Having thought about it, the only way I'd vote for Boris is if he was running against Soubry. I'd take any other leader.
I'd vote for him over TMay.
I think Javid in the end is maybe the best bet. And probably should be favourite.
Is that before or after you deport him for being a (secular) Muslim?
In all seriousness, you are right. Javid is by far the best candidate, it's amazing more Tories don't see it. If we were to have another Tory PM, I would very much hope it was him.
This conservative supports Javid. Boris would be a disaster - wholly unsuitable for high office
I think a critic would say than that.
But let's face it. Anyone scoring more than 5/10 in this Cabinet is a real contender. There are very few who do. He is the obvious contender from the cabinet at the moment.
Moreover, he is smart. He went from son of a bus driver to director at Deutsche Bank. That takes brains, and guile, and drive.
And he has political and economic nous, and foresight:
"Aged 20, Javid attended the annual Conservative Party Conference for the first time and campaigned against the Thatcher government's decision that year to join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), calling it a "fatal mistake".[10]"
Nobody has yet given me a decent answer as to why we should be discriminating against my friends down under. Have you got one?
That's a great question.
The British haven't offered a reciprocal free movement deal with Australia because British voters hate freedom. (I have no idea whether Australia would accept if offered.)
While in the EU British people had freedoms that their fellow British voters wouldn't otherwise have let them have because it wasn't up to their fellow British voters.
I think it should be obvious from the Australia case that it's better if you can avoid giving the voters the ability to make judgements like this about your life, which they will use to take away your freedom. But if the WTO or the Commonwealth or some other international body also had requirements like this, and British voters grudgingly accepted it to be able to export their jam or whatever, that would be great. Sadly there isn't a bigger, more global version of the EU, although the EU was slowly growing to take in more countries.
So British voters aren't allowed to vote for things they want or don't want?
It's a paradox. How do you compel people to accept "freedoms" that they don't want, and/or don't consider to be freedoms?
As I said recently, it is rude and bullying and should absolutely not have come out of a mainstream politician's mouth.
It does just what Corbyn has done, it legitimises discrimination against The Other.
Oh of course we can console ourselves that as some Muslims wear burqas, and some Muslims want to create a caliphate in Primrose Hill, all Muslims who wear the burqa are bad. But that of course would be a simpleton's argument.
Not that PB is short of simpletons.
The forced wearing of it I agree is a separate issue.
What percentage do you think wear a Burqa because they want to?
What percentage of Jews do you think wear a yarmulke because they want to?
Indeed. How many Jewish boys are circumcised because they want to be?
For what it's worth, I loathe the burka just as I loathe the practice of circumcision (which I would ban for children except for proven medical reasons - once you are an adult you can make that informed choice). I'd also ban all faith schools and the teaching of any religion on schools beyond academic study of it (again let adults make choices about religion, don't force feed it to children). I realise I am in a tiny minority but those are nevertheless my views.
Re: Boris. Topping is right, The guy is a bully, and a grasping self-serving one at that. He knew what he was doing and such bad manners has no place in British political discourse.
You can't tell this now, because all the results are about Boris, but a Google of burka letterbox just after he said it made very clear indeed (from the sites it showed up on) that it is a racist trope beloved of the right. Odds of Boris not knowing that?
Nobody has yet given me a decent answer as to why we should be discriminating against my friends down under. Have you got one?
That's a great question.
The British haven't offered a reciprocal free movement deal with Australia because British voters hate freedom. (I have no idea whether Australia would accept if offered.)
While in the EU British people had freedoms that their fellow British voters wouldn't otherwise have let them have because it wasn't up to their fellow British voters.
I think it should be obvious from the Australia case that it's better if you can avoid giving the voters the ability to make judgements like this about your life, which they will use to take away your freedom. But if the WTO or the Commonwealth or some other international body also had requirements like this, and British voters grudgingly accepted it to be able to export their jam or whatever, that would be great. Sadly there isn't a bigger, more global version of the EU, although the EU was slowly growing to take in more countries.
So British voters aren't allowed to vote for things they want or don't want?
Sure they're allowed to, they can vote for whatever they want. But if you value freedom, you will want your fellow voters to be at least somewhat constrained when they want to do things to you that are unwise and harmful to you.
This is a great example: The British and Australian governments could negotiate free movement for British people wanting to go to Australia and Australian people wanting to go to Britain, and nothing bad would happen. This is a constraint on freedom created for no good purpose. It would be better if the power of the voters over you was constrained so that they couldn't do these bad things.
Unfortunately it's not always easy to come up with a general principle that will prevent democracies from voting to do bad things to you while preserving their ability to do good things. There are some, like human rights laws, or, in most countries, constitutions that limit the powers of the government over you, but generally we're stuck with democracy as the least-bad available form of government. But when an international organization stops the voters making their government do stupid shit, that's obviously a good thing.
Nobody has yet given me a decent answer as to why we should be discriminating against my friends down under. Have you got one?
That's a great question.
The British haven't offered a reciprocal free movement deal with Australia because British voters hate freedom. (I have no idea whether Australia would accept if offered.)
While in the EU British people had freedoms that their fellow British voters wouldn't otherwise have let them have because it wasn't up to their fellow British voters.
I think it should be obvious from the Australia case that it's better if you can avoid giving the voters the ability to make judgements like this about your life, which they will use to take away your freedom. But if the WTO or the Commonwealth or some other international body also had requirements like this, and British voters grudgingly accepted it to be able to export their jam or whatever, that would be great. Sadly there isn't a bigger, more global version of the EU, although the EU was slowly growing to take in more countries.
So British voters aren't allowed to vote for things they want or don't want?
Sure they're allowed to, they can vote for whatever they want. But if you value freedom, you will want your fellow voters to be at least somewhat constrained when they want to do things to you that are unwise and harmful to you.
This is a great example: The British and Australian governments could negotiate free movement for British people wanting to go to Australia and Australian people wanting to go to Britain, and nothing bad would happen. This is a constraint on freedom created for no good purpose. It would be better if the power of the voters over you was constrained so that they couldn't do these bad things.
Unfortunately it's not always easy to come up with a general principle that will prevent democracies from voting to do bad things to you while preserving their ability to do good things. There are some, like human rights laws, or, in most countries, constitutions that limit the powers of the government over you, but generally we're stuck with democracy as the least-bad available form of government. But when an international organization stops the voters making their government do stupid shit, that's obviously a good thing.
Nobody has yet given me a decent answer as to why we should be discriminating against my friends down under. Have you got one?
That's a great question.
The British haven't offered a reciprocal free movement deal with Australia because British voters hate freedom. (I have no idea whether Australia would accept if offered.)
While in the EU British people had freedoms that their fellow British voters wouldn't otherwise have let them have because it wasn't up to their fellow British voters.
I think it should be obvious from the Australia case that it's better if you can avoid giving the voters the ability to make judgements like this about your life, which they will use to take away your freedom. But if the WTO or the Commonwealth or some other international body also had requirements like this, and British voters grudgingly accepted it to be able to export their jam or whatever, that would be great. Sadly there isn't a bigger, more global version of the EU, although the EU was slowly growing to take in more countries.
If we had a freedom of movement agreement between the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada it would be interesting to see what the overall population movements would be. Would the population density of the UK go up or down, for instance?
Nobody has yet given me a decent answer as to why we should be discriminating against my friends down under. Have you got one?
That's a great question.
The British haven't offered a reciprocal free movement deal with Australia because British voters hate freedom. (I have no idea whether Australia would accept if offered.)
While in the EU British people had freedoms that their fellow British voters wouldn't otherwise have let them have because it wasn't up to their fellow British voters.
I think it should be obvious from the Australia case that it's better if you can avoid giving the voters the ability to make judgements like this about your life, which they will use to take away your freedom. But if the WTO or the Commonwealth or some other international body also had requirements like this, and British voters grudgingly accepted it to be able to export their jam or whatever, that would be great. Sadly there isn't a bigger, more global version of the EU, although the EU was slowly growing to take in more countries.
So British voters aren't allowed to vote for things they want or don't want?
Sure they're allowed to, they can vote for whatever they want. But if you value freedom, you will want your fellow voters to be at least somewhat constrained when they want to do things to you that are unwise and harmful to you.
This is a great example: The British and Australian governments could negotiate free movement for British people wanting to go to Australia and Australian people wanting to go to Britain, and nothing bad would happen. This is a constraint on freedom created for no good purpose. It would be better if the power of the voters over you was constrained so that they couldn't do these bad things.
Unfortunately it's not always easy to come up with a general principle that will prevent democracies from voting to do bad things to you while preserving their ability to do good things. There are some, like human rights laws, or, in most countries, constitutions that limit the powers of the government over you, but generally we're stuck with democracy as the least-bad available form of government. But when an international organization stops the voters making their government do stupid shit, that's obviously a good thing.
But, other voters may take a different view to you about what constitutes good or bad. It's not a fact that free migration is a good thing, but an opinion.
It's a paradox. How do you compel people to accept "freedoms" that they don't want, and/or don't consider to be freedoms?
It's not really a paradox. They have power over you. They don't value your freedom, and it's not relevant to them because they mostly don't want to go to Australia. Working out ways to prevent people with power over you from abusing it, and to draw lines around what power they can have, is basically the point of the entire history democracy and all the other of systems of government that have been attempted from time to time.
Well sure, otherwise you'd just make a constitution that says "the government may not do any stupid shit". But there's objectively definitely *such a thing* as stupid shit that governments sometimes do.
PS. Does anyone want to actually *defend* mutual restrictions on Australians coming to Britain and British people going to Australia?
Apropos to SeanT's remark, the wearing of face masks (whatever you call 'em) should be I.L.L.E.G.A.L. while driving.
What if you're driving a high-performance open-top vehicle for which wearing a crash helmet would be prudent?
Or riding a motorbike?
Indeed. But @toms did specify "driving" as opposed to "riding".
All very funny chaps, but have a close look next time you spot somebody wearing a burqa, and ask yourself how safe she would be driving a car (or motorbike) on the Queen's highway. And it does happen when, as a cyclist and pedestrian, I have found it scary.
Dangerous driving is already an offence. If wearing a burqa makes the wearer drive dangerously then the police already have powers to address such offences.
I’d still be interested to know how you’d write legislation that would ban “wearing face masks [...] while driving” without making full face crash helmets illegal.
Nobody has yet given me a decent answer as to why we should be discriminating against my friends down under. Have you got one?
That's a great question.
The British haven't offered a reciprocal free movement deal with Australia because British voters hate freedom. (I have no idea whether Australia would accept if offered.)
While in the EU British people had freedoms that their fellow British voters wouldn't otherwise have let them have because it wasn't up to their fellow British voters.
I think it should be obvious from the Australia case that it's better if you can avoid giving the voters the ability to make judgements like this about your life, which they will use to take away your freedom. But if the WTO or the Commonwealth or some other international body also had requirements like this, and British voters grudgingly accepted it to be able to export their jam or whatever, that would be great. Sadly there isn't a bigger, more global version of the EU, although the EU was slowly growing to take in more countries.
So British voters aren't allowed to vote for things they want or don't want?
It's a paradox. How do you compel people to accept "freedoms" that they don't want, and/or don't consider to be freedoms?
You can't ultimately, in a democracy. That's the point. One person's freedom to have a house in Tuscany and drink Chianti whilst writing anguished columns for the Gruaniad (say), is an imposition on a sparky on a building site in Stoke who now has to compete with Casimir from Wroclaw who's prepared to live ten to a house and do the fuse box wiring for minimum wage.
It' s conundrum that we try to sort out peacefully through the ballot box. The issue really really kicks off if you say "that's sacrosanct and can't be altered, ever" because one section of society says so. That way lies the "approved list democracy" of the Soviet block.
This is at the heart of the EU's dilemma with Brexit. Economically they know perfectly well that letting things be very free and easy on "trade", whilst letting the UK genuinely remove itself from FOM would (they fear) lead to a queue of others saying "we want that too". But they can't allow people to have what they want because they then won't vote for ever closer union - and that's sacrosanct.
It's a paradox. How do you compel people to accept "freedoms" that they don't want, and/or don't consider to be freedoms?
It's not really a paradox. They have power over you. They don't value your freedom, and it's not relevant to them because they mostly don't want to go to Australia. Working out ways to prevent people with power over you from abusing it, and to draw lines around what power they can have, is basically the point of the entire history democracy and all the other of systems of government that have been attempted from time to time.
Any society will place restraints on freedom, for what it considers to be the greater good.
For example, I can't spend my income as I choose, but rather, have to pay a large portion of it over to HMRC.
Apropos to SeanT's remark, the wearing of face masks (whatever you call 'em) should be I.L.L.E.G.A.L. while driving.
What if you're driving a high-performance open-top vehicle for which wearing a crash helmet would be prudent?
Or riding a motorbike?
Indeed. But @toms did specify "driving" as opposed to "riding".
All very funny chaps, but have a close look next time you spot somebody wearing a burqa, and ask yourself how safe she would be driving a car (or motorbike) on the Queen's highway. And it does happen when, as a cyclist and pedestrian, I have found it scary.
Dangerous driving is already an offence. If wearing a burqa makes the wearer drive dangerously then the police already have powers to address such offences.
I’d still be interested to know how you’d write legislation that would ban “wearing face masks [...] while driving” without making full face crash helmets illegal.
Nobody has yet given me a decent answer as to why we should be discriminating against my friends down under. Have you got one?
That's a great question.
The British haven't offered a reciprocal free movement deal with Australia because British voters hate freedom. (I have no idea whether Australia would accept if offered.)
While in the EU British people had freedoms that their fellow British voters wouldn't otherwise have let them have because it wasn't up to their fellow British voters.
I think it should be obvious from the Australia case that it's better if you can avoid giving the voters the ability to make judgements like this about your life, which they will use to take away your freedom. But if the WTO or the Commonwealth or some other international body also had requirements like this, and British voters grudgingly accepted it to be able to export their jam or whatever, that would be great. Sadly there isn't a bigger, more global version of the EU, although the EU was slowly growing to take in more countries.
So British voters aren't allowed to vote for things they want or don't want?
Sure they're allowed to, they can vote for whatever they want. But if you value freedom, you will want your fellow voters to be at least somewhat constrained when they want to do things to you that are unwise and harmful to you.
This is a great example: The British and Australian governments could negotiate free movement for British people wanting to go to Australia and Australian people wanting to go to Britain, and nothing bad would happen. This is a constraint on freedom created for no good purpose. It would be better if the power of the voters over you was constrained so that they couldn't do these bad things.
Unfortunately it's not always easy to come up with a general principle that will prevent democracies from voting to do bad things to you while preserving their ability to do good things. There are some, like human rights laws, or, in most countries, constitutions that limit the powers of the government over you, but generally we're stuck with democracy as the least-bad available form of government. But when an international organization stops the voters making their government do stupid shit, that's obviously a good thing.
Cue our resident medical experts explaining why they know more than a drug company...
Good to see the media reporting how a no-deal Brexit would affect people on both sides of the channel and not just the UK.
Of course an EMA thats losing 30% of their staff won't help either
Finally. On a similar note an aviation forum I frequent suggests that as many as 50% of the staff at EASA are British, which could be the cause of a few problems too. I think everyone ca agree that whatever we end up with, deal or no deal, there will be agreements on aviation and medicines even if it’s a bit of can kicking.
Apropos to SeanT's remark, the wearing of face masks (whatever you call 'em) should be I.L.L.E.G.A.L. while driving.
What if you're driving a high-performance open-top vehicle for which wearing a crash helmet would be prudent?
Or riding a motorbike?
Indeed. But @toms did specify "driving" as opposed to "riding".
All very funny chaps, but have a close look next time you spot somebody wearing a burqa, and ask yourself how safe she would be driving a car (or motorbike) on the Queen's highway. And it does happen when, as a cyclist and pedestrian, I have found it scary.
Dangerous driving is already an offence. If wearing a burqa makes the wearer drive dangerously then the police already have powers to address such offences.
I’d still be interested to know how you’d write legislation that would ban “wearing face masks [...] while driving” without making full face crash helmets illegal.
There is already a field of vision test for driving. If the headgear restricts this field of vision to fail the test then it would be illegal to wear whilst driving.
As I said recently, it is rude and bullying and should absolutely not have come out of a mainstream politician's mouth.
It does just what Corbyn has done, it legitimises discrimination against The Other.
Oh of course we can console ourselves that as some Muslims wear burqas, and some Muslims want to create a caliphate in Primrose Hill, all Muslims who wear the burqa are bad. But that of course would be a simpleton's argument.
Not that PB is short of simpletons.
The forced wearing of it I agree is a separate issue.
What percentage do you think wear a Burqa because they want to?
What percentage of Jews do you think wear a yarmulke because they want to?
Indeed. How many Jewish boys are circumcised because they want to be?
For what it's worth, I loathe the burka just as I loathe the practice of circumcision (which I would ban for children except for proven medical reasons - once you are an adult you can make that informed choice). I'd also ban all faith schools and the teaching of any religion on schools beyond academic study of it (again let adults make choices about religion, don't force feed it to children). I realise I am in a tiny minority but those are nevertheless my views.
Re: Boris. Topping is right, The guy is a bully, and a grasping self-serving one at that. He knew what he was doing and such bad manners has no place in British political discourse.
You can't tell this now, because all the results are about Boris, but a Google of burka letterbox just after he said it made very clear indeed (from the sites it showed up on) that it is a racist trope beloved of the right. Odds of Boris not knowing that?
You are not in a minority of 1.
I must admit I didn't know that it was a racist trope. Thanks.
Apropos to SeanT's remark, the wearing of face masks (whatever you call 'em) should be I.L.L.E.G.A.L. while driving.
What if you're driving a high-performance open-top vehicle for which wearing a crash helmet would be prudent?
Or riding a motorbike?
Indeed. But @toms did specify "driving" as opposed to "riding".
All very funny chaps, but have a close look next time you spot somebody wearing a burqa, and ask yourself how safe she would be driving a car (or motorbike) on the Queen's highway. And it does happen when, as a cyclist and pedestrian, I have found it scary.
Dangerous driving is already an offence. If wearing a burqa makes the wearer drive dangerously then the police already have powers to address such offences.
I’d still be interested to know how you’d write legislation that would ban “wearing face masks [...] while driving” without making full face crash helmets illegal.
That’s easy, as crash helmets have a type approval sticker on the side, make it illegal to wear anything on the head that’s not type approved. Copy the legislation that currently covers motorbikes to any road vehicle.
Edit: but check the exemption for Sikhs wearing turbans that I think forms part of the current legislation, that it doesn’t cover any other ‘religious dress’.
It's a paradox. How do you compel people to accept "freedoms" that they don't want, and/or don't consider to be freedoms?
It's not really a paradox. They have power over you. They don't value your freedom, and it's not relevant to them because they mostly don't want to go to Australia. Working out ways to prevent people with power over you from abusing it, and to draw lines around what power they can have, is basically the point of the entire history democracy and all the other of systems of government that have been attempted from time to time.
Any society will place restraints on freedom, for what it considers to be the greater good.
For example, I can't spend my income as I choose, but rather, have to pay a large portion of it over to HMRC.
They should remove lane discipline on roads to demonstrate how far freedom gets you. Avoid roundabouts.
Apropos to SeanT's remark, the wearing of face masks (whatever you call 'em) should be I.L.L.E.G.A.L. while driving.
What if you're driving a high-performance open-top vehicle for which wearing a crash helmet would be prudent?
Or riding a motorbike?
Indeed. But @toms did specify "driving" as opposed to "riding".
All very funny chaps, but have a close look next time you spot somebody wearing a burqa, and ask yourself how safe she would be driving a car (or motorbike) on the Queen's highway. And it does happen when, as a cyclist and pedestrian, I have found it scary.
Dangerous driving is already an offence. If wearing a burqa makes the wearer drive dangerously then the police already have powers to address such offences.
I’d still be interested to know how you’d write legislation that would ban “wearing face masks [...] while driving” without making full face crash helmets illegal.
I suspect that such a change in the law would require some evidence. Is there any to suggest Niqab wearers have more accidents? It is not particularly unusual for me to see Niqab wearing drivers in Leicester, but no worse at driving than anyone else on Humberstone rd!
Nobody has yet given me a decent answer as to why we should be discriminating against my friends down under. Have you got one?
That's a great question.
The British haven't offered a reciprocal free movement deal with Australia because British voters hate freedom. (I have no idea whether Australia would accept if offered.)
While in the EU British people had freedoms that their fellow British voters wouldn't otherwise have let them have because it wasn't up to their fellow British voters.
I think it should be obvious from the Australia case that it's better if you can avoid giving the voters the ability to make judgements like this about your life, which they will use to take away your freedom. But if the WTO or the Commonwealth or some other international body also had requirements like this, and British voters grudgingly accepted it to be able to export their jam or whatever, that would be great. Sadly there isn't a bigger, more global version of the EU, although the EU was slowly growing to take in more countries.
So British voters aren't allowed to vote for things they want or don't want?
It's a paradox. How do you compel people to accept "freedoms" that they don't want, and/or don't consider to be freedoms?
You can't ultimately, in a democracy. That's the point. One person's freedom to have a house in Tuscany and drink Chianti whilst writing anguished columns for the Gruaniad (say), is an imposition on a sparky on a building site in Stoke who now has to compete with Casimir from Wroclaw who's prepared to live ten to a house and do the fuse box wiring for minimum wage.
It' s conundrum that we try to sort out peacefully through the ballot box. The issue really really kicks off if you say "that's sacrosanct and can't be altered, ever" because one section of society says so. That way lies the "approved list democracy" of the Soviet block.
This is at the heart of the EU's dilemma with Brexit. Economically they know perfectly well that letting things be very free and easy on "trade", whilst letting the UK genuinely remove itself from FOM would (they fear) lead to a queue of others saying "we want that too". But they can't allow people to have what they want because they then won't vote for ever closer union - and that's sacrosanct.
And it's the road to their perdition in the end.
It's much more fundamental than that. What attracts a citizen to the EU is the feeling that being part of the EU gives them equal status with other Europeans, whether you're from the most powerful country or the least powerful. If you break that dynamic, then the EU itself loses legitimacy.
You might. I don't. I don't feel unequal to the Swiss or equal to the Dutch because we've been in the EU with one but not the other.
The EU lacks express consent, certainly in the UK, for how far and how deep it has gone.
It desperately needs to address this and stop being de haut en bas "it's good for you now quit moaning". Otherwise it will go the way of Austria Hungary which it eerily echoes in my view.
You might. I don't. I don't feel unequal to the Swiss or equal to the Dutch because we've been in the EU with one but not the other.
The point is that it allows equality of esteem between citizens of nations of varying power. Sort of like the way the UK allows Welsh people to feel part of a large nation instead of a small one.
It desperately needs to address this and stop being de haut en bas "it's good for you now quit moaning". Otherwise it will go the way of Austria Hungary which it eerily echoes in my view.
Your view is wrong. What Brexit negotiations are showing is that the myriad ways in which integration is supported by the legal and political architecture of the EU are resilient and can't be unpicked without massive state intervention and economic pain. There is no mechanism for the EU to collapse short of a complete societal breakdown.
Nobody has yet given me a decent answer as to why we should be discriminating against my friends down under. Have you got one?
The British haven't offered a reciprocal free movement deal with Australia because British voters hate freedom. (I have no idea whether Australia would accept if offered. I think it should be obvious from the Australia case that it's better if you can avoid giving the voters the ability to make judgements like this about your life, which they will use to take away your freedom. But if the WTO or the Commonwealth or some other international body also had requirements like this, and British voters grudgingly accepted it to be able to export their jam or whatever, that would be great. Sadly there isn't a bigger, more global version of the EU, although the EU was slowly growing to take in more countries.
So British voters aren't allowed to vote for things they want or don't want?
It's a paradox. How do you compel people to accept "freedoms" that they don't want, and/or don't consider to be freedoms?
You can't ultimately, in a democracy. That's the point. One person's freedom to have a house in Tuscany and drink Chianti whilst writing anguished columns for the Gruaniad (say), is an imposition on a sparky on a building site in Stoke who now has to compete with Casimir from Wroclaw who's prepared to live ten to a house and do the fuse box wiring for minimum wage.
It' s conundrum that we try to sort out peacefully through the ballot box. The issue really really kicks off if you say "that's sacrosanct and can't be altered, ever" because one section of society says so. That way lies the "approved list democracy" of the Soviet block.
This is at the heart of the EU's dilemma with Brexit. Economically they know perfectly well that letting things be very free and easy on "trade", whilst letting the UK genuinely remove itself from FOM would (they fear) lead to a queue of others saying "we want that too". But they can't allow people to have what they want because they then won't vote for ever closer union - and that's sacrosanct.
And it's the road to their perdition in the end.
It's much more fundamental than that. What attracts a citizen to the EU is the feeling that being part of the EU gives them equal status with other Europeans, whether you're from the most powerful country or the least powerful. If you break that dynamic, then the EU itself loses legitimacy.
I suspect most EU citizens have better and more pressing matters to consider. Where national stereotypes allow this thought you imagine could well be the preserve of some with nothing better to do .
It's much more fundamental than that. What attracts a citizen to the EU is the feeling that being part of the EU gives them equal status with other Europeans, whether you're from the most powerful country or the least powerful. If you break that dynamic, then the EU itself loses legitimacy.
I suspect most EU citizens have better and more pressing matters to consider. Where national stereotypes allow this thought you imagine could well be the preserve of some with nothing better to do .
What, you don't think people in Malta sit around all day thinking "ah, now I know for sure I'm just as good/important as a German"?
Off topic but when did the football transfer window start shutting at 5pm. Thought it was normally ~11pm?
It's the cuts and austerity.
LOL!
I also don't remember it closing normally before the season begins.
But that's fine because outside of Merseyside none of the top clubs seem to have really even noticed it opening either.
Normally World Cup years are quite busy on the transfer market after players make a name for themselves on the biggest stage. Not really that much noticeable activity this year.
It's much more fundamental than that. What attracts a citizen to the EU is the feeling that being part of the EU gives them equal status with other Europeans,
All bees can have access to the honey - regardless of whether it is their hive or not ?
Off topic but when did the football transfer window start shutting at 5pm. Thought it was normally ~11pm?
It's the cuts and austerity.
LOL!
I also don't remember it closing normally before the season begins.
But that's fine because outside of Merseyside none of the top clubs seem to have really even noticed it opening either.
Normally World Cup years are quite busy on the transfer market after players make a name for themselves on the biggest stage. Not really that much noticeable activity this year.
They changed it to stop before the season begins to stop disruption and unsettling players whilst the season is in progress.
It's much more fundamental than that. What attracts a citizen to the EU is the feeling that being part of the EU gives them equal status with other Europeans, whether you're from the most powerful country or the least powerful. If you break that dynamic, then the EU itself loses legitimacy.
I suspect most EU citizens have better and more pressing matters to consider. Where national stereotypes allow this thought you imagine could well be the preserve of some with nothing better to do .
What, you don't think people in Malta sit around all day thinking "ah, now I know for sure I'm just as good/important as a German"?
While the French earnestly dissect the reasons and beauty for the equality between themselves and the Cypriots.
As I said recently, it is rude and bullying and should absolutely not have come out of a mainstream politician's mouth.
It does just what Corbyn has done, it legitimises discrimination against The Other.
Oh of course we can console ourselves that as some Muslims wear burqas, and some Muslims want to create a caliphate in Primrose Hill, all Muslims who wear the burqa are bad. But that of course would be a simpleton's argument.
Not that PB is short of simpletons.
The forced wearing of it I agree is a separate issue.
What percentage do you think wear a Burqa because they want to?
What percentage of Jews do you think wear a yarmulke because they want to?
Indeed. How many Jewish boys are circumcised because they want to be?
For what it's worth, I loathe the burka just as I loathe the practice of circumcision (which I would ban for children except for proven medical reasons - once you are an adult you can make that informed choice). I'd also ban all faith schools and the teaching of any religion on schools beyond academic study of it (again let adults make choices about religion, don't force feed it to children). I realise I am in a tiny minority but those are nevertheless my views.
Re: Boris. Topping is right, The guy is a bully, and a grasping self-serving one at that. He knew what he was doing and such bad manners has no place in British political discourse.
You can't tell this now, because all the results are about Boris, but a Google of burka letterbox just after he said it made very clear indeed (from the sites it showed up on) that it is a racist trope beloved of the right. Odds of Boris not knowing that?
You are not in a minority of 1.
I must admit I didn't know that it was a racist trope. Thanks.
It's much more fundamental than that. What attracts a citizen to the EU is the feeling that being part of the EU gives them equal status with other Europeans, whether you're from the most powerful country or the least powerful. If you break that dynamic, then the EU itself loses legitimacy.
I suspect most EU citizens have better and more pressing matters to consider. Where national stereotypes allow this thought you imagine could well be the preserve of some with nothing better to do .
What, you don't think people in Malta sit around all day thinking "ah, now I know for sure I'm just as good/important as a German"?
While the French earnestly dissect the reasons and beauty for the equality between themselves and the Cypriots.
They can rest easy - they are still better than Northern Cypriots.
Nobody has yet given me a decent answer as to why we should be discriminating against my friends down under. Have you got one?
TBritish voters grudgingly accepted it to be able to export their jam or whatever, that would be great. Sadly there isn't a bigger, more global version of the EU, although the EU was slowly growing to take in more countries.
So British voters aren't allowed to vote for things they want or don't want?
It's a paradox. How do you compel people to accept "freedoms" that they don't want, and/or don't consider to be freedoms?
You can't ultimately, in a democracy. That's the point. One person's freedom to have a house in Tuscany and drink Chianti whilst writing anguished columns for the Gruaniad (say), is an imposition on a sparky on a building site in Stoke who now has to compete with Casimir from Wroclaw who's prepared to live ten to a house and do the fuse box wiring for minimum wage.
It' s conundrum that we try to sort out peacefully through the ballot box. The issue really really kicks off if you say "that's sacrosanct and can't be altered, ever" because one section of society says so. That way lies the "approved list democracy" of the Soviet block.
This is at the heart of the EU's dilemma with Brexit. Economically they know perfectly well that letting things be very free and easy on "trade", whilst letting the UK genuinely remove itself from FOM would (they fear) lead to a queue of others saying "we want that too". But they can't allow people to have what they want because they then won't vote for ever closer union - and that's sacrosanct.
And it's the road to their perdition in the end.
Any membership organisation depends on the benefits of membership outweighing the costs and obligations. I might think Sky media packages aren't worth it; millions disagree. Sky however will never give me a package for free, even if that grant doesn't cost them anything. That really would be "perdition" for them. It is totally unrealistic to expect the EU to give an ex member the benefits of membership. We might not think the benefits amount to much but whatever they are, we will lose them. It's perverse to complain about the EU not giving us the benefits in that case.
It's much more fundamental than that. What attracts a citizen to the EU is the feeling that being part of the EU gives them equal status with other Europeans, whether you're from the most powerful country or the least powerful. If you break that dynamic, then the EU itself loses legitimacy.
I suspect most EU citizens have better and more pressing matters to consider. Where national stereotypes allow this thought you imagine could well be the preserve of some with nothing better to do .
What, you don't think people in Malta sit around all day thinking "ah, now I know for sure I'm just as good/important as a German"?
Lets face it - who hasn't considered how wonderful it is that we could move to Romania and claim child benefits for our children who stay back in Blighty - it's so wonderfully equal.
It's much more fundamental than that. What attracts a citizen to the EU is the feeling that being part of the EU gives them equal status with other Europeans, whether you're from the most powerful country or the least powerful. If you break that dynamic, then the EU itself loses legitimacy.
I suspect most EU citizens have better and more pressing matters to consider. Where national stereotypes allow this thought you imagine could well be the preserve of some with nothing better to do .
What, you don't think people in Malta sit around all day thinking "ah, now I know for sure I'm just as good/important as a German"?
Given the ratio of net contributors to net recipients, most probably go no further than 'Free money! Yay!".
A completely different view on burqa to May and Davidson:
"The burqa (niqab in Arabic) is a symbol. When you see it in a community, it indicates that an ideology and a radical form of Islam are spreading. In my field research on women and sharia law in Britain, South Africa and Middle Eastern countries, I heard this sentence a lot: "Ten years ago, we only had few women with the burqa. Today there are plenty."
"So when you see women in burqa, think of the ideology that is mainstreaming it. We should confront it – Muslims and non-Muslims alike."
Dr Elham Manea is an Islamic scholar in the department of political science at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. (my bold)
I can't understand why the Conservative hierarchy didn't strongly suggest that Boris Johnson spend an extended length of time in mosques up and down the country listening to the concerns of hard-working Muslim families. That would have been rather harder for him to brush off than a request for an apology.
As Stephen Bush is implying on Twitter, the Tory top brass are probably making such a song and dance about the Boris comments as a Trojan Horse, to distract from the far more serious problems with Islamophobia that the Tories also have. Cf. the Muslim former Tory aspiring parliamentary candidate, who told Newsnight the other day of all the offensive questions she got asked in selection processes.
There are a lot of scattergun accusations of Islamophobia.
Lady Warsi has accused the Conservatives of Islamophobia over variously, the appointment of Sara Khan as Lead Commissioner on Extremism, the government's attitudes towards the Israel/Palestine conflict, and the operation of the Prevent programme.
Sara Champion gets accused of Islamophobia for speaking up for the victims of child rape.
Do you not think asking a potential parliamentary candidate extensive questions about the British Raj, the National Black Policeman's Association, and referring to her and fellow Muslims as "you people" is inappropriate and probably Islamophobic?....
Racist, rather than Islamophobic, in that instance. The selection panel described in the clip probably had no idea where the lady came from, let alone her religion.
I think Islamophobia has come to the fore as it's a subset of racism made acceptable to many by the events of the last couple of decades. (And is in that respect indeed comparable to the anti-Semitism justified by a hatred of Israel.)
Apropos to SeanT's remark, the wearing of face masks (whatever you call 'em) should be I.L.L.E.G.A.L. while driving.
What if you're driving a high-performance open-top vehicle for which wearing a crash helmet would be prudent?
Or riding a motorbike?
Indeed. But @toms did specify "driving" as opposed to "riding".
All very funny chaps, but have a close look next time you spot somebody wearing a burqa, and ask yourself how safe she would be driving a car (or motorbike) on the Queen's highway. And it does happen when, as a cyclist and pedestrian, I have found it scary.
Dangerous driving is already an offence. If wearing a burqa makes the wearer drive dangerously then the police already have powers to address such offences.
I’d still be interested to know how you’d write legislation that would ban “wearing face masks [...] while driving” without making full face crash helmets illegal.
I suspect that such a change in the law would require some evidence. Is there any to suggest Niqab wearers have more accidents? It is not particularly unusual for me to see Niqab wearing drivers in Leicester, but no worse at driving than anyone else on Humberstone rd!
In my youth one often seemed to see mini clubman estates tooling down the motorway with 4 fully togged up nuns on board. Weirdly unsettling.
As I said recently, it is rude and bullying and should absolutely not have come out of a mainstream politician's mouth.
It does just what Corbyn has done, it legitimises discrimination against The Other.
Oh of course we can console ourselves that as some Muslims wear burqas, and some Muslims want to create a caliphate in Primrose Hill, all Muslims who wear the burqa are bad. But that of course would be a simpleton's argument.
Not that PB is short of simpletons.
The forced wearing of it I agree is a separate issue.
What percentage do you think wear a Burqa because they want to?
What percentage of Jews do you think wear a yarmulke because they want to?
Indeed. How many Jewish boys are circumcised because they want to be?
For what it's worth, I loathe the burka just as I loathe the practice of circumcision (which I would ban for children except for proven medical reasons - once you are an adult you can make that informed choice). I'd also ban all faith schools and the teaching of any religion on schools beyond academic study of it (again let adults make choices about religion, don't force feed it to children). I realise I am in a tiny minority but those are nevertheless my views.
Re: Boris. Topping is right, The guy is a bully, and a grasping self-serving one at that. He knew what he was doing and such bad manners has no place in British political discourse.
You can't tell this now, because all the results are about Boris, but a Google of burka letterbox just after he said it made very clear indeed (from the sites it showed up on) that it is a racist trope beloved of the right. Odds of Boris not knowing that?
A completely different view on burqa to May and Davidson:
"The burqa (niqab in Arabic) is a symbol. When you see it in a community, it indicates that an ideology and a radical form of Islam are spreading. In my field research on women and sharia law in Britain, South Africa and Middle Eastern countries, I heard this sentence a lot: "Ten years ago, we only had few women with the burqa. Today there are plenty."
"So when you see women in burqa, think of the ideology that is mainstreaming it. We should confront it – Muslims and non-Muslims alike."
Dr Elham Manea is an Islamic scholar in the department of political science at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. (my bold)
It's not encouraging for the quality of the rest of the article that he poses as an Islamic scholar and yet does not know the difference between the burqa and the niqab.
Apropos to SeanT's remark, the wearing of face masks (whatever you call 'em) should be I.L.L.E.G.A.L. while driving.
What if you're driving a high-performance open-top vehicle for which wearing a crash helmet would be prudent?
Or riding a motorbike?
Indeed. But @toms did specify "driving" as opposed to "riding".
All very funny chaps, but have a close look next time you spot somebody wearing a burqa, and ask yourself how safe she would be driving a car (or motorbike) on the Queen's highway. And it does happen when, as a cyclist and pedestrian, I have found it scary.
Dangerous driving is already an offence. If wearing a burqa makes the wearer drive dangerously then the police already have powers to address such offences.
I’d still be interested to know how you’d write legislation that would ban “wearing face masks [...] while driving” without making full face crash helmets illegal.
I suspect that such a change in the law would require some evidence. Is there any to suggest Niqab wearers have more accidents? It is not particularly unusual for me to see Niqab wearing drivers in Leicester, but no worse at driving than anyone else on Humberstone rd!
In my youth one often seemed to see mini clubman estates tooling down the motorway with 4 fully togged up nuns on board. Weirdly unsettling.
You should try driving in India. Predestination - if you are meant to get there..... Never mind Niqabs, most drivers might as well be wearing blindfolds.
Any membership organisation depends on the benefits of membership outweighing the costs and obligations. I might think Sky media packages aren't worth it; millions disagree. Sky however will never give me a package for free, even if that grant doesn't cost them anything. That really would be "perdition" for them. It is totally unrealistic to expect the EU to give an ex member the benefits of membership. We might not think the benefits amount to much but whatever they are, we will lose them. It's perverse to complain about the EU not giving us the benefits in that case.
On the one hand your analysis is true - work out the pros, the cons, subtract them, do we like the balance? But you are persisting in evaluating EU membership as nothing more than a Deal. But it isn't just a Deal, it's a Project. Sky membership packages are not, essentially, teleological. I am not expected to agree or align myself with the core aims and principles of the Sky corporation or its owners. It doesn't change my identity to "one of the Sky people", and I don't have to check to see whether I fit in with the other Sky folk. I certainly don't have to open up my spare bedroom for them. If Sky starts changing the nature of the contract on me, I can easily opt out - if I leave my membership running for 20 years without paying too much attention to it, I might be hit badly in the pocket but I'm not going to discover I've accidentally signed up to the legal responsibility of appointing Beloved Rupert as my personal lord and deity.
For memberships of organisations that are expected to evolve, you need to bear in mind the dynamics, and whether you agree with other members about the likely direction you want this to go in. For organisations that have a strong set of culture, values or identity, you want to decide whether you "fit". I doubt most Leave voters saw the Referendum as purely a business transaction to assess the Net Present Value of.
A completely different view on burqa to May and Davidson:
"The burqa (niqab in Arabic) is a symbol. When you see it in a community, it indicates that an ideology and a radical form of Islam are spreading. In my field research on women and sharia law in Britain, South Africa and Middle Eastern countries, I heard this sentence a lot: "Ten years ago, we only had few women with the burqa. Today there are plenty."
"So when you see women in burqa, think of the ideology that is mainstreaming it. We should confront it – Muslims and non-Muslims alike."
Dr Elham Manea is an Islamic scholar in the department of political science at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. (my bold)
It's not encouraging for the quality of the rest of the article that he poses as an Islamic scholar and yet does not know the difference between the burqa and the niqab.
It's much more fundamental than that. What attracts a citizen to the EU is the feeling that being part of the EU gives them equal status with other Europeans, whether you're from the most powerful country or the least powerful. If you break that dynamic, then the EU itself loses legitimacy.
I suspect most EU citizens have better and more pressing matters to consider. Where national stereotypes allow this thought you imagine could well be the preserve of some with nothing better to do .
What, you don't think people in Malta sit around all day thinking "ah, now I know for sure I'm just as good/important as a German"?
A citizen of Malta GC is worth a battalion of Huns.
A completely different view on burqa to May and Davidson:
"The burqa (niqab in Arabic) is a symbol. When you see it in a community, it indicates that an ideology and a radical form of Islam are spreading. In my field research on women and sharia law in Britain, South Africa and Middle Eastern countries, I heard this sentence a lot: "Ten years ago, we only had few women with the burqa. Today there are plenty."
"So when you see women in burqa, think of the ideology that is mainstreaming it. We should confront it – Muslims and non-Muslims alike."
Dr Elham Manea is an Islamic scholar in the department of political science at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. (my bold)
It's not encouraging for the quality of the rest of the article that he poses as an Islamic scholar and yet does not know the difference between the burqa and the niqab.
A completely different view on burqa to May and Davidson:
"The burqa (niqab in Arabic) is a symbol. When you see it in a community, it indicates that an ideology and a radical form of Islam are spreading. In my field research on women and sharia law in Britain, South Africa and Middle Eastern countries, I heard this sentence a lot: "Ten years ago, we only had few women with the burqa. Today there are plenty."
"So when you see women in burqa, think of the ideology that is mainstreaming it. We should confront it – Muslims and non-Muslims alike."
Dr Elham Manea is an Islamic scholar in the department of political science at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. (my bold)
It's not encouraging for the quality of the rest of the article that he poses as an Islamic scholar and yet does not know the difference between the burqa and the niqab.
Are you referring to the garment worn in the photo?
Apropos to SeanT's remark, the wearing of face masks (whatever you call 'em) should be I.L.L.E.G.A.L. while driving.
What if you're driving a high-performance open-top vehicle for which wearing a crash helmet would be prudent?
Or riding a motorbike?
Indeed. But @toms did specify "driving" as opposed to "riding".
All very funny chaps, but have a close look next time you spot somebody wearing a burqa, and ask yourself how safe she would be driving a car (or motorbike) on the Queen's highway. And it does happen when, as a cyclist and pedestrian, I have found it scary.
Dangerous driving is already an offence. If wearing a burqa makes the wearer drive dangerously then the police already have powers to address such offences.
I’d still be interested to know how you’d write legislation that would ban “wearing face masks [...] while driving” without making full face crash helmets illegal.
I suspect that such a change in the law would require some evidence. Is there any to suggest Niqab wearers have more accidents? It is not particularly unusual for me to see Niqab wearing drivers in Leicester, but no worse at driving than anyone else on Humberstone rd!
In my youth one often seemed to see mini clubman estates tooling down the motorway with 4 fully togged up nuns on board. Weirdly unsettling.
You should try driving in India. Predestination - if you are meant to get there..... Never mind Niqabs, most drivers might as well be wearing blindfolds.
It’s not too bad if you keep out of the way of the cows.
Off topic but when did the football transfer window start shutting at 5pm. Thought it was normally ~11pm?
It's the cuts and austerity.
LOL!
I also don't remember it closing normally before the season begins.
But that's fine because outside of Merseyside none of the top clubs seem to have really even noticed it opening either.
Normally World Cup years are quite busy on the transfer market after players make a name for themselves on the biggest stage. Not really that much noticeable activity this year.
I suspect these days that thanks to Opta and other data-gathering firms, as well as Sky and the other broadcasters, there is not much that is unknown about any footballer, so the World Cup offers little new information. Perhaps we will look back on a couple of anomalous decades when there were countries, especially in Africa and the Far East, whose footballers would be seen just once every four years, and there were the money and mechanisms to transfer them to European clubs. Didn't Harry Redknapp have a story about a fan sending him a postcard urging him to buy a fantastic young Czech player he'd seen while on holiday, Karel Poborsky?
Now all clubs have the same data and probably analyse it in similar ways.
I can't understand why the Conservative hierarchy didn't strongly suggest that Boris Johnson spend an extended length of time in mosques up and down the country listening to the concerns of hard-working Muslim families. That would have been rather harder for him to brush off than a request for an apology.
As Stephen Bush is implying on Twitter, the Tory top brass are probably making such a song and dance about the Boris comments as a Trojan Horse, to distract from the far more serious problems with Islamophobia that the Tories also have. Cf. the Muslim former Tory aspiring parliamentary candidate, who told Newsnight the other day of all the offensive questions she got asked in selection processes.
There are a lot of scattergun accusations of Islamophobia.
Lady Warsi has accused the Conservatives of Islamophobia over variously, the appointment of Sara Khan as Lead Commissioner on Extremism, the government's attitudes towards the Israel/Palestine conflict, and the operation of the Prevent programme.
Sara Champion gets accused of Islamophobia for speaking up for the victims of child rape.
I think it’s all code for “how dare you sack me”.
As early as 1545hrs you have just won the Pathetic Reply of the Day award.
Not really. Lady Warsi performed poorly and was sacked accordingly.
Her comments claiming prejudice in the Conservative Party then spiked thereafter.
Apropos to SeanT's remark, the wearing of face masks (whatever you call 'em) should be I.L.L.E.G.A.L. while driving.
What if you're driving a high-performance open-top vehicle for which wearing a crash helmet would be prudent?
Or riding a motorbike?
Indeed. But @toms did specify "driving" as opposed to "riding".
All very funny chaps, but have a close look next time you spot somebody wearing a burqa, and ask yourself how safe she would be driving a car (or motorbike) on the Queen's highway. And it does happen when, as a cyclist and pedestrian, I have found it scary.
Dangerous driving is already an offence. If wearing a burqa makes the wearer drive dangerously then the police already have powers to address such offences.
I’d still be interested to know how you’d write legislation that would ban “wearing face masks [...] while driving” without making full face crash helmets illegal.
I suspect that such a change in the law would require some evidence. Is there any to suggest Niqab wearers have more accidents? It is not particularly unusual for me to see Niqab wearing drivers in Leicester, but no worse at driving than anyone else on Humberstone rd!
In my youth one often seemed to see mini clubman estates tooling down the motorway with 4 fully togged up nuns on board. Weirdly unsettling.
You should try driving in India. Predestination - if you are meant to get there..... Never mind Niqabs, most drivers might as well be wearing blindfolds.
It’s not too bad if you keep out of the way of the cows.
A completely different view on burqa to May and Davidson:
"The burqa (niqab in Arabic) is a symbol. When you see it in a community, it indicates that an ideology and a radical form of Islam are spreading. In my field research on women and sharia law in Britain, South Africa and Middle Eastern countries, I heard this sentence a lot: "Ten years ago, we only had few women with the burqa. Today there are plenty."
"So when you see women in burqa, think of the ideology that is mainstreaming it. We should confront it – Muslims and non-Muslims alike."
Dr Elham Manea is an Islamic scholar in the department of political science at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. (my bold)
It's not encouraging for the quality of the rest of the article that he poses as an Islamic scholar and yet does not know the difference between the burqa and the niqab.
Apropos to SeanT's remark, the wearing of face masks (whatever you call 'em) should be I.L.L.E.G.A.L. while driving.
What if you're driving a high-performance open-top vehicle for which wearing a crash helmet would be prudent?
Or riding a motorbike?
Indeed. But @toms did specify "driving" as opposed to "riding".
All very funny chaps, but have a close look next time you spot somebody wearing a burqa, and ask yourself how safe she would be driving a car (or motorbike) on the Queen's highway. And it does happen when, as a cyclist and pedestrian, I have found it scary.
Dangerous driving is already an offence. If wearing a burqa makes the wearer drive dangerously then the police already have powers to address such offences.
I’d still be interested to know how you’d write legislation that would ban “wearing face masks [...] while driving” without making full face crash helmets illegal.
I suspect that such a change in the law would require some evidence. Is there any to suggest Niqab wearers have more accidents? It is not particularly unusual for me to see Niqab wearing drivers in Leicester, but no worse at driving than anyone else on Humberstone rd!
In my youth one often seemed to see mini clubman estates tooling down the motorway with 4 fully togged up nuns on board. Weirdly unsettling.
You should try driving in India. Predestination - if you are meant to get there..... Never mind Niqabs, most drivers might as well be wearing blindfolds.
It’s not too bad if you keep out of the way of the cows.
Any membership organisation depends on the benefits of membership outweighing the costs and obligations. I might think Sky media packages aren't worth it; millions disagree. Sky however will never give me a package for free, even if that grant doesn't cost them anything. That really would be "perdition" for them. It is totally unrealistic to expect the EU to give an ex member the benefits of membership. We might not think the benefits amount to much but whatever they are, we will lose them. It's perverse to complain about the EU not giving us the benefits in that case.
On the one hand your analysis is true - work out the pros, the cons, subtract them, do we like the balance? But you are persisting in evaluating EU membership as nothing more than a Deal. But it isn't just a Deal, it's a Project. Sky membership packages are not, essentially, teleological. I am not expected to agree or align myself with the core aims and principles of the Sky corporation or its owners. It doesn't change my identity to "one of the Sky people", and I don't have to check to see whether I fit in with the other Sky folk. I certainly don't have to open up my spare bedroom for them. If Sky starts changing the nature of the contract on me, I can easily opt out - if I leave my membership running for 20 years without paying too much attention to it, I might be hit badly in the pocket but I'm not going to discover I've accidentally signed up to the legal responsibility of appointing Beloved Rupert as my personal lord and deity.
For memberships of organisations that are expected to evolve, you need to bear in mind the dynamics, and whether you agree with other members about the likely direction you want this to go in. For organisations that have a strong set of culture, values or identity, you want to decide whether you "fit". I doubt most Leave voters saw the Referendum as purely a business transaction to assess the Net Present Value of.
I get that, but mine is a narrower point. It is illogical to expect the EU to treat an ex member the same, or as well from its view, as its members. Whatever we lose out has to be a price worth paying for the freedom of constraint that comes from leaving the EU.
Leavers have never accepted or justified any price as worth paying.
I can't understand why the Conservative hierarchy didn't strongly suggest that Boris Johnson spend an extended length of time in mosques up and down the country listening to the concerns of hard-working Muslim families. That would have been rather harder for him to brush off than a request for an apology.
As Stephen Bush is implying on Twitter, the Tory top brass are probably making such a song and dance about the Boris comments as a Trojan Horse, to distract from the far more serious problems with Islamophobia that the Tories also have. Cf. the Muslim former Tory aspiring parliamentary candidate, who told Newsnight the other day of all the offensive questions she got asked in selection processes.
There are a lot of scattergun accusations of Islamophobia.
Lady Warsi has accused the Conservatives of Islamophobia over variously, the appointment of Sara Khan as Lead Commissioner on Extremism, the government's attitudes towards the Israel/Palestine conflict, and the operation of the Prevent programme.
Sara Champion gets accused of Islamophobia for speaking up for the victims of child rape.
I think it’s all code for “how dare you sack me”.
As early as 1545hrs you have just won the Pathetic Reply of the Day award.
Not really. Lady Warsi performed poorly and was sacked accordingly.
Her comments claiming prejudice in the Conservative Party then spiked thereafter.
She might have had a better point about prejudice in the Tory party if, following her sacking, she had not allied herself with some of the most extreme elements within the Muslim community. There is nothing wrong with being extremely sceptical about the agendas of such groups who, almost invariably, complain of "islamophobia" the moment someone points out that they, for instance, describe a vicious killer as a "beautiful boy" etc. There are plenty of moderate reforming people within Islam, some of them women, but Lady Warsi chose to ignore them. She has devalued the value of her criticisms.
I do though think that there are some within the Tories who do have a prejudiced attitude to Muslims and we should as attentive to stopping such prejudice spread and calling it out as with equivalent prejudice against Jews within Labour.
I can't understand why the Conservative hierarchy didn't strongly suggest that Boris Johnson spend an extended length of time in mosques up and down the country listening to the concerns of hard-working Muslim families. That would have been rather harder for him to brush off than a request for an apology.
As Stephen Bush is implying on Twitter, the Tory top brass are probably making such a song and dance about the Boris comments as a Trojan Horse, to distract from the far more serious problems with Islamophobia that the Tories also have. Cf. the Muslim former Tory aspiring parliamentary candidate, who told Newsnight the other day of all the offensive questions she got asked in selection processes.
There are a lot of scattergun accusations of Islamophobia.
Lady Warsi has accused the Conservatives of Islamophobia over variously, the appointment of Sara Khan as Lead Commissioner on Extremism, the government's attitudes towards the Israel/Palestine conflict, and the operation of the Prevent programme.
Sara Champion gets accused of Islamophobia for speaking up for the victims of child rape.
I think it’s all code for “how dare you sack me”.
As early as 1545hrs you have just won the Pathetic Reply of the Day award.
Not really. Lady Warsi performed poorly and was sacked accordingly.
Her comments claiming prejudice in the Conservative Party then spiked thereafter.
Apropos to SeanT's remark, the wearing of face masks (whatever you call 'em) should be I.L.L.E.G.A.L. while driving.
What if you're driving a high-performance open-top vehicle for which wearing a crash helmet would be prudent?
Or riding a motorbike?
Indeed. But @toms did specify "driving" as opposed to "riding".
All very funny chaps, but have a close look next time you spot somebody wearing a burqa, and ask yourself how safe she would be driving a car (or motorbike) on the Queen's highway. And it does happen when, as a cyclist and pedestrian, I have found it scary.
Dangerous driving is already an offence. If wearing a burqa makes the wearer drive dangerously then the police already have powers to address such offences.
I’d still be interested to know how you’d write legislation that would ban “wearing face masks [...] while driving” without making full face crash helmets illegal.
I suspect that such a change in the law would require some evidence. Is there any to suggest Niqab wearers have more accidents? It is not particularly unusual for me to see Niqab wearing drivers in Leicester, but no worse at driving than anyone else on Humberstone rd!
In my youth one often seemed to see mini clubman estates tooling down the motorway with 4 fully togged up nuns on board. Weirdly unsettling.
You should try driving in India. Predestination - if you are meant to get there..... Never mind Niqabs, most drivers might as well be wearing blindfolds.
It’s not too bad if you keep out of the way of the cows.
Interesting metaphor that she uses (for those who can't read German, the scene from Rebel without a Cause she refers to is below).
I won't both to wonder however who is cast for the role of gang leader committing an epic act of unnecessary self-destruction made worse by stupid bungling, because it could apply to either side and the usual suspects will give the usual answers. https://youtu.be/u7hZ9jKrwvo
Off topic but when did the football transfer window start shutting at 5pm. Thought it was normally ~11pm?
It's the cuts and austerity.
LOL!
I also don't remember it closing normally before the season begins.
But that's fine because outside of Merseyside none of the top clubs seem to have really even noticed it opening either.
Normally World Cup years are quite busy on the transfer market after players make a name for themselves on the biggest stage. Not really that much noticeable activity this year.
I suspect these days that thanks to Opta and other data-gathering firms, as well as Sky and the other broadcasters, there is not much that is unknown about any footballer, so the World Cup offers little new information. Perhaps we will look back on a couple of anomalous decades when there were countries, especially in Africa and the Far East, whose footballers would be seen just once every four years, and there were the money and mechanisms to transfer them to European clubs. Didn't Harry Redknapp have a story about a fan sending him a postcard urging him to buy a fantastic young Czech player he'd seen while on holiday, Karel Poborsky?
Now all clubs have the same data and probably analyse it in similar ways.
There's a story that AC Milan mistook Luther Blisset for John Barnes and wound up signing the wrong player from Watford.
Apropos to SeanT's remark, the wearing of face masks (whatever you call 'em) should be I.L.L.E.G.A.L. while driving.
What if you're driving a high-performance open-top vehicle for which wearing a crash helmet would be prudent?
Or riding a motorbike?
Indeed. But @toms did specify "driving" as opposed to "riding".
All very funny chaps, but have a close look next time you spot somebody wearing a burqa, and ask yourself how safe she would be driving a car (or motorbike) on the Queen's highway. And it does happen when, as a cyclist and pedestrian, I have found it scary.
Dangerous driving is already an offence. If wearing a burqa makes the wearer drive dangerously then the police already have powers to address such offences.
I’d still be interested to know how you’d write legislation that would ban “wearing face masks [...] while driving” without making full face crash helmets illegal.
I suspect that such a change in the law would require some evidence. Is there any to suggest Niqab wearers have more accidents? It is not particularly unusual for me to see Niqab wearing drivers in Leicester, but no worse at driving than anyone else on Humberstone rd!
In my youth one often seemed to see mini clubman estates tooling down the motorway with 4 fully togged up nuns on board. Weirdly unsettling.
You should try driving in India. Predestination - if you are meant to get there..... Never mind Niqabs, most drivers might as well be wearing blindfolds.
It’s not too bad if you keep out of the way of the cows.
Apropos to SeanT's remark, the wearing of face masks (whatever you call 'em) should be I.L.L.E.G.A.L. while driving.
What if you're driving a high-performance open-top vehicle for which wearing a crash helmet would be prudent?
Or riding a motorbike?
Indeed. But @toms did specify "driving" as opposed to "riding".
All very funny chaps, but have a close look next time you spot somebody wearing a burqa, and ask yourself how safe she would be driving a car (or motorbike) on the Queen's highway. And it does happen when, as a cyclist and pedestrian, I have found it scary.
Dangerous driving is already an offence. If wearing a burqa makes the wearer drive dangerously then the police already have powers to address such offences.
I’d still be interested to know how you’d write legislation that would ban “wearing face masks [...] while driving” without making full face crash helmets illegal.
I suspect that such a change in the law would require some evidence. Is there any to suggest Niqab wearers have more accidents? It is not particularly unusual for me to see Niqab wearing drivers in Leicester, but no worse at driving than anyone else on Humberstone rd!
In my youth one often seemed to see mini clubman estates tooling down the motorway with 4 fully togged up nuns on board. Weirdly unsettling.
You should try driving in India. Predestination - if you are meant to get there..... Never mind Niqabs, most drivers might as well be wearing blindfolds.
It’s not too bad if you keep out of the way of the cows.
What! They let cows drive?
Don't be silly. Cows are moved in udder ways.
You really know how to milk a pun.
It makes up in skill what it lacts in subtlety.
Get it wrong, and you risk making a complete teat of yourself.
At what point should we at least start campaigning for an arms embargo to Saudi Arabia? I know it won't happen because the Americans wouldn't allow it, but this is just grotesque. If it was the Syrian government doing it Trump would already have blitzed their airfields to hell and back again.
Apropos to SeanT's remark, the wearing of face masks (whatever you call 'em) should be I.L.L.E.G.A.L. while driving.
What if you're driving a high-performance open-top vehicle for which wearing a crash helmet would be prudent?
Or riding a motorbike?
Indeed. But @toms did specify "driving" as opposed to "riding".
All very funny chaps, but have a close look next time you spot somebody wearing a burqa, and ask yourself how safe she would be driving a car (or motorbike) on the Queen's highway. And it does happen when, as a cyclist and pedestrian, I have found it scary.
Dangerous driving is already an offence. If wearing a burqa makes the wearer drive dangerously then the police already have powers to address such offences.
I’d still be interested to know how you’d write legislation that would ban “wearing face masks [...] while driving” without making full face crash helmets illegal.
I suspect that such a change in the law would require some evidence. Is there any to suggest Niqab wearers have more accidents? It is not particularly unusual for me to see Niqab wearing drivers in Leicester, but no worse at driving than anyone else on Humberstone rd!
In my youth one often seemed to see mini clubman estates tooling down the motorway with 4 fully togged up nuns on board. Weirdly unsettling.
You should try driving in India. Predestination - if you are meant to get there..... Never mind Niqabs, most drivers might as well be wearing blindfolds.
It’s not too bad if you keep out of the way of the cows.
What! They let cows drive?
Don't be silly. Cows are moved in udder ways.
You really know how to milk a pun.
It makes up in skill what it lacts in subtlety.
Get it wrong, and you risk making a complete teat of yourself.
I did think of saying that after a hard day's work I deserved a teat, but I realised in time that had a very unfortunate double meaning so I didn't.
Howheifer, I was quite pleased with the one I came up with.
At what point should we at least start campaigning for an arms embargo to Saudi Arabia? I know it won't happen because the Americans wouldn't allow it, but this is just grotesque. If it was the Syrian government doing it Trump would already have blitzed their airfields to hell and back again.
Our government still considers Yemen a sales opportunity rather than a war crime.
Apropos to SeanT's remark, the wearing of face masks (whatever you call 'em) should be I.L.L.E.G.A.L. while driving.
What if you're driving a high-performance open-top vehicle for which wearing a crash helmet would be prudent?
Or riding a motorbike?
Indeed. But @toms did specify "driving" as opposed to "riding".
n the Queen's highway. And it does happen when, as a cyclist and pedestrian, I have found it scary.
Dangerous driving is already an offence. If wearing a burqa makes the wearer drive dangerously then the police already have powers to address such offences.
I’d still be interested to know how you’d write legislation that would ban “wearing face masks [...] while driving” without making full face crash helmets illegal.
I suspect that such a change in the law would require some evidence. Is there any to suggest Niqab wearers have more accidents? It is not particularly unusual for me to see Niqab wearing drivers in Leicester, but no worse at driving than anyone else on Humberstone rd!
In my youth one often seemed to see mini clubman estates tooling down the motorway with 4 fully togged up nuns on board. Weirdly unsettling.
You should try driving in India. Predestination - if you are meant to get there..... Never mind Niqabs, most drivers might as well be wearing blindfolds.
It’s not too bad if you keep out of the way of the cows.
What! They let cows drive?
Don't be silly. Cows are moved in udder ways.
You really know how to milk a pun.
It makes up in skill what it lacts in subtlety.
Get it wrong, and you risk making a complete teat of yourself.
I did think of saying that after a hard day's work I deserved a teat, but I realised in time that had a very unfortunate double meaning so I didn't.
Howheifer, I was quite pleased with the one I came up with.
Always good to come across a pun you haven't herd before.
We'll need about a decade, given the way we're going.......
How about never? Never would be a good time.
Oh, where's the fun in that? We should aim for Beautiful Brexit (tm).
Can't wait - all those happy smiling faces. Leavers will be delirious with joy at having brought us to the Promised Land, and basking in the warm glow of appreciation from Remoaners who finally see all the benefits of leaving the EU.
There’s a pretty horrible civil war going on there, thousands of casualties on both sides and civilians usually caught in the middle of the warring factions. This story is sadly becoming almost typical.
Cue our resident medical experts explaining why they know more than a drug company...
No one has said that.
These issues are easily resolvable by allowing the U.K. to remain a member of the EMA. (It’s a bit more complicated than that but that’s a good example).
It’s a blindingly obvious sensible solution which would be acceptable to the U.K. The only negotiation would need to be over the membership fee. But for some reason the EU Commission wants to make life harder for ordinary people
There’s a pretty horrible civil war going on there, thousands of casualties on both sides and civilians usually caught in the middle of the warring factions. This story is sadly becoming almost typical.
If the Saudi Air Force can't tell the difference between a school bus and a bunch of jihadis, then they should not be dropping bombs.
They should also take advantage of a free eye test at Specsavers.
Alternatively we must assume - and I am afraid it seems all too likely - that it was deliberate and a naked act of terrorism.
One thing I will say for Corbyn is he has consistently called for sanctions on SA over this, but unfortunately being Corbyn he can't divorce it from a dig at the government and the US as well, giving May an alibi for doing nothing.
I get that, but mine is a narrower point. It is illogical to expect the EU to treat an ex member the same, or as well from its view, as its members. Whatever we lose out has to be a price worth paying for the freedom of constraint that comes from leaving the EU.
In terms of what the EU can offer, I fully accept the point. Their situation is quite tricky because for various sensible reasons they can't be seen to grant the UK favourable access post-Brexit.
As for the trade-off from the Leave perspective, I suspect this is where the heterogeneity of the Leave coalition breaks off into different answers. For many the ultimate prize was simply Out itself - and Out sooner better than Out later. After all, if you think Brexit now looks tough, imagine trying to disentangle ourselves in a further 10 or 20 years. But when you get into specific trade-offs, you find that e.g. to some people giving up free movement would mean giving up one of the prizes of EU membership, while to others it was one of the objectives of leaving in the first place. And there was significant desire for Leavers of all flavours to partake in cake. One of the problems with the referendum is that it wasn't won by a Leave programme, as such. This should have been one of the advantages of having that early General Election - that people were standing for office on the basis of pushing through a particular approach or vision of Brexit. Sadly the prerequisite "sitting round a table and sorting an approach out" doesn't seem to have happened pre-campaign.
I did think of saying that after a hard day's work I deserved a teat, but I realised in time that had a very unfortunate double meaning so I didn't.
Howheifer, I was quite pleased with the one I came up with.
I love the joke about the inner city child who tells the teacher how he went on a farm visit and saw some pigs, some sheep and some fuckers. "Farmer called them F-ers, but I knew what 'e meant. "
At what point should we at least start campaigning for an arms embargo to Saudi Arabia? I know it won't happen because the Americans wouldn't allow it, but this is just grotesque. If it was the Syrian government doing it Trump would already have blitzed their airfields to hell and back again.
Our government still considers Yemen a sales opportunity rather than a war crime.
Cue our resident medical experts explaining why they know more than a drug company...
Didn't need medicine back in my day. Bloody immigrants bringing in their dirty foreign germs, making us sick. Tuberculosis epidemic is a price well worth paying for DEMOCRACY.
You do realise that the article is that EU countries would not get the drugs made in the UK? i.e your TB epidemic would be on continental Europe.
There’s a pretty horrible civil war going on there, thousands of casualties on both sides and civilians usually caught in the middle of the warring factions. This story is sadly becoming almost typical.
If the Saudi Air Force can't tell the difference between a school bus and a bunch of jihadis, then they should not be dropping bombs.
They should also take advantage of a free eye test at Specsavers.
Alternatively we must assume - and I am afraid it seems all too likely - that it was deliberate and a naked act of terrorism.
One thing I will say for Corbyn is he has consistently called for sanctions on SA over this, but unfortunately being Corbyn he can't divorce it from a dig at the government and the US as well, giving May an alibi for doing nothing.
To be fair the Saudis are there at the request of the Yemeni government, are having missiles fired across the border into their own country by the rebels, and are taking a lot of casualties themselves.
That doesn’t of course mean they shouldn’t be better at targeting airborne bombs, but it’s not as if Western forces haven’t had many problems themselves over the years with dropping bombs in the wrong place.
I’m not sure what calling out Saudi would achieve, unless we also call out Qatar who are funding the other side of Iranian rebels who invaded Yemen to start the conflict.
Comments
You are not in a minority of 1.
Despite Dave's seeming cuddliness you were either with him or you weren't.
Of course an EMA thats losing 30% of their staff won't help either
This is a great example: The British and Australian governments could negotiate free movement for British people wanting to go to Australia and Australian people wanting to go to Britain, and nothing bad would happen. This is a constraint on freedom created for no good purpose. It would be better if the power of the voters over you was constrained so that they couldn't do these bad things.
Unfortunately it's not always easy to come up with a general principle that will prevent democracies from voting to do bad things to you while preserving their ability to do good things. There are some, like human rights laws, or, in most countries, constitutions that limit the powers of the government over you, but generally we're stuck with democracy as the least-bad available form of government. But when an international organization stops the voters making their government do stupid shit, that's obviously a good thing.
PS. Does anyone want to actually *defend* mutual restrictions on Australians coming to Britain and British people going to Australia?
I’d still be interested to know how you’d write legislation that would ban “wearing face masks [...] while driving” without making full face crash helmets illegal.
It' s conundrum that we try to sort out peacefully through the ballot box. The issue really really kicks off if you say "that's sacrosanct and can't be altered, ever" because one section of society says so. That way lies the "approved list democracy" of the Soviet block.
This is at the heart of the EU's dilemma with Brexit. Economically they know perfectly well that letting things be very free and easy on "trade", whilst letting the UK genuinely remove itself from FOM would (they fear) lead to a queue of others saying "we want that too". But they can't allow people to have what they want because they then won't vote for ever closer union - and that's sacrosanct.
And it's the road to their perdition in the end.
For example, I can't spend my income as I choose, but rather, have to pay a large portion of it over to HMRC.
https://twitter.com/mjgriffiths123/status/1027463814567141376
Edit: but check the exemption for Sikhs wearing turbans that I think forms part of the current legislation, that it doesn’t cover any other ‘religious dress’.
Private Eye Cover........
"Corbyn......"
https://twitter.com/BBCSport/status/1027533433919217664?s=19
@William Glenn
You might. I don't. I don't feel unequal to the Swiss or equal to the Dutch because we've been in the EU with one but not the other.
The EU lacks express consent, certainly in the UK, for how far and how deep it has gone.
It desperately needs to address this and stop being de haut en bas "it's good for you now quit moaning". Otherwise it will go the way of Austria Hungary which it eerily echoes in my view.
Where national stereotypes allow this thought you imagine could well be the preserve of some with nothing better to do .
Scroll down "Corbyn Tries to End Anti Semitism Row"
https://twitter.com/privateeyenews
I also don't remember it closing normally before the season begins.
But that's fine because outside of Merseyside none of the top clubs seem to have really even noticed it opening either.
Normally World Cup years are quite busy on the transfer market after players make a name for themselves on the biggest stage. Not really that much noticeable activity this year.
"The burqa (niqab in Arabic) is a symbol. When you see it in a community, it indicates that an ideology and a radical form of Islam are spreading. In my field research on women and sharia law in Britain, South Africa and Middle Eastern countries, I heard this sentence a lot: "Ten years ago, we only had few women with the burqa. Today there are plenty."
"So when you see women in burqa, think of the ideology that is mainstreaming it. We should confront it – Muslims and non-Muslims alike."
Dr Elham Manea is an Islamic scholar in the department of political science at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. (my bold)
https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/looking-beyond-the-burqa-stunt-20170825-gy4jd6.html
I think Islamophobia has come to the fore as it's a subset of racism made acceptable to many by the events of the last couple of decades.
(And is in that respect indeed comparable to the anti-Semitism justified by a hatred of Israel.)
Slim.
For memberships of organisations that are expected to evolve, you need to bear in mind the dynamics, and whether you agree with other members about the likely direction you want this to go in. For organisations that have a strong set of culture, values or identity, you want to decide whether you "fit". I doubt most Leave voters saw the Referendum as purely a business transaction to assess the Net Present Value of.
https://www.ipz.uzh.ch/en/institut/mitarbeitende/staff/manea.html
Now all clubs have the same data and probably analyse it in similar ways.
Her comments claiming prejudice in the Conservative Party then spiked thereafter.
Leavers have never accepted or justified any price as worth paying.
https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2018-08/brexit-eu-verhandlungen-verlaengerung-grossbritannien/komplettansicht
I do though think that there are some within the Tories who do have a prejudiced attitude to Muslims and we should as attentive to stopping such prejudice spread and calling it out as with equivalent prejudice against Jews within Labour.
Not that they carry enough weight to move the EU27 and the Commission!
I won't both to wonder however who is cast for the role of gang leader committing an epic act of unnecessary self-destruction made worse by stupid bungling, because it could apply to either side and the usual suspects will give the usual answers.
https://youtu.be/u7hZ9jKrwvo
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-45130907
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/08/09/middleeast/yemen-bus-intl/index.html
Couldn't happen these days, could it?
https://www.theredroar.com/2018/08/another-momentum-candidate-shared-antisemitic-conspiracy-theories/
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/09/paul-manafort-trial-day-8-judge-ellis-769889
Howheifer, I was quite pleased with the one I came up with.
It will be a wondrous time.
Edit - especially if there going to be pig puns as well.
These issues are easily resolvable by allowing the U.K. to remain a member of the EMA. (It’s a bit more complicated than that but that’s a good example).
It’s a blindingly obvious sensible solution which would be acceptable to the U.K. The only negotiation would need to be over the membership fee. But for some reason the EU Commission wants to make life harder for ordinary people
They should also take advantage of a free eye test at Specsavers.
Alternatively we must assume - and I am afraid it seems all too likely - that it was deliberate and a naked act of terrorism.
One thing I will say for Corbyn is he has consistently called for sanctions on SA over this, but unfortunately being Corbyn he can't divorce it from a dig at the government and the US as well, giving May an alibi for doing nothing.
As for the trade-off from the Leave perspective, I suspect this is where the heterogeneity of the Leave coalition breaks off into different answers. For many the ultimate prize was simply Out itself - and Out sooner better than Out later. After all, if you think Brexit now looks tough, imagine trying to disentangle ourselves in a further 10 or 20 years. But when you get into specific trade-offs, you find that e.g. to some people giving up free movement would mean giving up one of the prizes of EU membership, while to others it was one of the objectives of leaving in the first place. And there was significant desire for Leavers of all flavours to partake in cake. One of the problems with the referendum is that it wasn't won by a Leave programme, as such. This should have been one of the advantages of having that early General Election - that people were standing for office on the basis of pushing through a particular approach or vision of Brexit. Sadly the prerequisite "sitting round a table and sorting an approach out" doesn't seem to have happened pre-campaign.
Will Saudi now require women to not wear burqas whilst driving now?
That doesn’t of course mean they shouldn’t be better at targeting airborne bombs, but it’s not as if Western forces haven’t had many problems themselves over the years with dropping bombs in the wrong place.
I’m not sure what calling out Saudi would achieve, unless we also call out Qatar who are funding the other side of Iranian rebels who invaded Yemen to start the conflict.