

    "Russia hacked hundreds of MPs and civil servants"

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/russia-hacked-hundreds-of-mps-and-civil-servants-wvhrh2cvw

    After hacking into Braverman’s personal emails, the Russians have decided that she will be the perfect replacement for Putin, when the time comes.
  • Options

    NEW THREAD

  • Options
    Taz said:

    Leon said:

    Right. Finals Week on Masterchef. No spoilers!

    Finals Plural. How many finals are there?
    They pad the whole thing out for weeks.

    Tonight’s episode no one will leave they just go and cook somewhere abroad.
    Somewhere abroad is Alchemist in Copenhagen. Chef Rasmus Monk is properly bonkers artistic.
  • Options
    theProletheProle Posts: 950
    edited December 2023

    theProle said:

    Immigration at the scale we have is itself a direct constitutional issue. It literally changes how the country is constituted and resets the parameters within which politics can take place.

    But the Rwanda plan has almost nothing to do with immigration at the scale we have. The record levels of immigration are from people on student visas, work visas, family visas, and the special Ukraine and Hong Kong schemes. All of those are things that are under the direct control of the Government and do not require unprecedented legislation to address.
    Yep this is what all the Rwanda advocates are ignoring. Apart from a very small number coming over illegally, we have exactly what they want. We have control of our borders.

    It is just that the Government has decided (correctly in my opinion) that they will use that control to allow more migrants into the UK to provide the workers and growth we need.

    This whole thing about 745,000 immigrants last year has nothing to do with illegal migration. Nor will it be stopped by Rwanda type idiocy. It has everything to do with the current Government making an economic and political decision over how many people it wants to let into the country.
    Yes and no. I'm completely in agreement that the government needs to get a grip on legal migration ASAP (the shortage occupation list needs either to go or a massive pruning), and that the government is deliberately conflating the legal and illegal immigration issues in the hope that people will think solving the boat crossings problem will solve the whole thing.

    That said, the boat crossings issue is real - it's still about 10% of the total immigration numbers, and it's also the least desirable and most expensive to us of all the immigration streams.

    It's also a problem with as far as I can see only 3 possible solutions:
    1)Use the navy to sink every boat. Would probably only require one or two sinkings and a few hundred drownings to work, but obviously it's completely unacceptable to behave like that, and we shouldn't do it.
    2) Get the French to catch all the people smugglers before they leave the French coast/waters. Nice idea in theory, in practice completely unworkable as the French have zero incentive to co-operate, no matter how much we pay them.
    3) Remove every single boat crosser without fail to somewhere that's safe, but not in the UK. This would actually work to stop the crossings, as the Australians demonstrated when they solved their boat people problem.

    My problem is that the government doesn't actually seem to be serious about solving the issue; they would rather keep losing in the courts and making a load of noise about lefty lawyers obstructing democracy (they aren't wrong about that, but it's hardly news - lawyers have been abusing the HRA for years to give "rights" to allow undesirables to stay in the country), rather than actually getting the deed done, and planes flying to Rwanda. If they don't think it's possible under the law (and it's pretty clear Jenrick and Braveman don't) either give up and try something different, or change the law, rather than keep pretending that this time it will be different.
    Your 10% is quite a long way off.

    The last year we have full figures for for legal and illegal immigration the number of migrants entering by illegal boat crossings was 45,000. Total legal immigration in 2022 was 1.2 million. That is 3.75%

    If the Government actually wanted to do something about reducing overall migration (which I don't think they should anyway) then they should spend the time and effort on reducing legal migration - and suffer the economic comsequences - rather than spending vast sums on stupid schemes to send people to Africa.

    Again - Yes and No. I thought that the annual illegal migration number was around 70k - having just looked it is 52.5k - fair cop.
    On the other hand, (and again my fault) using the total legal immigration number is wrong (and not what I meant - I expressed myself badly); it's the net number that's really relevant. The net number is 672k for the last year. so the actual percentage of illegal immigrants is just under 8%, and most of those came by boat.

    The government is spending around 8 million quid a day on hotels for asylum seekers, which is about £66k per person that arrives. If we can make the problem go away permanently by throwing say half of that per head at Rwanda, that's a complete bargain.
  • Options
    kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,429

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    l

    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    Can you tell me the last time the UK government legislated to allow itself to break the law? Not to change the law, but to break it?

    The current constitutional settlement wrests on the notion that there are some things the government won’t do even if, in theory, it can. I’d suggest that a couple of those are legislating to remove all human rights from a defined group of people and legislating to allow the government to break the law. That goes beyond politics, although only politics can resolve it - if the government does not legislate that away.

    Well, your lot decided to try and cancel democracy by annulling a referendum - Britain’s biggest ever vote - before the result was even enacted. So frankly you can fuck off with this pious bullshit

    Not least because Sir Kir Royale was a leading “2nd voter”

    My lot?

    I did not vote Labour in December 2019. However, I did think that MPs elected on a manifesto promise to oppose a No Deal Brexit were perfectly entitled to seek to prevent one. The MPs that did not have such a right were the Tory ones.

    Sir Keir wanted a second referendum even if the PM and the EU agreed a deal before the 2019 GE; one of the options had to be remain, and he would campaign for Remain

    And Labour put that case to the British people and was roundly defeated.

    Yes, but you can’t get away with that, sorry.

    Sir Keir wanted a second referendum with remain an option, in which he would campaign for remain when there was no GE in the offing

    This is despite being elected in 2017 after saying respecting the result was ‘an important point of principle’
    Starmer did not get what he wanted. But what he wanted was to put his case to the British people, not impose an outcome on them.

    He said in the 2017 GE campaign

    We’ve got to do this from a position of principle.
    Did we agree agree that we’d put this out to the public for a vote? Yes
    Did we agree that we’d accept that vote? Yes
    Have we got to accept that result? Yes
    So the first position is a matter of principle; Having done this, having got a result, we’ve got to accept it, & simply saying ‘well it’s better for us electorally if we do this or do that’ doesn’t help”


    Then in 2019 when the Tories were between Prime Ministers, he said

    I’m really pleased that whatever outcome the next Prime Minister puts before us, whether that’s a deal of some sort, or no deal, we’ve agreed that it must be subject to another referendum, & in that referendum Remain must be an option and Labour will be campaigning for Remain

    That’s a really important point of principle ”

    So he did want to re run the referendum without a GE.
    After saying that would be wrong.
    And both were matters of principle
    This doesn't look like someone who has taken my well-meant advice to not obsess about SKS.
    You don’t like it, and you want him to shut up, because you know @isam is completely right
    It's become such a boring point now that I can't be bothered with it. The far more important thing - as I've said to isam - is he doesn't fall into a deep hole of (for want of a better term) 'StarmerDerangementSyndrome'. I know what that's like (the Johnson variety), obsessive dislike of a prominent politician, it eats you up, brings out the worst in you, stops you living properly. It'll be even worse for isam because me and BJ only had 3 years whereas he could be looking at a decade of Keir as our PM, as his PM. So that's 10 years of misery-guts negativity and nitpicking. I don't want that for him.
    The problem is when something like Starmer Derangement Syndrome (or BDS, or CDS...) gets called even when the criticism has some validity. In other words, when the fanbois are so fanboish they cannot even see when their guy has done something wrong.

    Remember the way some defended Corbyn when he was Labour leader, even when it was obvious he was utterly wrong?

    I was a firm, and early, critic of Boris on here, but I now find myself in the somewhat odd position of occasionally defending him against people who were lauding him back in 2016/7.
    Tbf Starmer doesn't have much of a passionate fanbase and so correspondingly there isn't a lot of SDS around. Where you do mainly find it is in 2 places. The Corbynite left who feel legged over by him. A certain type of Leaver who took the Ref2 campaign as a personal affront. When someone is in both those camps (eg BJO) that's where you'll see SDS at its most pungent.
  • Options
    MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 25,418
    ...
    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    algarkirk said:

    algarkirk said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    It is not impossible that there are wider implications. Tom de la Mare KC comments thus today on TwiX:

    One of the practical merits of the British Constitution hitherto is that the limits of the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty have never been explored by the passing of extreme legislation testing the unstated but assumed premises of our constitutional arrangements.

    Those problems are amplified by the other multifold ways in which our Parliament is evidently defective, starting with the abuse of delegated legislation and power transfer to the Executive, against which only the Courts are a safeguard, leading to further constitutional strain.

    Precisely!
    There are a couple of deep issues here.
    One is the question of what courts/lawyers/judges are for. Do they merely check out the law or do they ever make it?

    And secondly, who is the final arbiter? The Supreme Court or Parliament? And can a court simply say 'You can't do that because of reasons'.

    The government can change the law as it sees fit. But the government is not seeking to do that with the Rwanda legislation. It is seeking to disapply it inasmuch as it effects a particular category of people. If it can do it to them (refugees), what is to stop it doing the same to anyone else? It seems to me that we have entered entirely uncharted territory.

    Parliament can do what it likes. You display a fairly astonishing lack of understanding of the UK’s constitutional history

    It is an elected dictatorship, hedged about by convention. This is well known

    Is it flawless? No. Are other systems better? Maybe logically, but we have avoided revolution or ACTUAL dictatorship for 400 years unlike almost every other country in the world

    I totally understand that Parliament can do what it wants, but it is being asked to do what it has never done before. Our constitutional settlement is predicated on the principle that while Parliament is theoretically unconstrained, in practice it is, that there are certain things it will not do. I'd argue that removing human rights from a carefully defined group of people is one such action. If it can and then does do that with regard to refugees, why not other groups too?

    I feel your pain - some things are technically legal but just *feel* wrong. Yet they get away with it

    We'll see if they get away with it. An election is approaching. This government cannot now use Parliament to ban them as the House of Lords can block the required legislation. So the people will decide.

    Some things are legal, other things are not legal. Boris Johnson broke the law. Keir Starmer did not break the law. Let it go. It is done.

    There is a cigarette paper between what Boris was fined for (his wife bringing a birthday cake and beer into his office), what Rishi Sunak was fined for (being there having a glass of water) & what Sir Keir was investigated for (having a beer and curry after work/whilst working). The beer and cake wasn’t considered necessary for work, the beer and curry was.

    Sir Keir wanted them to resign for being investigated but failed to offer his resignation when it happened to him.

    If all that matters is strict legality, then let’s apply that to everything; lobbying, second jobs, MPs expenses etc etc
    Why are you ignoring all the other "events" that Johnson attended, not least the Abba Party in his very own apartment?
  • Options
    JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 39,165

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    l

    isam said:

    isam said:

    Leon said:

    If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.

    If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?

    The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.

    That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).

    There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
    Can you tell me the last time the UK government legislated to allow itself to break the law? Not to change the law, but to break it?

    The current constitutional settlement wrests on the notion that there are some things the government won’t do even if, in theory, it can. I’d suggest that a couple of those are legislating to remove all human rights from a defined group of people and legislating to allow the government to break the law. That goes beyond politics, although only politics can resolve it - if the government does not legislate that away.

    Well, your lot decided to try and cancel democracy by annulling a referendum - Britain’s biggest ever vote - before the result was even enacted. So frankly you can fuck off with this pious bullshit

    Not least because Sir Kir Royale was a leading “2nd voter”

    My lot?

    I did not vote Labour in December 2019. However, I did think that MPs elected on a manifesto promise to oppose a No Deal Brexit were perfectly entitled to seek to prevent one. The MPs that did not have such a right were the Tory ones.

    Sir Keir wanted a second referendum even if the PM and the EU agreed a deal before the 2019 GE; one of the options had to be remain, and he would campaign for Remain

    And Labour put that case to the British people and was roundly defeated.

    Yes, but you can’t get away with that, sorry.

    Sir Keir wanted a second referendum with remain an option, in which he would campaign for remain when there was no GE in the offing

    This is despite being elected in 2017 after saying respecting the result was ‘an important point of principle’
    Starmer did not get what he wanted. But what he wanted was to put his case to the British people, not impose an outcome on them.

    He said in the 2017 GE campaign

    We’ve got to do this from a position of principle.
    Did we agree agree that we’d put this out to the public for a vote? Yes
    Did we agree that we’d accept that vote? Yes
    Have we got to accept that result? Yes
    So the first position is a matter of principle; Having done this, having got a result, we’ve got to accept it, & simply saying ‘well it’s better for us electorally if we do this or do that’ doesn’t help”


    Then in 2019 when the Tories were between Prime Ministers, he said

    I’m really pleased that whatever outcome the next Prime Minister puts before us, whether that’s a deal of some sort, or no deal, we’ve agreed that it must be subject to another referendum, & in that referendum Remain must be an option and Labour will be campaigning for Remain

    That’s a really important point of principle ”

    So he did want to re run the referendum without a GE.
    After saying that would be wrong.
    And both were matters of principle
    This doesn't look like someone who has taken my well-meant advice to not obsess about SKS.
    You don’t like it, and you want him to shut up, because you know @isam is completely right
    It's become such a boring point now that I can't be bothered with it. The far more important thing - as I've said to isam - is he doesn't fall into a deep hole of (for want of a better term) 'StarmerDerangementSyndrome'. I know what that's like (the Johnson variety), obsessive dislike of a prominent politician, it eats you up, brings out the worst in you, stops you living properly. It'll be even worse for isam because me and BJ only had 3 years whereas he could be looking at a decade of Keir as our PM, as his PM. So that's 10 years of misery-guts negativity and nitpicking. I don't want that for him.
    The problem is when something like Starmer Derangement Syndrome (or BDS, or CDS...) gets called even when the criticism has some validity. In other words, when the fanbois are so fanboish they cannot even see when their guy has done something wrong.

    Remember the way some defended Corbyn when he was Labour leader, even when it was obvious he was utterly wrong?

    I was a firm, and early, critic of Boris on here, but I now find myself in the somewhat odd position of occasionally defending him against people who were lauding him back in 2016/7.
    All politicians do Bad Things. Especially the ones we like. The oddity around Currygate was that the motivation seemed essentially to be revenge for the fact that Boris got caught. If they proved that Starmer had done the same then Boris wasn't bad after all.

    I can't even argue that the Starmer event was ill-advised. If you recall there were various photos released of politicians of all parties doing similar during the campaign - and do what, the law had been changed. The absurdity was that after the GOTCHA moment fizzled they kept going at it and at it and at it. isam still is. Baffling.

    We can all point at laws we disagree with. But disagreeing with a law doesn't disapply it...
    I think Starmer was in the wrong over Currygate; but there seems little point in arguing over it on here. For one thing, I think calling it a 'work event' is pushing things - especially if alcohol was involved. Secondly, there's the (ahem) minor fact that the virus did not care if it was a work event or not: it was not sensible to get people from all over the country together to have food/get pissed. Thirdly, there's the hypocrisy of SKS wanting to lock us down further 'for our safety' later on. Fourthly, after the Mitchell Affair, I don't trust the police to be impartial when it comes to politics.

    I know this will *enrage* Labour people, but that's my view. I see a vast gulf between their views on Boris/partgate and Starmer/beergate, when there's not much gap between he events in reality.
This discussion has been closed.