I see the lovely unionists , Carlotta, Charles and Davidl were supporting thugs beating up women as just being unfortunate last night and suggesting the unconscious pregnant woman was faking. How very unionist.
I see the lovely unionists , Carlotta, Charles and Davidl were supporting thugs beating up women as just being unfortunate last night and suggesting the unconscious pregnant woman was faking. How very unionist.
That is not true.
Please withdraw and apologise.
go read your comments, they were not condemning what was an assault by a thug on a pregnant woman. It was a cosy unionist chat about her pretending etc. how nasty YES is blah blah
I've condemed it previously. The debate was whether it was a premediated attack or an accidental strike in a more generalised struggle.
In any event that is not the same as "supporting thugs beating up women" which, frankly, is an actionable accusation.
So what would be the context in which a referendum in the next parliament could be thought "fair"? And why as things stand would it be "unfair"?
As I have made clear many times my main concern is the time available to get anything in place that cannot be undone immediately after a vote to stay in. As it stands Cameron has given himself 2 years to get a deal done that he will then recommend to the public. Anyone who knows anything about the EU and the way it works - including Cameron - knows that this is simply not possible.
The only way he would be able to get anything enforceable that we could trust would not be unraveled straight away would be if it was in the form of a new treaty. Something that will be signed sealed and - most importantly - ratified by all the member states before the referendum. We would then be able to judge whatever he presented in the knowledge it could not easily be undone.
Now the daft thing is that if Cameron said that he was going to hold his referendum towards the end of the next Parliament in say late 2019 and he had started the serious work of renegotiation already, making clear what he expected to see in terms of the return of powers to the UK, then he might have a chance of convincing us he was being honest. It is unlikely he would be able to convince people like me that we should stay in given that I am damn sure future governments would do their best to unravel whatever had been agreed but at least we would have some idea that he himself was playing things straight as far as proper meaningful negotiations were concerned.
As it is, by making sure there is not enough time for a new treaty to be ratified he has already made it clear that he has no intention of securing any binding changes to the EU and our relationship with it. It is obvious that he intends to do exactly as Carswell claimed - get just enough apparent concessions to get a Yes vote and then happily watch it all unravel afterwards with us no better off than we are now.
Please let this Boris Island idiocy now be buried. This was little more than an environmental disaster in the making. Wrong on almost all counts.
Care to expand on that thought?
Concreting over some of the most important areas of coastal habitat in the SE, not to mention all the attendant development that would blight the whole Estuary area. The Thames Estuary is after the Wash, the most important area in the UK for migrant and wintering shorebirds. How can we possibly expect China, Korea etc., to respect wildlife conventions for the Pacific flyway when we would be trashing one of the most important sites of the West Atlantic flyway. There are no credible plans for mitigation. Boris Island was always more about self promotion of Boris than it was about developing a credible, sustainable solution and thankfully the Commission has called it.
Notwithstanding that Geographically, it would be badly sited for most of the population; admittedly H and G are not much better, but that's no reason to make things worse. We have to look at developing use of Manchester, Birmingham etc, alongside developing H and G. We also have to look at pricing flight to reflect its environmental costs.
Ah, so you want to protect the birds. Well, we can do that all the better if we are a rich, prosperous nation rather than one that is hamstrung by individual's pet wishes (the Severn Barrage is another example).
Conservation effects can be mitigated. Your solution is one of industrial decline.
Is that the best you can do? First they came for the birds etc. Your way lies environmental catastrophe.
There'd be a certain horrific elegance to the irony of Scotland, motivated in significant part by the dislike of right-wing English politicians, voting themselves out of the EU.
Comments
The only way he would be able to get anything enforceable that we could trust would not be unraveled straight away would be if it was in the form of a new treaty. Something that will be signed sealed and - most importantly - ratified by all the member states before the referendum. We would then be able to judge whatever he presented in the knowledge it could not easily be undone.
Now the daft thing is that if Cameron said that he was going to hold his referendum towards the end of the next Parliament in say late 2019 and he had started the serious work of renegotiation already, making clear what he expected to see in terms of the return of powers to the UK, then he might have a chance of convincing us he was being honest. It is unlikely he would be able to convince people like me that we should stay in given that I am damn sure future governments would do their best to unravel whatever had been agreed but at least we would have some idea that he himself was playing things straight as far as proper meaningful negotiations were concerned.
As it is, by making sure there is not enough time for a new treaty to be ratified he has already made it clear that he has no intention of securing any binding changes to the EU and our relationship with it. It is obvious that he intends to do exactly as Carswell claimed - get just enough apparent concessions to get a Yes vote and then happily watch it all unravel afterwards with us no better off than we are now.