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A Dismal Spectacle – politicalbetting.com
A Dismal Spectacle – politicalbetting.com
35 years ago – 14 February 1989 – Khomeini’s fatwa against Salman Rushdie was issued. A foreign leader instructed members of his religion world-wide to murder him because he had written a book which that leader claimed insulted his religion. After the initial outrage, some Labour politicians started rowing back, claiming that the reaction of Muslims here who supported the fatwa was understandable. It was an unprincipled, craven stance influenced by a desire not to offend Labour voters. Threatening the life and safety of a British citizen could be justified, if there were votes in it.
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It is a complete lie people protesting against a genocide are threatening violence. The only threats they are issuing are that they won't vote for those MPs complicit in Genocide.
Let's do a swap of all 650 MPs send them to live in Gaza for a month living in the conditions of typical Gazans and bring 650 Gazans to the UK permanently.
Any surviving MPs who return after the month can then decide if a ceasefire is required or not.
And it is noticeable, in any case, that nothing was said about this ‘security’ explanation for the Speaker’s ruling on the day; this story has emerged only after it turned into a scandal. If we do the Speaker the favour of assuming that it’s genuine, and not a convenient post hoc explanation, it is likely that Starmer put such concerns to him to try and ‘persuade’ the Speaker to make a ruling that just happened to get Starmer out of a huge political hole, security concerns or no.
The big issue is that a combination of absurdly arcane parliamentary procedure and the appalling behaviour of members across the chamber has brought our national politics further into disrepute.
I will credit the SNP with being better informed and perhaps more concerned, because of their First Minister’s family connections, but does anyone believe they weren’t significantly motivated by the opportunity to word a motion that would create rifts within Labour?
Does anyone believe that Labour wasn’t mostly motivated by the need to patch over and hide away its internal divisions, and the not completely resolved matter of attitudes within its party, above making a worthwhile contribution to the national debate?
Does anyone believe that the Tories - who regularly play procedural games with opposition day debates - weren’t fully aware that by walking out and letting Labour’s amendment through, they would handily stoke the building crisis and be able to sit back and let Labour and the SNP take chunks out of each other?
None of them put our national and political reputation above their petty partisan concerns.
Do MPs where stab vests?
Eng 112/5 at lunch on Day 1, having chosen to bat.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/tory-mike-freer-says-many-31749984.amp
PB Israel apologists please explain.
I wish all that shit could just stay in the Middle East rather than poisoning our politics.
I call bullshit.
Why?
Firstly, you cannot know this. You are not a conduit through which the protestors contact MPs; so you cannot know that everyone on your side is playing nicely. You may want it to be true, but that doesn't make it true.
Secondly, serious threats against MPs are well documented on a whole host of issues. Causes, good and bad, attract those who go a little too far - though mostly just in words, not physical violence. Though words can be bad enough for the target. So it is not as though threats of violence are unprecedented. And as we've seen with Cox and Amess, violence can occur, and MPs are right to be concerned.
Thirdly, your fellow travellers are numerous. I *know* you wouldn't possibly threaten an MP, and neither would any of your friends, because you're all awesome. But with that number of people, there're bound to be some idiots - or worse - who go too far.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-68374811
And even if it did happen it was apparently more likely it came from the Labour Whips so Starmer isn’t implicated anyway .
I have seen some of the threats made against current MPs, as I did during the Brexit impasse. The overwhelming majority of people who want peace in Gaza are non violent, there's a very small minority who are not, just like I don't tar all Brexiteers with Thomas Mair or the far right mobs who threatened to Jo Cox a few MPs.
You owe Cyclefree an apology.
I do not accept this line of reasoning. The precise arrangements for minor party opposition days, where others can propose amendments but they are never called, before a non-binding vote is not some crucial part of the bedrock of our democracy. One can argue Hoyle was right or wrong to take an amendment that changed a motion calling for a ceasefire to a slightly different motion calling for a ceasefire. Threats of intimidation didn’t change how MPs voted, which would be a concern, but it’s not some craven acquiescence to terrorism for the Speaker to decide that on a contentious matter, it was important to get to a motion that a majority of the House could support rather than let the SNP play games with a motion designed purely for their own campaigning purposes.
Looking at the newspaper headlines this morning, these events are absent or the third story. I think the newspapers appreciate that the public will be largely unbothered by this spat. It is a concern that MPs are being intimidated, but this row over Parliamentary procedure does not mean the terrorists have won.
If she wins the govt may still appeal.
If she returns celebrity big brother, I'm a sleb, strictly and Masterchef may well await. Mind you it is a big if. Even if she gets her citizenship back, and I think she should, there are several others in these camps who retain british citizenship who have not been repatriated and there is little sign of them being repatriated. An incoming labour govt will probably have a different view.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/court-to-rule-on-shamima-begum-appeal-against-citizenship-removal/ar-BB1iKlvG?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=27ecb2d326df44f483775ee7ba1f9a7d&ei=8
It is depressing. Quite frankly I expected better from here.
Yousaf urged to suspend MSP who said it was legitimate to criticise ‘the Jews’
John Mason accused of making ‘appalling antisemitic comment’ in Gaza debate at Holyrood
Humza Yousaf has been urged to suspend an SNP MSP who said it was legitimate to criticise “the Jews” because of the Bible’s teachings.
In a debate at Holyrood about the war in Gaza, John Mason, who has often fallen foul of his party leadership for a series of controversial comments, said it was possible not to be antisemitic while criticising the Israeli state.
However, he added that “neither are the two completely distinct and unconnected” because most Jewish people in the UK had relations or friends in Israel.
“It is the only Jewish state in the world and, according to the Bible, is the land which God gave his chosen people,” Mason said.
“Now, having said that, it does not mean that we cannot criticise the Jews or Israel. God himself is hugely critical of his people in much of the scriptures, not least when he punished them by exiling them to Babylon and elsewhere.
“So, it is not antisemitic for some to say that the present Israeli offensive has been over the top and has possibly crossed the line from defence to revenge.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/yousaf-urged-to-suspend-msp-who-said-it-was-legitimate-to-criticise-the-jews-cj5nxw0ch
"Rather than stand up to this [threats of violence against MPs], he caved in." - really? What happened - Parliament passed a motion calling for a complete cease-fire. The real nutters out there want to destroy Israel and think anyone who disagrees is "enabling genocide". The motion passed fulfils the sane part of the argument and - unlike the original SNP motion - does not provide succour to the nutters.
We also need to go back to what specifically happened. Yesterday I posted a link to and text from the letter from the clerk to the speaker. What Hoyle chose to do was in order, with precedent, and exclusively at his discretion. All of the guff about Hoyle making up the rules as he went along is just that - guff.
What should have happened? How would MPs have "stood up" to nutters making threats? By passing the inflammatory SNP motion designed to appease them? I'm defending Holye despite the motion of my own party not even being selected - I'm not being partisan.
There is a clear path being trod by the international community to constrain both of the aggressors and bring fighting to a stop. Our parliament passed a motion keeping us on that international path. That IS standing up to the nutters who think only Israel is wrong, the ones who threaten MPs for not being pro-Hamas.
How strange to see this newfound conviction among Conservatives that people who get something wrong in the House of Commons should immediately lose their jobs.
Yet again @Cyclefree identifies the issues correctly and to those who think it is all irrelevant or a Westminster story you couldn't be more wrong
MPs fear is well documented and cowering to the baying mob outside the house who project an antisemitic saying onto the HOC whilst the police stand and watch is not only wrong, but utterly frightening
Indeed unless something is done I fear the next election will be one where violence and intimidation occur like never before and you can see some of that already in the Rochdale by election due next Thursday
I have never felt more depressed about our politics and politicians than I do now
We have lunatics who feel that they are entitled to disrupt and risk lives because their perception of what is required in respect of the environment is not matched by the consensus. We have the never ending bitterness of the Brexit arguments. We have, in Scotland, the wearying arguments about independence. We have partisan views on both sides about various foreign issues, whether it is who the next President of the US should be, the rights and wrongs of Ukraine and now the rights and wrongs of a war in the Middle East over which we have no influence whatsoever.
While our political class and many others waste their time and energy on these matters our public services become ever more a source of income for those employed in them and ever less a source of services for those in need. Blatant injustices, such as those whose lives are poisoned by blood products or wrongly accused of theft go on unresolved. In Scotland the second anniversary of a police inquiry into the honesty and bookkeeping of the party of government goes by barely noted. Our armed services now share in the general disappointment.
We need to find more common causes and better means of achieving consensus. It is easy to state but hard to do. Politics no longer even seems to attract the sort of people who might try to achieve this. It is concerning.
The mob want to finger Israel as uniquely to blame - something written into the SNP motion. The actual motion passed by the house took that out. Something which I would imagine the mob wouldn't have liked.
"The UK’s household energy price cap is set to fall by 12 per cent in April following a drop in wholesale gas and electricity prices.
Ofgem, Britain’s energy regulator, has set the price cap for the April to June period at £1,690 a year for a typical household, down from £1,928.
It is the lowest level for the cap since March 2022, when it stood at £1,216. However, it remains above typical levels of below £1,200 before the energy crisis that began in the winter of 2021 as wholesale prices rose."
Based on wholesale prices, I expect the cap will be reduced further in July as well.
https://www.thenational.scot/news/24134333.read-snps-gaza-ceasefire-motion-labours-amendment---full/
Reading these highlights the ridiculous nature of the rows in parliament. Most readers would probably agree with 90% of the text of all amendments.
There is nevertheless some interesting nuance.
The original SNP motion is by far the shortest and to the point. It’s notably leaning on the Palestinian side. There’s a bit of a student politics vibe to it.
The Labour amendment is the most wordy, opaque and couched in international diplomacy language. You can sense the committee based drafting. It loses most of its power as a result, but is fairly inoffensive.
The Lib Dem one is also wordy. It leans a bit on the Palestinian side of the mean and personalises the message more on Netanyahu and the Likud government.
The Tory amendment is much more clearly pro-Israeli and reads as a rebuttal to the SNP wording. It’s the most well drafted of the 4, but out of line with most public opinion on the war: it reads like something written last October rather than now.
But these differences are really not huge.
I'm reminded of the Batley Grammar teacher hounded out by a mob. This isn't new. It's just happening to MPs now. That doesn't make it less serious but it does make it predictable. Turns out feeding that crocodile doesn't make it your friend.
My local station was £1.33 a litre two weeks ago and is now £1.37
The current uptick in political violence has its roots in the 2016-19 period, when some of those now leading the charge against the protesters were themselves inflaming the mob - Enemies of the People anyone?
Let us hope that action is taken now that should have been taken then. The events of this week do not leave me optimistic that will be the case.
Helps saves money and deprives Saudi Arabia of money.
The message to the mob from all the shouting the last two days is “look, if you make MPs feel intimidated you can influence what happens in parliament”. This being blown up more just encourages them and gives them ideas.
They too are really pissed off that Hoyle denied them the opportunity of the spectacle of Labour MPs voting against the SNP motion while being unable to vote in support of a Labour amendment calling for an immediate ceasefire.
So in acting as he did, Hoyle frustrated these people. Whatever Hoyle's motivation for his actions, frustrating them is one of the outcomes. So if he ended up doing the opposite of what those practicising intimidation would have wanted, it hardly amounts to the appeasement claimed in the thread, does it?
I also find the thread pretty one-sided, to be honest. A pretty open attack on Starmer for using the threat of violence for political advantage, yet total silence on the way that the SNP and Conservatives also cooperated to try and gain political advantage by using the issue of Gaza to open up splits in Labour, effectively distracting from any focus on the substance of the outrage that is happening there.
We can't build or repair stuff, can't keep our population healthy, can't afford to tackle crime or put criminals in prison, can't have a functioning miltary or even fire missiles. The list of our failures is endless. But we can fuck about around about how important we are on the world stage....not!
It's shameful, and we deserve better.
On Today this morning in a piece about the legitimacy of protesting outside MPs' homes I heard "Just Stop Oil" become "Just Stop Tory Oil"
That said, and to bring together the two discussions currently in this thread, political violence is similar to inflation in that if action is not taken to address it, then it can become entrenched and pose a greater problem down the line.
I think the internet has had a major effect on this. It allows the nutters to find each other. More significantly, it allows, indeed with various algorithms positively encourages, echo chambers and alternative truths. The internet has brought many positive things, not least our opportunity to courteously debate these matters on PB, but it is making holding society together into a cohesive whole much more difficult.
The SNP could have sought consensus and created a unifying statement and downplayed partisan posturing.
The Conservatives could have supported the speakers motives, allowed the vote and used their majority to assert their authority
Labour could have adopted a more aggressive position against Israel and backed the snp motion.
Hoyle could have ignored the safety fears of MPs and rigidly stuck to old rules.
When you look at it this way, of the main actors, the SNP and the Conservatives were in the position to be most constructive. Hoyle is not the villain.
I do agree that the Internet “allows the nutters to find each other” and that there are challenges for modern society because of that, but there’s no need to invent some prelapsarian fantasy.
That's life.
The regulator is the energy companies friend, not the consumers.
How long ago is that imagined past ? If it exists, which I doubt, it certainly predates the publication of The Satanic Verses in 1989.
Here's a 2009 article on that, rehearsing many of the same arguments we're having today.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jan/11/salman-rushdie-satanic-verses
If 'all can vote, all can organise and all can stand' isn't the solution, it is necessary to suggest what is. And what other means than representative democracy would be the way of finding out whether we like the new suggestions?
We are all critics of the competence of government and of our representatives, sure, but is it possible to point to countries whose fundamental politics is completely different, and do it all much better than us?
It looks as if Hoyle is safe which is a good thing as he is a decent speaker even if he, by his own admission, made a mistake
Is it ok to criticise the "Muslims" for the actions of a Muslim state? Nope.
The government of the state is the entity with the moral agency.
AFAICS, the police have all the powers they might need.
What's lacking are the resources, or the determination, or the understanding of how they might go about it.
See the attempts, in the trans issue, to deny the rape threats that are made against women as a specific.
A few years back, some on the Corbynite Left wanted to get the subsidy for private security at Synagogues and other Jewish culture locations stopped. They claimed that there *couldn't* be a problem. Despite the evidence of frequent racist attacks.
That's one reason I don't find SKS and Mr Hoyle credible at present. Firstly for using security as an excuse for the last two days and secondly for not addressing it properly.
https://www.skynews.com.au/world-news/dubai-buildings-cladding-questioned-after-35storey-apartment-catches-fire-and-flames-soar-up-the-side-of-complex/news-story/55749716c20650033d9d9897ca825b69
Instead they are so wound up in their self importance and grandstanding that they end up hurting themselves even more.
An easy win for any one vaguely interested in the result, rather than the grandstanding.
- A vote for every man aged twenty-one years and above, of sound mind, and not undergoing punishment for a crime.
- The secret ballot to protect the elector in the exercise of his vote.
- No property qualification for Members of Parliament (MPs), to allow the constituencies to return the man of their choice.
- Payment of Members, enabling tradesmen, working men, or other persons of modest means to leave or interrupt their livelihood to attend to the interests of the nation.
- Equal constituencies, securing the same amount of representation for the same number of electors, instead of allowing less populous constituencies to have as much or more weight than larger ones.
- Annual parliamentary elections, thus presenting the most effectual check to bribery and intimidation, since no purse could buy a constituency under a system of universal manhood suffrage in every twelve months.
- Non-binding Opposition Day motions by third parties to only face amendments from the Government benches
I think that's how they went.The problem is that the ideas of nutters are more convincing than the ideas of non-nutters. And part of the reason for that is that self-identified non-nutters got lazy and were dishonest and dissembling, maybe only a little at first, but respecting the truth is a habit and something that has to be nurtured, not neglected. And in a contrast between lying a little and lying a lot - lying a lot wins.
Another part of the problem is that the non-nutters are promising only more of the same ideas, the ideas that have created the problems that people are so unhappy about. If the only alternative offered to them is a nutty one, then desperate people will take that over the status quo.
This is what happened in the 1930s - it's not exactly unprecedented - and it wasn't caused by the internet back then.
And grifting in America is, sadly, normal for ex-PMs.
For your £0.60 you get 8.9 kwH of fuel, so the actual cost is 6.74 pence per kwh.
Figures for diesel are pretty much the same bearing in mind the slightly higher price but greater calorific density of diesel.
Working it out I get about 1.8 miles/kwH (~55 mpg), whilst EVs get about 4.8.
Here's the thing though, the price per kwh for leccy is 30p at home, or about 28p ex tax and far more on the road (80p at superchargers for non Tesla)
Which I work out as at least 1.5 times more expensive before the effects of taxation are considered. Now if you're on Octopus tariff and restrict charging between midnight and 4 am at home it makes sense, but charging anywhere else is a big cost to both yourself and also the treasury !
How is the Gov't going to get back all the fuel duty receipts when we're all on EVs ?
ETA and that can be traced back to her swallowing George Osborne's bile against the finest Chancellor of our times, and so Truss not appreciating why Gordon Brown made the Bank of England independent. Oh, and then George Osborne's too cute by half OBR, designed to trip Labour.
He's a very measured guy and I think it rather trite to suggest he is just the "energy companies friend".
I doubt you'd say it to his face either. He's an imposing figure of a Scouser.