Who else do people possibly think could win Gorton?
Turnout would have to go down a very long way before Labour lost somewhere like that. And the muslim community will almost certainly turn out, even if no-one else does.
The Tories won't win their in my lifetime, and I can't see the Lib Dems managing it either.
That is where it gets tricky with Galloway. I repeat, the LD will win comfortably.
As Tim Farron said last Sunday:
"All you generals without armies, here’s your army. You want a vehicle. Get on board. You want a movement. Move. Stop waiting for something to happen. Join us and make something happen."
We pay £20bn divorce bill. We pay £5bn net a year into the EU budget. We agree EU citizens can come with a job offer, plus an emergency break if it gets too high.
We get free trade and partial customs union or customs alignment in Goods. We get extra non-tariff barriers for services, including loss of financial passport. We get a three year transition deal post A50 expiry to 2022.
We leave ECJ, we formally leave EEA, we get all other powers repatriated, we line up new trade deals during the transition period.
Job done.
Do you think Conservatives would accept that?
I think that bill and the ongoing payments would be unacceptable to too many Tory backbenchers. I also don't think allowing EU citizens to come if they get a job will fly... Even with an emergency break. Control surely means choosing who comes... Not saying anyone with a job up o a certain number.
Yes. And it would pass the House.
The litmus test is: if we're arguing about it on here - with Remainers and the EU saying it's shite and Leavers and the UK saying it's fine - then we have the right pitch point for the deal.
I really can't see the Daily Mail accepting continuing British payments to the EU. And there's really no sign at all that May would stand up to the Daily Mail.
If the UK paid (say) £550m to be members of Erasmus, Galileo, the ESA and the EMA, would they really be that bothered?
There is no price that would allow us to be members of the EMA without being part of the EEA as it would require treaty amendments, and why should they undermine the existing treaties just for us?
The object lesson of Switzerland is also important to bear in mind. The EU forced them into 'third country' status in a range of programmes in response to their vote to end free movement.
Who else do people possibly think could win Gorton?
Turnout would have to go down a very long way before Labour lost somewhere like that. And the muslim community will almost certainly turn out, even if no-one else does.
The Tories won't win their in my lifetime, and I can't see the Lib Dems managing it either.
That is where it gets tricky with Galloway. I repeat, the LD will win comfortably.
As Tim Farron said last Sunday:
"All you generals without armies, here’s your army. You want a vehicle. Get on board. You want a movement. Move. Stop waiting for something to happen. Join us and make something happen."
He also said:
"Let me tell you about a friend of mine. She woke up the day after the 2015 election, heartbroken that fear and division had won. She made a choice. Not to hang her head in despair, but to do something about it. She joined the Liberal Democrats. Today, she is the Member of Parliament for Richmond Park. It doesn’t always happen like that. It took me a bit longer. But Sarah Olney exemplifies the best way to respond to the nationalist nightmare."
The most worrying thing about that leaked negotiating position is how vague it is. If it's accurate, it sounds as if they haven't really started their thinking yet.
They don't know what they want, or, rather, they want three mutually contradictory things:
- To damage the UK, pour décourager les autres; - Not to damage the UK, so as not to damage their own rather fragile economies; - To continue to get a chunky contribution to their budget from us.
They really don't get the British mindset do they?
They should follow @Falkland_United on twitter if they're in doubt
Casino_Royale - plenty of UK job agencies are active in Europe, and large firms such as Tesco had their own agencies there - I think you will find that immigration is an organised business and your proposal of limiting immigration to those with job offers would have very limited effect.
The trick, I think Mr, PAw, is to turn the offer into a work permit dependent on maintaining that job. Once you do that AND have an effective and efficient method of removing people from the country when they fail to comply with the terms of their permit, immigration will cease to be an issue.
The most worrying thing about that leaked negotiating position is how vague it is. If it's accurate, it sounds as if they haven't really started their thinking yet.
They don't know what they want, or, rather, they want three mutually contradictory things:
- To damage the UK, pour décourager les autres; - Not to damage the UK, so as not to damage their own rather fragile economies; - To continue to get a chunky contribution to their budget from us.
I agree on the first two. I strongly suspect that the last one is just a "**** you" cherry on the top.
The most worrying thing about that leaked negotiating position is how vague it is. If it's accurate, it sounds as if they haven't really started their thinking yet.
They don't know what they want, or, rather, they want three mutually contradictory things:
- To damage the UK, pour décourager les autres; - Not to damage the UK, so as not to damage their own rather fragile economies; - To continue to get a chunky contribution to their budget from us.
I agree on the first two. I strongly suspect that the last one is just a "**** you" cherry on the top.
Sorry to sound like a broken record but the Commission would favour (1) whilst Members States will have more support for (2)
To listen to the radio this morning you'd have thought that Martin McGuiness had been elevated to sainthood for, finally, doing something to clear the mess he he'd been so instrumental in creating.
Still, the bastard died in his bed. Unlike:-
- Jonathan Ball, the three year old boy killed in Warrington while out shopping for a Mother's Day card. His mother died of a broken heart. - Jean McConville, a mother of 10, "disappeared" and killed for showing kindness to a wounded British soldier. - Robert Nairac, the British soldier kidnapped from a pub, tortured and killed in 1977. - Heidi Hazell, a German girl sitting in a car with British number plates outside an army base in Germany and shot 14 times at point blank range. - Royal Air Force Corporal Maheshkumar Islania and his 6 month old daughter who were shot dead in their car outside an RAF base in Germany. The baby was being held in her mother's arms.
And all the many many other victims of the IRA.
May they rest in peace.
Apologies for reposting. But those victims had names and lives and did not get acres of obituaries. So if we are to recognize what McGuinness did and did not do we should also recognize those who suffered at his hands and had no choice about that suffering, unlike him - who made a choice. People like McGuinness dishonoured Ireland, dishonoured Irish nationalism, dishonoured those who had tried to remedy the very many faults of the Northern Irish statelet and who tried to do so without violence and dishonoured all those Irish people - in Ireland and here - who were tainted by the violence that McGuinness and co., unleashed.
Still, it will be interesting to see if we get any more information about the rumours that he was a British agent.
And finally, someone in HMQ's household has a (black) sense of humour. The pudding at the state dinner which McGuinness attended was Bombe Surprise.
I've got a huge amount of time for this post. And so I'll quote it in full. Well done.
I can accept that we may have to make deals with very bad people, but we should never claim they possess virtues which they plainly lack.
I still think the smart money is on Anna Soubry's prediction: that there won't even be any meaningful "negotiations", that both sides are going to be too inflexible to even agree some basic terms in order to get round the table, and that we're going to basically be kicked out of the EU without any deal at all or any preparation time by the end of this coming summer.
We can't be kicked out, the 2-year timescale is fixed.
We can if a 'kick us out' deal gets approved by the parliament and council by QMV.
In practice even if the negotiations break down completely, they'll just let us stew in our own juice while watching the clock tick down.
'Kicking someone out' means against that party's will. The EU can't do that to Britain. As Richard said, the 2 year timescale is fixed. It can only be foreshortened if both sides - UK and EU - agree. If they agree, they're not being kicked out.
In any case, nothing definitive will happen until after the German elections.
In general I think it's a pretty good principle to take the views of people on the spot over those of the long distance fulminators & sermonisers.
Well, the people on the spot when the bombs went off and the killings took place were in Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland and England and Gibraltar and Germany and are just as entitled to express a view as those members of a party which, frankly, did not have clean hands either - both in relation to how it treated the Catholic minority population in Northern Ireland and in its attitude to violence.
Well, I was there when the bombs went off and the killings took place. I grew up with it and the sound of a car bomb was the background to life in 1970s Belfast as were armed soldiers, armed police, checkpoints and personal searches and friskdowns.
I do not really blame McGuinness or even the evangelical nut-jobs of Unionism.
I blame the Northern Ireland educational system and its segregated schools for ensuring that demonising "the other side" was easy to do and instilling a "them and us" attitude into children that many failed to shake off in later life. It makes the ghetto mentality easy to maintain and gets you off to a good start in life in Norn Iron's very own apartheid system.
It is why I believe that Faith Schools on the UK mainland is a far, far bigger error than Grammar Schools.
Fittingly the banner ad was for 4 Stages to a Heart Attack.
Quietly? It was all over the press before.
I do find it draw-dropping that such a huge break with almost a thousand years of history has been brought it by the Lords because it is estimated to save about £80k a year...
80k!
How many members does that pay for? (All expenses included, I should have said what fraction of a member.)
In fact, how many portraits of members does that pay for? (The answer may well be fractional again.)
The food budget, the wine budget, I could go on.
You could sell me on the quality of the new paper being better, given appropriate evidence. You might even sell me on "the country's gone vegan, too controversial to use animal products these days". But on cost grounds, for those kind of sums, and in the context of the running costs of that place, my flabber is gasted.
We pay £20bn divorce bill. We pay £5bn net a year into the EU budget. We agree EU citizens can come with a job offer, plus an emergency break if it gets too high.
We get free trade and partial customs union or customs alignment in Goods. We get extra non-tariff barriers for services, including loss of financial passport. We get a three year transition deal post A50 expiry to 2022.
We leave ECJ, we formally leave EEA, we get all other powers repatriated, we line up new trade deals during the transition period.
Job done.
Do you think Conservatives would accept that?
I think that bill and the ongoing payments would be unacceptable to too many Tory backbenchers. I also don't think allowing EU citizens to come if they get a job will fly... Even with an emergency break. Control surely means choosing who comes... Not saying anyone with a job up o a certain number.
Yes. And it would pass the House.
The litmus test is: if we're arguing about it on here - with Remainers and the EU saying it's shite and Leavers and the UK saying it's fine - then we have the right pitch point for the deal.
I really can't see the Daily Mail accepting continuing British payments to the EU. And there's really no sign at all that May would stand up to the Daily Mail.
If the UK paid (say) £550m to be members of Erasmus, Galileo, the ESA and the EMA, would they really be that bothered?
No, that wouldn't be an issue. £5bn pa to the EU directly for Single Market access would be a different matter.
I'm green on both the Lib Dems and Galloway, but I'm praying to Allah that I don't collect on the latter.
I wonder how awful something has to be before one won't bet on it. There might be a Geoffrey Archer type novel in that.
They say that it's all in the bible. Just as an exercise I looked at a bible search site.
The best I could find was in Ecclesiastes:
9:11 "I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all."
Fittingly the banner ad was for 4 Stages to a Heart Attack.
Quietly? It was all over the press before.
I do find it draw-dropping that such a huge break with almost a thousand years of history has been brought it by the Lords because it is estimated to save about £80k a year...
80k!
How many members does that pay for? (All expenses included, I should have said what fraction of a member.)
In fact, how many portraits of members does that pay for? (The answer may well be fractional again.)
The food budget, the wine budget, I could go on.
You could sell me on the quality of the new paper being better, given appropriate evidence. You might even sell me on "the country's gone vegan, too controversial to use animal products these days". But on cost grounds, for those kind of sums, and in the context of the running costs of that place, my flabber is gasted.
I hope you mean jaw-dropping rather than drawer-dropping, or life in the Burning Ears household is more Bohemian than chez Meeks.
I do find it draw-dropping that such a huge break with almost a thousand years of history has been brought it by the Lords because it is estimated to save about £80k a year...
Oh stop complaining. It is part of taking back control.
If this seat isn't a boring Labour hold, Labour are in Extinction Level Event territory. That it's even worth a thread header as a speculative punt for anyone else is astonishing.
Labour should be huge value here. Yet I can't bring myself to bet on them.
Labour's position in Gorton is exaggerated by the unusual result in 2015. Had there been a by-election there in 2003/4, it'd have been a very likely Lib Dem gain.
But it's a difficult election to read now with three candidates in the running. Lab should start favourite but Galloway's intervention throws the cat among them and you can see a number of ways that Labour could lose.
Galloway and cat? An intentional joke?
More an amusing reference point than joke but yes, intentional - not least because it exemplifies one of the difficulties he'll have: being taken seriously by enough people.
In general I think it's a pretty good principle to take the views of people on the spot over those of the long distance fulminators & sermonisers.
Well, the people on the spot when the bombs went off and the killings took place were in Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland and England and Gibraltar and Germany and are just as entitled to express a view as those members of a party which, frankly, did not have clean hands either - both in relation to how it treated the Catholic minority population in Northern Ireland and in its attitude to violence.
Well, I was there when the bombs went off and the killings took place. I grew up with it and the sound of a car bomb was the background to life in 1970s Belfast as were armed soldiers, armed police, checkpoints and personal searches and friskdowns.
I do not really blame McGuinness or even the evangelical nut-jobs of Unionism.
I blame the Northern Ireland educational system and its segregated schools for ensuring that demonising "the other side" was easy to do and instilling a "them and us" attitude into children that many failed to shake off in later life. It makes the ghetto mentality easy to maintain and gets you off to a good start in life in Norn Iron's very own apartheid system.
It is why I believe that Faith Schools on the UK mainland is a far, far bigger error than Grammar Schools.
People are responsible for their own actions. Many people in Northern Ireland did not become terrorists, despite intense provocation. People who go to faith schools on the Mainland don't generally go round killing members of other religions.
I still think the smart money is on Anna Soubry's prediction: that there won't even be any meaningful "negotiations", that both sides are going to be too inflexible to even agree some basic terms in order to get round the table, and that we're going to basically be kicked out of the EU without any deal at all or any preparation time by the end of this coming summer.
We can't be kicked out, the 2-year timescale is fixed.
We can if a 'kick us out' deal gets approved by the parliament and council by QMV.
In practice even if the negotiations break down completely, they'll just let us stew in our own juice while watching the clock tick down.
'Kicking someone out' means against that party's will. The EU can't do that to Britain. As Richard said, the 2 year timescale is fixed. It can only be foreshortened if both sides - UK and EU - agree. If they agree, they're not being kicked out.
In any case, nothing definitive will happen until after the German elections.
Well then there would be political capital to be gained from forcing the UK to say 'no' to a clean hard Brexit if it were offered. There would be plenty of hard-liners clamouring to go for it, so they would have to be defeated in order to clear the way for round 2 of negotiations.
I'm green on both the Lib Dems and Galloway, but I'm praying to Allah that I don't collect on the latter.
I wonder how awful something has to be before one won't bet on it. There might be a Geoffrey Archer type novel in that.
They say that it's all in the bible. Just as an exercise I looked at a bible search site.
The best I could find was in Ecclesiastes:
9:11 "I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all."
Time and Chance would make for a great cop movie. "Thrown together by their superiors, this mismatched pairing got off on the wrong foot, the one working patiently and methodically, the other trusting to luck. But as they grew to understand each other and started to work together, they forged into an unbeatable team."
Fittingly the banner ad was for 4 Stages to a Heart Attack.
Quietly? It was all over the press before.
I do find it draw-dropping that such a huge break with almost a thousand years of history has been brought it by the Lords because it is estimated to save about £80k a year...
80k!
How many members does that pay for? (All expenses included, I should have said what fraction of a member.)
In fact, how many portraits of members does that pay for? (The answer may well be fractional again.)
The food budget, the wine budget, I could go on.
You could sell me on the quality of the new paper being better, given appropriate evidence. You might even sell me on "the country's gone vegan, too controversial to use animal products these days". But on cost grounds, for those kind of sums, and in the context of the running costs of that place, my flabber is gasted.
I hope you mean jaw-dropping rather than drawer-dropping, or life in the Burning Ears household is more Bohemian than chez Meeks.
Hah, I'll keep that one for posterity! Chez MBE, c'est la place to be.
SCons have been under taking a furious assault on the Greens over the last week. Culminating in an open letter expressing surprise and anger that the pro Independece Green party was in fact in favour of independence.
What I didn't realise was that the letter also criticised the Greens for voting in favour of the SNP budget. Something the Conservatives did every year of the 2007-2011 parliament. Their chutzpah knows no bounds.
I'm green on both the Lib Dems and Galloway, but I'm praying to Allah that I don't collect on the latter.
I wonder how awful something has to be before one won't bet on it. There might be a Geoffrey Archer type novel in that.
They say that it's all in the bible. Just as an exercise I looked at a bible search site.
The best I could find was in Ecclesiastes:
9:11 "I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all."
Time and Chance would make for a great cop movie. "Thrown together by their superiors, this mismatched pairing got off on the wrong foot, the one working patiently and methodically, the other trusting to luck. But as they grew to understand each other and started to work together, they forged into an unbeatable team."
Nice one. Unfortunately it didn't (but should have) happen(ed) with us in the EU.
I'm green on both the Lib Dems and Galloway, but I'm praying to Allah that I don't collect on the latter.
I wonder how awful something has to be before one won't bet on it. There might be a Geoffrey Archer type novel in that.
They say that it's all in the bible. Just as an exercise I looked at a bible search site.
The best I could find was in Ecclesiastes:
9:11 "I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all."
Time and Chance would make for a great cop movie. "Thrown together by their superiors, this mismatched pairing got off on the wrong foot, the one working patiently and methodically, the other trusting to luck. But as they grew to understand each other and started to work together, they forged into an unbeatable team."
Chance would be the maverick cop who didn't play by the rules of course, possibly played by Matthew McConaughey.
To listen to the radio this morning you'd have thought that Martin McGuiness had been elevated to sainthood for, finally, doing something to clear the mess he he'd been so instrumental in creating.
Still, the bastard died in his bed. Unlike:-
- Jonathan Ball, the three year old boy killed in Warrington while out shopping for a Mother's Day card. His mother died of a broken heart. - Jean McConville, a mother of 10, "disappeared" and killed for showing kindness to a wounded British soldier. - Robert Nairac, the British soldier kidnapped from a pub, tortured and killed in 1977. - Heidi Hazell, a German girl sitting in a car with British number plates outside an army base in Germany and shot 14 times at point blank range. - Royal Air Force Corporal Maheshkumar Islania and his 6 month old daughter who were shot dead in their car outside an RAF base in Germany. The baby was being held in her mother's arms.
And all the many many other victims of the IRA.
May they rest in peace.
Apologies for reposting. But those victims had names and lives and did not get acres of obituaries. So if we are to recognize what McGuinness did and did not do we should also recognize those who suffered at his hands and had no choice about that suffering, unlike him - who made a choice. People like McGuinness dishonoured Ireland, dishonoured Irish nationalism, dishonoured those who had tried to remedy the very many faults of the Northern Irish statelet and who tried to do so without violence and dishonoured all those Irish people - in Ireland and here - who were tainted by the violence that McGuinness and co., unleashed.
Still, it will be interesting to see if we get any more information about the rumours that he was a British agent.
And finally, someone in HMQ's household has a (black) sense of humour. The pudding at the state dinner which McGuinness attended was Bombe Surprise.
I've got a huge amount of time for this post. And so I'll quote it in full. Well done.
I can accept that we may have to make deals with very bad people, but we should never claim they possess virtues which they plainly lack.
Disclaimer: I was raised on the Unionist side.
Neither side were sainted. Read up on the Shankill Butchers who killed and tortured dozens with meat cleavers and the like. Or the UVF's Dublin bombs or the Dundalk bombs.
Each side had their psychos. I grew up with some of the UVF ones.
I do find it draw-dropping that such a huge break with almost a thousand years of history has been brought it by the Lords because it is estimated to save about £80k a year...
Oh stop complaining. It is part of taking back control.
Since this is yet another case of the will of elected MPs being overruled by the ranks of the unelected "great and good", some more control being taken back would be quite welcome
It'd odd, I'd perhaps have expected the Lords to support such traditional practices and that they may have had to fight a rear-guard against the modernising, penny-pinching members of the Commons, rather than t'other way round.
SCons have been under taking a furious assault on the Greens over the last week. Culminating in an open letter expressing surprise and anger that the pro Independece Green party was in fact in favour of independence.
What I didn't realise was that the letter also criticised the Greens for voting in favour of the SNP budget. Something the Conservatives did every year of the 2007-2011 parliament. Their chutzpah knows no bounds.
Patrick Harvie's open letter in response is one sick burn.
There's a lot of wishful punting here today. IMO the LibDems look unlikely to win Gorton. And Galloway has no chance at all and will be lucky to save his deposit.
If this seat isn't a boring Labour hold, Labour are in Extinction Level Event territory. That it's even worth a thread header as a speculative punt for anyone else is astonishing.
Labour should be huge value here. Yet I can't bring myself to bet on them.
Labour's position in Gorton is exaggerated by the unusual result in 2015. Had there been a by-election there in 2003/4, it'd have been a very likely Lib Dem gain.
But it's a difficult election to read now with three candidates in the running. Lab should start favourite but Galloway's intervention throws the cat among them and you can see a number of ways that Labour could lose.
Galloway and cat? An intentional joke?
More an amusing reference point than joke but yes, intentional - not least because it exemplifies one of the difficulties he'll have: being taken seriously by enough people.
If this seat isn't a boring Labour hold, Labour are in Extinction Level Event territory. That it's even worth a thread header as a speculative punt for anyone else is astonishing.
Labour should be huge value here. Yet I can't bring myself to bet on them.
Labour's position in Gorton is exaggerated by the unusual result in 2015. Had there been a by-election there in 2003/4, it'd have been a very likely Lib Dem gain.
But it's a difficult election to read now with three candidates in the running. Lab should start favourite but Galloway's intervention throws the cat among them and you can see a number of ways that Labour could lose.
Galloway and cat? An intentional joke?
More an amusing reference point than joke but yes, intentional - not least because it exemplifies one of the difficulties he'll have: being taken seriously by enough people.
Didn't stop him winning Bradford West.
That seat had a history for very odd results (e.g. a swing from Labour to Tories in 1997).
To listen to the radio this morning you'd have thought that Martin McGuiness had been elevated to sainthood for, finally, doing something to clear the mess he he'd been so instrumental in creating.
Still, the bastard died in his bed. Unlike:-
- Jonathan Ball, the three year old boy killed in Warrington while out shopping for a Mother's Day card. His mother died of a broken heart. - Jean McConville, a mother of 10, "disappeared" and killed for showing kindness to a wounded British soldier. - Robert Nairac, the British soldier kidnapped from a pub, tortured and killed in 1977. - Heidi Hazell, a German girl sitting in a car with British number plates outside an army base in Germany and shot 14 times at point blank range. - Royal Air Force Corporal Maheshkumar Islania and his 6 month old daughter who were shot dead in their car outside an RAF base in Germany. The baby was being held in her mother's arms.
And all the many many other victims of the IRA.
May they rest in peace.
Apologies for reposting. But those victims had names and lives and did not get acres of obituaries. So if we are to recognize what McGuinness did and did not do we should also recognize those who suffered at his hands and had no choice about that suffering, unlike him - who made a choice. People like McGuinness dishonoured Ireland, dishonoured Irish nationalism, dishonoured those who had tried to remedy the very many faults of the Northern Irish statelet and who tried to do so without violence and dishonoured all those Irish people - in Ireland and here - who were tainted by the violence that McGuinness and co., unleashed.
Still, it will be interesting to see if we get any more information about the rumours that he was a British agent.
And finally, someone in HMQ's household has a (black) sense of humour. The pudding at the state dinner which McGuinness attended was Bombe Surprise.
I've got a huge amount of time for this post. And so I'll quote it in full. Well done.
I can accept that we may have to make deals with very bad people, but we should never claim they possess virtues which they plainly lack.
Disclaimer: I was raised on the Unionist side.
Neither side were sainted. Read up on the Shankill Butchers who killed and tortured dozens with meat cleavers and the like. Or the UVF's Dublin bombs or the Dundalk bombs.
Each side had their psychos. I grew up with some of the UVF ones.
As far as I'm concerned the Shankill Butchers and Martin McGuinness were equally depraved.
Fittingly the banner ad was for 4 Stages to a Heart Attack.
Quietly? It was all over the press before.
I do find it draw-dropping that such a huge break with almost a thousand years of history has been brought it by the Lords because it is estimated to save about £80k a year...
80k!
How many members does that pay for? (All expenses included, I should have said what fraction of a member.)
In fact, how many portraits of members does that pay for? (The answer may well be fractional again.)
The food budget, the wine budget, I could go on.
You could sell me on the quality of the new paper being better, given appropriate evidence. You might even sell me on "the country's gone vegan, too controversial to use animal products these days". But on cost grounds, for those kind of sums, and in the context of the running costs of that place, my flabber is gasted.
I introduced a 10 Minute Rule bill to get rid of vellum (on animal rights grounds) back in 1998 or so. It was opposed by the local Labour MP for the only vellum factory. We had an inconclusive wrangle which went nowhere, which is what usually happens to 10MR bills (which literally take 2*10 minutes and then generally vanish). However, it's a daft relic - inferior quality, pointless use of animal products, and symbolic of our preoccupation with irrelevant bits of the past.
Not sure that Galloway standing will help the LDs in the way that many might assume.To a large extent they rely on the NOTA or 'pissed off' vote - and much of that might go to Galloway if he becomes seen as a serious contender.
"Let me tell you about a friend of mine. She woke up the day after the 2015 election, heartbroken that fear and division had won. "
Don't you feel a bit queasy about supporting a party whose leader says that the result of a democratic election, won by a moderate centre-right party, with roots going back centuries and led by a conspicuously moderate and decent leader, meant that 'fear and division had won'?
Not sure that Galloway standing will help the LDs in the way that many might assume.To a large extent they rely on the NOTA or 'pissed off' vote - and much of that might go to Galloway if he becomes seen as a serious contender.
That's a fair point, it could actually help Labour.
Casino_Royale - plenty of UK job agencies are active in Europe, and large firms such as Tesco had their own agencies there - I think you will find that immigration is an organised business and your proposal of limiting immigration to those with job offers would have very limited effect.
Indeed, and tesco prevented sites recruiting locally iirc
"Let me tell you about a friend of mine. She woke up the day after the 2015 election, heartbroken that fear and division had won. "
Don't you feel a bit queasy about supporting a party whose leader says that the result of a democratic election, won by a moderate centre-right party, with roots going back centuries and led by a conspicuously moderate and decent leader, meant that 'fear and division had won'?
Indeed. The Conservative Party is hardly the NSDAP.
People are responsible for their own actions. Many people in Northern Ireland did not become terrorists, despite intense provocation. People who go to faith schools on the Mainland don't generally go round killing members of other religions.
Whatever. In my school I was encouraged by my classmates to "stone taigs" or "spit on fenians" because they were all f**kers. It was bad enough coming from my fellow classmates but teachers never stopped it or intervened.
As for the Orange Order, the bigotry and intolerance in a large number or its members was breathtaking. I have no doubt that similar things were happening in the Nationalist community but I had no contact with them until I was over 18. None. It was too d*mn dangerous and besides, they were the enemy. I had been assured of that since I could walk.
I grew up with these people. I lived amongst them. FFS, I am related to some of them!!
This is not a theoretical exercise. It is the sh*t I grew up with.
You do not need many converts to become the terrorists, but it sure helps to have a fertile breeding ground to start you off.
I could not stand it and I will never go back. It is why I have no time for division or hatred. I have had enough for one lifetime.
And on that merry note, I shall go off and cool down a bit.
SCons have been under taking a furious assault on the Greens over the last week. Culminating in an open letter expressing surprise and anger that the pro Independece Green party was in fact in favour of independence.
What I didn't realise was that the letter also criticised the Greens for voting in favour of the SNP budget. Something the Conservatives did every year of the 2007-2011 parliament. Their chutzpah knows no bounds.
People are responsible for their own actions. Many people in Northern Ireland did not become terrorists, despite intense provocation. People who go to faith schools on the Mainland don't generally go round killing members of other religions.
Whatever. In my school I was encouraged by my classmates to "stone taigs" or "spit on fenians" because they were all f**kers. It was bad enough coming from my fellow classmates but teachers never stopped it or intervened.
As for the Orange Order, the bigotry and intolerance in a large number or its members was breathtaking. I have no doubt that similar things were happening in the Nationalist community but I had no contact with them until I was over 18. None. It was too d*mn dangerous and besides, they were the enemy. I had been assured of that since I could walk.
I grew up with these people. I lived amongst them. FFS, I am related to some of them!!
This is not a theoretical exercise. It is the sh*t I grew up with.
You do not need many converts to become the terrorists, but it sure helps to have a fertile breeding ground to start you off.
I could not stand it and I will never go back. It is why I have no time for division or hatred. I have had enough for one lifetime.
And on that merry note, I shall go off and cool down a bit.
I don't have much sympathy for the view that "society is to blame" when people carry out depraved acts.
Sounds very fishy, I’d be interested to know what the Labour NEC rules are concerning standing against an elected deputy leader.
Pretty similar to standing against the leader, I think, as per Owen Smith. I find it unlikely that Thornberry would get the nominations in the circumstances.
"Let me tell you about a friend of mine. She woke up the day after the 2015 election, heartbroken that fear and division had won. "
Don't you feel a bit queasy about supporting a party whose leader says that the result of a democratic election, won by a moderate centre-right party, with roots going back centuries and led by a conspicuously moderate and decent leader, meant that 'fear and division had won'?
Interesting news via the ludicrous Chris Williamson MP. Deputy Leadership contests as proxy battles once again?
(Snip)
Oh, FFS. I'm not exactly a fan of Watson, and I find the current spat between Watson and his old friend McCluskey hilarious (if not scripted).
But anyone who thinks that the problem that needs tackling in Labour is Watson, not Corbyn, needs their head checking.
The Labour Party is the Titanic, the captain is 'Smithy' Corbyn, and the crew are busy rearranging the deckchairs as they steam towards the iceberg of electoral disaster. Watson is Frederick Fleet up in the Crow's Nest.
SCons have been under taking a furious assault on the Greens over the last week. Culminating in an open letter expressing surprise and anger that the pro Independece Green party was in fact in favour of independence.
What I didn't realise was that the letter also criticised the Greens for voting in favour of the SNP budget. Something the Conservatives did every year of the 2007-2011 parliament. Their chutzpah knows no bounds.
Its politics
Lib Dems and Labour joining in to try and paint this bizarre "Great Betrayal of the Greens" narrative is positively nutty to me. All they seem to be doing is creating an environment to give the Greens as many SNP transfer votes as possible come the Local Council election
"Let me tell you about a friend of mine. She woke up the day after the 2015 election, heartbroken that fear and division had won. "
Don't you feel a bit queasy about supporting a party whose leader says that the result of a democratic election, won by a moderate centre-right party, with roots going back centuries and led by a conspicuously moderate and decent leader, meant that 'fear and division had won'?
Nope. Remember the campaign.
I do. Surely it would be fairer to suggest that fear lost?
It's amazing the Sky Data twitter account still hasn't tweeted it's Scotland Favourability rating poll yet. The last thing it tweeted was the YouGov Scottish favorability poll it commissioned last week.
You'd think with this earth shattering apocalypto of a poll they'd want to tell people about it. Or at least show the data tables.
SCons have been under taking a furious assault on the Greens over the last week. Culminating in an open letter expressing surprise and anger that the pro Independece Green party was in fact in favour of independence.
What I didn't realise was that the letter also criticised the Greens for voting in favour of the SNP budget. Something the Conservatives did every year of the 2007-2011 parliament. Their chutzpah knows no bounds.
Its politics
Lib Dems and Labour joining in to try and paint this bizarre "Great Betrayal of the Greens" narrative is positively nutty to me. All they seem to be doing is creating an environment to give the Greens as many SNP transfer votes as possible come the Local Council election
There won't be many circumstances where that will be relevant, will there?
"Let me tell you about a friend of mine. She woke up the day after the 2015 election, heartbroken that fear and division had won. "
Don't you feel a bit queasy about supporting a party whose leader says that the result of a democratic election, won by a moderate centre-right party, with roots going back centuries and led by a conspicuously moderate and decent leader, meant that 'fear and division had won'?
Indeed. The Conservative Party is hardly the NSDAP.
I woke up the other day (Saturday or Sunday) and turned on the radio, and some loony was ranting away about Tories, Brexit, the Far Right, and Trump. I wondered "who the hell invited this idiot on to the breakfast show?" and then realised I was listening to Tim Farron. He sounded quite unhinged.
Interesting news via the ludicrous Chris Williamson MP. Deputy Leadership contests as proxy battles once again?
(Snip)
Oh, FFS. I'm not exactly a fan of Watson, and I find the current spat between Watson and his old friend McCluskey hilarious (if not scripted).
But anyone who thinks that the problem that needs tackling in Labour is Watson, not Corbyn, needs their head checking.
The Labour Party is the Titanic, the captain is 'Smithy' Corbyn, and the crew are busy rearranging the deckchairs as they steam towards the iceberg of electoral disaster. Watson is Frederick Fleet up in the Crow's Nest.
That's grossly unfair to Capt Smith, who was a good seaman and had a long and distinguished career as a commander.
If the Labour Party is the Titanic, then it's in some alternate history where there was a mutiny and an engine stoker has been elevated to the master's chair. (Though the Titanic is a poor analogy because the inference is that the ship is doomed whatever, which wasn't necessarily true).
Interesting news via the ludicrous Chris Williamson MP. Deputy Leadership contests as proxy battles once again?
(Snip)
Oh, FFS. I'm not exactly a fan of Watson, and I find the current spat between Watson and his old friend McCluskey hilarious (if not scripted).
But anyone who thinks that the problem that needs tackling in Labour is Watson, not Corbyn, needs their head checking.
The Labour Party is the Titanic, the captain is 'Smithy' Corbyn, and the crew are busy rearranging the deckchairs as they steam towards the iceberg of electoral disaster. Watson is Frederick Fleet up in the Crow's Nest.
That's grossly unfair to Capt Smith, who was a good seaman and had a long and distinguished career as a commander.
If the Labour Party is the Titanic, then it's in some alternate history where there was a mutiny and an engine stoker has been elevated to the master's chair. (Though the Titanic is a poor analogy because the inference is that the ship is doomed whatever, which wasn't necessarily true).
The reaction of the Corbynites would be great though.
Corbyn smashed the iceberg into a thousand pieces, it was a truly terrible night for the iceberg.
If Corbyn can do that to an iceberg just imagine what he can do to the Tory party.
David Woolridge On this day in 1556 the first Protestant Archbiship of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer was burned at the stake in Oxford. https://t.co/Rj7LmUeNOX
"Let me tell you about a friend of mine. She woke up the day after the 2015 election, heartbroken that fear and division had won. "
Don't you feel a bit queasy about supporting a party whose leader says that the result of a democratic election, won by a moderate centre-right party, with roots going back centuries and led by a conspicuously moderate and decent leader, meant that 'fear and division had won'?
Nope. Remember the campaign.
I do. Surely it would be fairer to suggest that fear lost?
Miliband in Salmond's pocket? "Competence not chaos" - that was a joke! Secret decapitation of LibDems who had supported them in coalition.
Ross Kempall Exclusive: Three of five Labour candidates on the shortlist for Manchester Gorton attended Khomeinist rallies backing the Iranian regime https://t.co/HZ53sLSgDA
And finally, someone in HMQ's household has a (black) sense of humour. The pudding at the state dinner which McGuinness attended was Bombe Surprise.
Are you sure it is in the Household?
IIRC, HMQ's response to Martin McGuniness asking how she was was "I'm still alive"
You do wonder whether there was a subtle dig at the ex-IRA commander in that comment or whether it was was just the innocent comment of an elderly lady happy to be in reasonable health.
I blame the Northern Ireland educational system and its segregated schools
My view of faith schools is similar to your own but I think you overestimate their effect - the counterfactual to the schools ceasing to be formally segregated, isn't that the schools would have become integrated, but that they would have become informally segregated.
People have a tremendous capacity for self-segregation - in housing, social organisations, public services, the full works. Even in spheres where people are forced to mix, it doesn't mean that they network. Cross-links between separate communities still remain sparse. The Big Sort is well worth a google if you have time.
There has been some sociological research into "Integration" in schools in West Yorkshire, where if I recall correctly one of the main findings was that even at those schools where white and Asian students both attended in significant numbers, "mixing" mostly occurred in the outer circles of friendship groups. Once we move beyond acquaintances and into the circle of close friends, the children were almost exclusively investing their deepest social capital with others from the same community background. Moreover, cross-community contact in the outer circle tended to cease after leaving school. And this was among kids whose parents were willing enough to let them socialise with other groups that they were sent to a mixed school - others preferred homogeneous schools, and we are not necessarily talking about "faith" schools here. (In England at least, faith schools are not necessarily homogeneous: there are Catholic schools in London where 90%+ of students are Muslim, Jewish schools where only a tiny fraction are Jews, and so on. But one could hardly argue faith schools promote integration, the justification has always been one of parental choice.)
A truly integrated NI education system would be a Good Thing in many ways, but what would it take? Parental choice would have to be curtailed or removed altogether; a system of quasi-random allocation would be needed in its stead; given the geographic spread of the communities, busing would be required. (For fans of British social history, look at what happened in Bradford and Ealing - not an experiment that anyone is likely to want to repeat in a hurry.) Parents or community groups would need to be banned from establishing private schools (you might find a few more supporters for this one). And for all this, you could only make the students mix, not necessarily integrate - once they're outside the school gates, their closest friends, the ones they can actually socialise more deeply with, are likely to be their nearest neighbours. And if the steps required to mix the schooling system are authoritarian to the point of oppressive, goodness knows how many human rights treaties it would breach to address the housing segregation issue and reallocate the population.
"Let me tell you about a friend of mine. She woke up the day after the 2015 election, heartbroken that fear and division had won. "
Don't you feel a bit queasy about supporting a party whose leader says that the result of a democratic election, won by a moderate centre-right party, with roots going back centuries and led by a conspicuously moderate and decent leader, meant that 'fear and division had won'?
Clearly they haven't been listening to Ian Austin (this bit of which applies to anyone):
There’s no point speaking to adoring crowds of people who already agree with you if the public aren’t listening. And there’s no point just telling people how terrible you think the Tories are, if you haven’t persuaded them you can be trusted first.
Some people really do think the problem is not bashing the Tories enough. Each side bashes each other relentlessly in a campaign and their media mouthpieces and online supporters regurgitate the attack lines day in day out; it's not enough on its own - if enough people agreed about how terrible the Tories were, if it were that self evident, they wouldn't have won. By all means believe it, plenty do, but its amazing how lazy people can be about anti-Toryism (and yes, anti-labourism too, but being lazy when in the ascendency makes a bit more sense)
"Let me tell you about a friend of mine. She woke up the day after the 2015 election, heartbroken that fear and division had won. "
Don't you feel a bit queasy about supporting a party whose leader says that the result of a democratic election, won by a moderate centre-right party, with roots going back centuries and led by a conspicuously moderate and decent leader, meant that 'fear and division had won'?
Nope. Remember the campaign.
I do. Surely it would be fairer to suggest that fear lost?
Miliband in Salmond's pocket? "Competence not chaos" - that was a joke! Secret decapitation of LibDems who had supported them in coalition.
Wasn't bloody secret.
When Dave campaigned in Yeovil, 400 yards from Paddy Ashdown's house, Paddy and the Lib Dems thought it confirmed Dave, George, Andrew Feldman, and Sir Lynton (pbuh) didn't have a flipping clue about campaigning or winning.
In general I think it's a pretty good principle to take the views of people on the spot over those of the long distance fulminators & sermonisers.
Be that as it may, he was still a murdering c*%$ though. If he did good in the years of the peace process, then that is something to be thankful for. That he will soon be rotting in his grave at a relatively young age is also something to be thankful for. Many innocent people didn't get that chance at as long a life as his.
"Let me tell you about a friend of mine. She woke up the day after the 2015 election, heartbroken that fear and division had won. "
Don't you feel a bit queasy about supporting a party whose leader says that the result of a democratic election, won by a moderate centre-right party, with roots going back centuries and led by a conspicuously moderate and decent leader, meant that 'fear and division had won'?
Nope. Remember the campaign.
I do. Surely it would be fairer to suggest that fear lost?
Miliband in Salmond's pocket? "Competence not chaos" - that was a joke! Secret decapitation of LibDems who had supported them in coalition.
I was a fan of the coalition and would have liked it to continue, but what exactly is untoward about the Tories trying to win seats anywhere, including the LDs, as hard as they could, and what was secret about it? In the absence of an official pact, everybody was fair game (though it would appear the Tories even more than most ignored election spending rules), including coalition partners. After all, the senior part of a coalition benefiting while the junior part suffers seems to be a trend.
People are responsible for their own actions. Many people in Northern Ireland did not become terrorists, despite intense provocation. People who go to faith schools on the Mainland don't generally go round killing members of other religions.
Whatever. In my school I was encouraged by my classmates to "stone taigs" or "spit on fenians" because they were all f**kers. It was bad enough coming from my fellow classmates but teachers never stopped it or intervened.
As for the Orange Order, the bigotry and intolerance in a large number or its members was breathtaking. I have no doubt that similar things were happening in the Nationalist community but I had no contact with them until I was over 18. None. It was too d*mn dangerous and besides, they were the enemy. I had been assured of that since I could walk.
I grew up with these people. I lived amongst them. FFS, I am related to some of them!!
This is not a theoretical exercise. It is the sh*t I grew up with.
You do not need many converts to become the terrorists, but it sure helps to have a fertile breeding ground to start you off.
I could not stand it and I will never go back. It is why I have no time for division or hatred. I have had enough for one lifetime.
And on that merry note, I shall go off and cool down a bit.
I don't have much sympathy for the view that "society is to blame" when people carry out depraved acts.
A contributing factor that needs addressing, but as plenty of people don't commit such acts in the same situation, the person is still principally responsible and doesn't get a great deal of sympathy, though can be easier to understand.
"De Volkskrant, a respected Dutch newspaper, has published a long article about the negotiating strategy the EU will adopt during Brexit. It appears under the headline:
Dit is de geheime EU-strategie voor scheiding van de Britten
or, as Google Translate puts it,
This is the secret EU Strategy for separation from the British
And that article says it is based on information provided by insiders about what it says is the draft negotiating strategy that has been drawn up. It says these will come out when Theresa May presses the “Brexitknop” (Brexit button?). Based on feeding it through Google Translate, here are the key points.
The EU will insist access to the internal market depends upon accepting the four freedoms, including freedom of movement, de Volkskrant claims.
The EU will propose a deal guaranteeing the reciprocal rights of EU nationals in the UK and Britons in EU countries, de Volkskrant claims.
The EU will demand an exit “bill”, de Volkskrant claims. Interestingly, it says that David Cameron is partly responsible for the possible demand being so high. Cameron demanded cuts to the EU budget for 2014-20. But, in return for spending going down in the early years, planned spending in the future rose sharply. There is an argument now that the UK is obliged to contribute to those future spending commitments.
The EU will demand that the UK loses some of its existing trade advantages, de Volkskrant claims.
The EU has yet to decide whether to allow talks on the withdrawal deal and talks on the future trade deal to take place in parallel, as the UK wants, or sequentially, de Volkskrant says.
If the UK tries to leave without a deal, the EU could take it to court at the Hague to try to recover the money it thinks is owed, de Volkskrant says.
Only six people, including Donald Tusk, the European council president, and Jean-Claude Juncker, the European commission president, have seen the 10-page draft negotiating guidelines, de Volkskrant claims."
Given immigration control in the form of work permits is non negotiable from the UK government perspective we are certainly leaving the single market/internal market and I doubt we will get a Free Trade Agreement either by the time we leave, at most we will get some bilateral agreements in areas like financial services and car manufacturing in return for some continued EU budget contributions. In other areas of the economy, including agriculture, we most likely go to WTO terms
Casino_Royale - plenty of UK job agencies are active in Europe, and large firms such as Tesco had their own agencies there - I think you will find that immigration is an organised business and your proposal of limiting immigration to those with job offers would have very limited effect.
I think you'd have the standard requirement of needing to prove that you had tried to recruit in the UK and the EU candidate was better than all UK candidate because...
I suppose the counter-argument is that you only need to see people from another community somewhat to get past the idea of them all being evil, all being threats to you and your kin, and so just being in the same classrooms as each other is where most of the gains are made, rather than people actually forming strong cross-community relationships.
But if a school was mixed 10%-90% I wouldn't want to volunteer for that 10%. And for schools to mix at a stable 50%-50% would require significant planning, would only have been viable for a handful schools (particularly at the heights of the Troubles) and at any rate would attract the kind of parents and kids who least need to see that the other side is not a threat.
I'm not saying that the schooling system in NI had no negative effects, quite the contrary, it's just that I can't see it as being the underlying driver of the problem. It's very difficult to imagine a scenario in which the school system "worked", and hence eventually repaired community relations, without wider social factors being fixed first. Like many complex things in life, the causation seems to require both chickens and eggs at the same time.
SCons have been under taking a furious assault on the Greens over the last week. Culminating in an open letter expressing surprise and anger that the pro Independece Green party was in fact in favour of independence.
What I didn't realise was that the letter also criticised the Greens for voting in favour of the SNP budget. Something the Conservatives did every year of the 2007-2011 parliament. Their chutzpah knows no bounds.
Its politics
Lib Dems and Labour joining in to try and paint this bizarre "Great Betrayal of the Greens" narrative is positively nutty to me. All they seem to be doing is creating an environment to give the Greens as many SNP transfer votes as possible come the Local Council election
FWIW Ruth needs to keep Tomkins, Mundell etc under control - if not there's a real risk they'll start to undermine the SCON renaissance under her leadership !
"Let me tell you about a friend of mine. She woke up the day after the 2015 election, heartbroken that fear and division had won. "
Don't you feel a bit queasy about supporting a party whose leader says that the result of a democratic election, won by a moderate centre-right party, with roots going back centuries and led by a conspicuously moderate and decent leader, meant that 'fear and division had won'?
Nope. Remember the campaign.
I do. Surely it would be fairer to suggest that fear lost?
Miliband in Salmond's pocket? "Competence not chaos" - that was a joke! Secret decapitation of LibDems who had supported them in coalition.
Ah, sorry, I was thinking about the referendum not GE2015!
There's nothing secret about decapitation when the Prime Minister campaigns in Yeovil & Twickenham. More fool the LDs for not knowing what was going on on their doorstep.
Fittingly the banner ad was for 4 Stages to a Heart Attack.
Quietly? It was all over the press before.
I do find it draw-dropping that such a huge break with almost a thousand years of history has been brought it by the Lords because it is estimated to save about £80k a year...
80k!
How many members does that pay for? (All expenses included, I should have said what fraction of a member.)
In fact, how many portraits of members does that pay for? (The answer may well be fractional again.)
The food budget, the wine budget, I could go on.
You could sell me on the quality of the new paper being better, given appropriate evidence. You might even sell me on "the country's gone vegan, too controversial to use animal products these days". But on cost grounds, for those kind of sums, and in the context of the running costs of that place, my flabber is gasted.
I introduced a 10 Minute Rule bill to get rid of vellum (on animal rights grounds) back in 1998 or so. It was opposed by the local Labour MP for the only vellum factory. We had an inconclusive wrangle which went nowhere, which is what usually happens to 10MR bills (which literally take 2*10 minutes and then generally vanish). However, it's a daft relic - inferior quality, pointless use of animal products, and symbolic of our preoccupation with irrelevant bits of the past.
You see, that's the kind of argument I could get behind. It is the puny magnitude of the 80k (bearing in mind the move is originating with the Lords!) and the slightly uncharacteristic role of the Lords as anti-traditionalists which got me, not the other merits of the case.
We pay £20bn divorce bill. We pay £5bn net a year into the EU budget. We agree EU citizens can come with a job offer, plus an emergency break if it gets too high.
We get free trade and partial customs union or customs alignment in Goods. We get extra non-tariff barriers for services, including loss of financial passport. We get a three year transition deal post A50 expiry to 2022.
We leave ECJ, we formally leave EEA, we get all other powers repatriated, we line up new trade deals during the transition period.
Job done.
Do you think Conservatives would accept that?
I think that bill and the ongoing payments would be unacceptable to too many Tory backbenchers. I also don't think allowing EU citizens to come if they get a job will fly... Even with an emergency break. Control surely means choosing who comes... Not saying anyone with a job up o a certain number.
Yes. And it would pass the House.
The litmus test is: if we're arguing about it on here - with Remainers and the EU saying it's shite and Leavers and the UK saying it's fine - then we have the right pitch point for the deal.
I really can't see the Daily Mail accepting continuing British payments to the EU. And there's really no sign at all that May would stand up to the Daily Mail.
If the UK paid (say) £550m to be members of Erasmus, Galileo, the ESA and the EMA, would they really be that bothered?
Probably not - but Mrs May herself said the days of large payments to the EU are over even if we do opt in to the odd paying doodah. With her I find it's usually best just to accept what she says is what she'll do.
My point is simply that recreating some of the competences that we've outsourced (i.e. EMA) is not inexpensive. If the choice is between doing something for £1bn ourselves, or outsourcing it for £550m, we should take the cheaper option. (Assuming no difference in quality.)
Take Galileo. This is one of three competing 'positioning' systems. (Alongside the Russian GLONASS and the US GPS.) We currently rely on the ultra accurate positioning for our military. Now, we could pay the US to get the US GPS unlocked. Or we could pay the Russians. Or we could continue to foot about 7% of the Galileo bill. But we sure as shit won't be launching our own network of satellites.
In general I think it's a pretty good principle to take the views of people on the spot over those of the long distance fulminators & sermonisers.
Be that as it may, he was still a murdering c*%$ though. If he did good in the years of the peace process, then that is something to be thankful for. That he will soon be rotting in his grave at a relatively young age is also something to be thankful for. Many innocent people didn't get that chance at as long a life as his.
Whatever floats your boat. Ranting on the internet about him being a murdering c*%$ just seems to me to be like those people who hang about outside court & hammer on the side of a security van containing some convicted paedo that they don't know from Adam.
Interesting news via the ludicrous Chris Williamson MP. Deputy Leadership contests as proxy battles once again?
(Snip)
Oh, FFS. I'm not exactly a fan of Watson, and I find the current spat between Watson and his old friend McCluskey hilarious (if not scripted).
But anyone who thinks that the problem that needs tackling in Labour is Watson, not Corbyn, needs their head checking.
The Labour Party is the Titanic, the captain is 'Smithy' Corbyn, and the crew are busy rearranging the deckchairs as they steam towards the iceberg of electoral disaster. Watson is Frederick Fleet up in the Crow's Nest.
That's grossly unfair to Capt Smith, who was a good seaman and had a long and distinguished career as a commander.
If the Labour Party is the Titanic, then it's in some alternate history where there was a mutiny and an engine stoker has been elevated to the master's chair. (Though the Titanic is a poor analogy because the inference is that the ship is doomed whatever, which wasn't necessarily true).
I think you're treating my comment with more seriousness than it deserves ...
Fittingly the banner ad was for 4 Stages to a Heart Attack.
Quietly? It was all over the press before.
I d
80k!
How many members does that pay for? (All expenses included, I should have said what fraction of a member.)
In fact, how many portraits of members does that pay for? (The answer may well be fractional again.)
The food budget, the wine budget, I could go on.
You could sell me on the quality of the new paper being better, given appropriate evidence. You might even sell me on "the country's gone vegan, too controversial to use animal products these days". But on cost grounds, for those kind of sums, and in the context of the running costs of that place, my flabber is gasted.
I introduced a 10 Minute Rule bill to get rid of vellum (on animal rights grounds) back in 1998 or so. It was opposed by the local Labour MP for the only vellum factory. We had an inconclusive wrangle which went nowhere, which is what usually happens to 10MR bills (which literally take 2*10 minutes and then generally vanish). However, it's a daft relic - inferior quality, pointless use of animal products, and symbolic of our preoccupation with irrelevant bits of the past.
I don't really care about the animal products bit, though I am surprised as I thought the vellum issue had been defeated. I do think with such changes as these people go nuts on significance of dropping them and significance of keeping them. It really saves very little in the grand scheme, but at the end of the day it is a saving and does it really matter if it is vellum or paper? On the other hand, describing it as symbolic of our preoccupation with irrelevant bits of the past seems a bit harsh, implying there's something wrong with retaining traditions rather than merely focusing on the quality and animal rights issues.
I still laugh at Carswell for example trying to make periscoping in parliament some kind of grand modernisation gesture, part of some campaign, the same with SNP clapping. There are ancient or archaic rules and conventions which are utterly harmless and add to the character of the place. If those rules require unreasonable expenditures perhaps they can be reviewed, but there's nothing wrong with retaining older conventions if they don't reduce the place in any way. And usually claims of older customs doing so are overblown, to say the least.
Casino_Royale - plenty of UK job agencies are active in Europe, and large firms such as Tesco had their own agencies there - I think you will find that immigration is an organised business and your proposal of limiting immigration to those with job offers would have very limited effect.
The trick, I think Mr, PAw, is to turn the offer into a work permit dependent on maintaining that job. Once you do that AND have an effective and efficient method of removing people from the country when they fail to comply with the terms of their permit, immigration will cease to be an issue.
We don't even do a good job with people in the UK from (say) Albania working in car washes. And those are people we could legally deport.
There's nothing secret about decapitation when the Prime Minister campaigns in Yeovil & Twickenham. More fool the LDs for not knowing what was going on on their doorstep.
It's a bit rich of a LibDem to complain about a 'decapitation' strategy, given that that was what they tried (and fortunately failed) to do in 2005.
In any case, the Conservative campaign in LibDem seats was an equal-opportunity campaign, targetting head, body, arms, legs and toes without discrimination.
I'm still unclear what the 'fear and division' referred to. The bitching seems to be about the LibDems losing seats.
Casino_Royale - plenty of UK job agencies are active in Europe, and large firms such as Tesco had their own agencies there - I think you will find that immigration is an organised business and your proposal of limiting immigration to those with job offers would have very limited effect.
Indeed, and tesco prevented sites recruiting locally iirc
Why pay more to employ and train local Britons, who may also have a sense of self-entitlement and a poor work ethic, when you can recruit limitless numbers of keen workers from Europe who are happy to work at the minimum wage?
To those who say it's not just our immigration system, it's also our education system and poor levels of family/social support, together with far too expensive housing, I'd say I agree.
But the concerns of native Britons were too easy to dismiss, because no-one likes chavs and the system worked pretty well for the middle classes.
Casino_Royale - plenty of UK job agencies are active in Europe, and large firms such as Tesco had their own agencies there - I think you will find that immigration is an organised business and your proposal of limiting immigration to those with job offers would have very limited effect.
I think you'd have the standard requirement of needing to prove that you had tried to recruit in the UK and the EU candidate was better than all UK candidate because...
Germany imposed a work permit requirement from 2004 to 2011 as the EU expanded, had Blair done the same we may never have left the EU
Interesting news via the ludicrous Chris Williamson MP. Deputy Leadership contests as proxy battles once again?
(Snip)
Oh, FFS. I'm not exactly a fan of Watson, and I find the current spat between Watson and his old friend McCluskey hilarious (if not scripted).
But anyone who thinks that the problem that needs tackling in Labour is Watson, not Corbyn, needs their head checking.
The Labour Party is the Titanic, the captain is 'Smithy' Corbyn, and the crew are busy rearranging the deckchairs as they steam towards the iceberg of electoral disaster. Watson is Frederick Fleet up in the Crow's Nest.
That's grossly unfair to Capt Smith, who was a good seaman and had a long and distinguished career as a commander.
If the Labour Party is the Titanic, then it's in some alternate history where there was a mutiny and an engine stoker has been elevated to the master's chair. (Though the Titanic is a poor analogy because the inference is that the ship is doomed whatever, which wasn't necessarily true).
I think you're treating my comment with more seriousness than it deserves ...
You should know not to make an analogy on PB without it being thoroughly ravaged, like a fox at the end of a hunt by the local tories.
And finally, someone in HMQ's household has a (black) sense of humour. The pudding at the state dinner which McGuinness attended was Bombe Surprise.
Are you sure it is in the Household?
IIRC, HMQ's response to Martin McGuniness asking how she was was "I'm still alive"
You do wonder whether there was a subtle dig at the ex-IRA commander in that comment or whether it was was just the innocent comment of an elderly lady happy to be in reasonable health.
HMQ never says anything without understanding the implications. She is very practiced at this and extremely switched on. Don't forget she makes small talk for a living
Comments
There might be a Geoffrey Archer type novel in that.
"All you generals without armies, here’s your army. You want a vehicle. Get on board. You want a movement. Move. Stop waiting for something to happen. Join us and make something happen."
The object lesson of Switzerland is also important to bear in mind. The EU forced them into 'third country' status in a range of programmes in response to their vote to end free movement.
http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/erasmus-plus/updates/20140128-participation-switzerland-erasmus-plus_en
"Let me tell you about a friend of mine. She woke up the day after the 2015 election, heartbroken that fear and division had won. She made a choice. Not to hang her head in despair, but to do something about it. She joined the Liberal Democrats. Today, she is the Member of Parliament for Richmond Park. It doesn’t always happen like that. It took me a bit longer. But Sarah Olney exemplifies the best way to respond to the nationalist nightmare."
Game on.
'Tory fury as historic Brexit Act WON'T be printed for posterity on vellum because the centuries old tradition has been quietly DITCHED'
http://tinyurl.com/kd9ujaa
Fittingly the banner ad was for 4 Stages to a Heart Attack.
In any case, nothing definitive will happen until after the German elections.
I do not really blame McGuinness or even the evangelical nut-jobs of Unionism.
I blame the Northern Ireland educational system and its segregated schools for ensuring that demonising "the other side" was easy to do and instilling a "them and us" attitude into children that many failed to shake off in later life. It makes the ghetto mentality easy to maintain and gets you off to a good start in life in Norn Iron's very own apartheid system.
It is why I believe that Faith Schools on the UK mainland is a far, far bigger error than Grammar Schools.
80k!
How many members does that pay for? (All expenses included, I should have said what fraction of a member.)
In fact, how many portraits of members does that pay for? (The answer may well be fractional again.)
The food budget, the wine budget, I could go on.
You could sell me on the quality of the new paper being better, given appropriate evidence. You might even sell me on "the country's gone vegan, too controversial to use animal products these days". But on cost grounds, for those kind of sums, and in the context of the running costs of that place, my flabber is gasted.
One of these is a 1-5 shot supposedly, another 6-4 for the reds. I don't think both can be correct.
Hat tip: @Psephography
The best I could find was in Ecclesiastes:
9:11 "I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all."
Anyway, there's absolutely no chance that they'd want to. They have a lot of preparatory work to do as well.
What I didn't realise was that the letter also criticised the Greens for voting in favour of the SNP budget. Something the Conservatives did every year of the 2007-2011 parliament. Their chutzpah knows no bounds.
Unfortunately it didn't (but should have) happen(ed) with us in the EU.
They would have paid out if he had been assassinated.
Neither side were sainted. Read up on the Shankill Butchers who killed and tortured dozens with meat cleavers and the like. Or the UVF's Dublin bombs or the Dundalk bombs.
Each side had their psychos. I grew up with some of the UVF ones.
It'd odd, I'd perhaps have expected the Lords to support such traditional practices and that they may have had to fight a rear-guard against the modernising, penny-pinching members of the Commons, rather than t'other way round.
https://twitter.com/ChriswMP/status/844137453489393664
As for the Orange Order, the bigotry and intolerance in a large number or its members was breathtaking. I have no doubt that similar things were happening in the Nationalist community but I had no contact with them until I was over 18. None. It was too d*mn dangerous and besides, they were the enemy. I had been assured of that since I could walk.
I grew up with these people. I lived amongst them. FFS, I am related to some of them!!
This is not a theoretical exercise. It is the sh*t I grew up with.
You do not need many converts to become the terrorists, but it sure helps to have a fertile breeding ground to start you off.
I could not stand it and I will never go back. It is why I have no time for division or hatred. I have had enough for one lifetime.
And on that merry note, I shall go off and cool down a bit.
https://youtu.be/ZMgIEQN3W4g
But anyone who thinks that the problem that needs tackling in Labour is Watson, not Corbyn, needs their head checking.
The Labour Party is the Titanic, the captain is 'Smithy' Corbyn, and the crew are busy rearranging the deckchairs as they steam towards the iceberg of electoral disaster. Watson is Frederick Fleet up in the Crow's Nest.
You'd think with this earth shattering apocalypto of a poll they'd want to tell people about it. Or at least show the data tables.
https://twitter.com/caronmlindsay/status/844134397733490690
If the Labour Party is the Titanic, then it's in some alternate history where there was a mutiny and an engine stoker has been elevated to the master's chair. (Though the Titanic is a poor analogy because the inference is that the ship is doomed whatever, which wasn't necessarily true).
Corbyn smashed the iceberg into a thousand pieces, it was a truly terrible night for the iceberg.
If Corbyn can do that to an iceberg just imagine what he can do to the Tory party.
IIRC, HMQ's response to Martin McGuniness asking how she was was "I'm still alive"
On this day in 1556 the first Protestant Archbiship of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer was burned at the stake in Oxford. https://t.co/Rj7LmUeNOX
"Competence not chaos" - that was a joke!
Secret decapitation of LibDems who had supported them in coalition.
Ross Kempall
Exclusive: Three of five Labour candidates on the shortlist for Manchester Gorton attended Khomeinist rallies backing the Iranian regime https://t.co/HZ53sLSgDA
People have a tremendous capacity for self-segregation - in housing, social organisations, public services, the full works. Even in spheres where people are forced to mix, it doesn't mean that they network. Cross-links between separate communities still remain sparse. The Big Sort is well worth a google if you have time.
There has been some sociological research into "Integration" in schools in West Yorkshire, where if I recall correctly one of the main findings was that even at those schools where white and Asian students both attended in significant numbers, "mixing" mostly occurred in the outer circles of friendship groups. Once we move beyond acquaintances and into the circle of close friends, the children were almost exclusively investing their deepest social capital with others from the same community background. Moreover, cross-community contact in the outer circle tended to cease after leaving school. And this was among kids whose parents were willing enough to let them socialise with other groups that they were sent to a mixed school - others preferred homogeneous schools, and we are not necessarily talking about "faith" schools here. (In England at least, faith schools are not necessarily homogeneous: there are Catholic schools in London where 90%+ of students are Muslim, Jewish schools where only a tiny fraction are Jews, and so on. But one could hardly argue faith schools promote integration, the justification has always been one of parental choice.)
A truly integrated NI education system would be a Good Thing in many ways, but what would it take? Parental choice would have to be curtailed or removed altogether; a system of quasi-random allocation would be needed in its stead; given the geographic spread of the communities, busing would be required. (For fans of British social history, look at what happened in Bradford and Ealing - not an experiment that anyone is likely to want to repeat in a hurry.) Parents or community groups would need to be banned from establishing private schools (you might find a few more supporters for this one). And for all this, you could only make the students mix, not necessarily integrate - once they're outside the school gates, their closest friends, the ones they can actually socialise more deeply with, are likely to be their nearest neighbours. And if the steps required to mix the schooling system are authoritarian to the point of oppressive, goodness knows how many human rights treaties it would breach to address the housing segregation issue and reallocate the population.
There’s no point speaking to adoring crowds of people who already agree with you if the public aren’t listening. And there’s no point just telling people how terrible you think the Tories are, if you haven’t persuaded them you can be trusted first.
http://labourlist.org/2017/03/ian-austin-lets-not-kid-ourselves-tory-cheats-arent-why-we-lost-in-2015/
Some people really do think the problem is not bashing the Tories enough. Each side bashes each other relentlessly in a campaign and their media mouthpieces and online supporters regurgitate the attack lines day in day out; it's not enough on its own - if enough people agreed about how terrible the Tories were, if it were that self evident, they wouldn't have won. By all means believe it, plenty do, but its amazing how lazy people can be about anti-Toryism (and yes, anti-labourism too, but being lazy when in the ascendency makes a bit more sense)
When Dave campaigned in Yeovil, 400 yards from Paddy Ashdown's house, Paddy and the Lib Dems thought it confirmed Dave, George, Andrew Feldman, and Sir Lynton (pbuh) didn't have a flipping clue about campaigning or winning.
If he did good in the years of the peace process, then that is something to be thankful for. That he will soon be rotting in his grave at a relatively young age is also something to be thankful for. Many innocent people didn't get that chance at as long a life as his.
A gentle reminder that she may have forgiven, but hasn't forgotten?
But if a school was mixed 10%-90% I wouldn't want to volunteer for that 10%. And for schools to mix at a stable 50%-50% would require significant planning, would only have been viable for a handful schools (particularly at the heights of the Troubles) and at any rate would attract the kind of parents and kids who least need to see that the other side is not a threat.
I'm not saying that the schooling system in NI had no negative effects, quite the contrary, it's just that I can't see it as being the underlying driver of the problem. It's very difficult to imagine a scenario in which the school system "worked", and hence eventually repaired community relations, without wider social factors being fixed first. Like many complex things in life, the causation seems to require both chickens and eggs at the same time.
There's nothing secret about decapitation when the Prime Minister campaigns in Yeovil & Twickenham. More fool the LDs for not knowing what was going on on their doorstep.
Edit - as @TSE has already pointed out!
Take Galileo. This is one of three competing 'positioning' systems. (Alongside the Russian GLONASS and the US GPS.) We currently rely on the ultra accurate positioning for our military. Now, we could pay the US to get the US GPS unlocked. Or we could pay the Russians. Or we could continue to foot about 7% of the Galileo bill. But we sure as shit won't be launching our own network of satellites.
Ranting on the internet about him being a murdering c*%$ just seems to me to be like those people who hang about outside court & hammer on the side of a security van containing some convicted paedo that they don't know from Adam.
I still laugh at Carswell for example trying to make periscoping in parliament some kind of grand modernisation gesture, part of some campaign, the same with SNP clapping. There are ancient or archaic rules and conventions which are utterly harmless and add to the character of the place. If those rules require unreasonable expenditures perhaps they can be reviewed, but there's nothing wrong with retaining older conventions if they don't reduce the place in any way. And usually claims of older customs doing so are overblown, to say the least.
In any case, the Conservative campaign in LibDem seats was an equal-opportunity campaign, targetting head, body, arms, legs and toes without discrimination.
I'm still unclear what the 'fear and division' referred to. The bitching seems to be about the LibDems losing seats.
RIP.
True story: he was friends with my auntie, and they used to correspond in code and crossword clues.
To those who say it's not just our immigration system, it's also our education system and poor levels of family/social support, together with far too expensive housing, I'd say I agree.
But the concerns of native Britons were too easy to dismiss, because no-one likes chavs and the system worked pretty well for the middle classes.
It is, but I'd expect them to at least just say 'safe' in case of the worst case scenarios.