On legalising marijuana, surely the only sane policy now is to wait a few years to see what the results of the mass field trial being run in Canada are?
Perhaps. But if the Conservatives are looking for a single policy that will change most people's perception of them, while also providing a source of tax revenue that can fund the NHS, and one that reduces crime by having fewer young men with knives on street corners, I can't think of a more obvious thing to put in the next manifesto.
I think other posters are right that we are probably still a generation away. But to me the idea that weed should be illegal is as strange as the idea that gays shouldn't be allowed to marry.
On legalising marijuana, surely the only sane policy now is to wait a few years to see what the results of the mass field trial being run in Canada are?
We've certainly not seen any precipitous collapse in civilization in anywhere that has legalized cannabis.
Perhaps the greatest decriminalization success story is Portugal:
Meanwhile here in deepest Leaverstan the final piece of public squalor fell into place yesterday on the way up to church. We now have public street begging. We now have the complete set of behaviours associated with urban poverty in a town of 25K people in a rural location.
In the Anglican liturgy the preamble to the Nine Lessons and Carols service is beautiful and a passage focuses on poverty. It was quite haunting in the context. Then the sermon was quite a sophisticated meditation on food and plenty coupled with an appeal for help with our newish feeding project. 2018 was the year our Foodbank ' buckled ' and just isn't enough anymore.
The food is just a symptom however. It's a wide and deep social collapse linked to addiction, mental health and brutal public service cuts. The juxtaposition with the Westminster political crisis haunts me.
Was astonished by the homelessness in the West End this weekend. Huge numbers sleeping in Charing Cross Tube station - I counted about 20 sets of sleeping bags, and "camps", often of couples. Never seen anything like it since the '80s.
The bulk of homelessness in London is because of migration from Eastern Europe. Sad, but true.
It's not (in London) a symptom of Brexit, it's a CAUSE of Brexit.
These seemed to be largely white british people from outside the centre, judging by their accents. The exit to trafalgar to square had row after row of them in their sleeping bags.
Well, maybe. But I live in London. The homelessness is at its worst around Hyde Park Corner and Marble Arch, and it is almost exclusively Eastern European, and usually Roma.
Worth a read. Over-written, but brave and intriguing.
From your link:
"Judah might not trust statistics but he weaves them into his narrative, and at the end – in case we don’t trust them – he gives the sources, mostly from government surveys. In 40 years the percentage of white British in London has fallen from 86% to 45%; 600,000 of those in London are there illegally; the number of Africans would fill a city the size of Sheffield; 57% of births are to migrant mothers."
I am fairly certain that the driving force behind Brexit has been the pace of change. How can you have a society when so few share a common culture?
On legalising marijuana, surely the only sane policy now is to wait a few years to see what the results of the mass field trial being run in Canada are?
Aside from the removal of the criminal element and increased tax revenues it will end up much the same as the mass field trial they were previously running.
Quite possibly, but no-one really knows. I don't see much downside to waiting to see whether that is actually the case or not. It's not often we get the luxury of being able to observe a mass field-trial under real-life conditions at no cost or risk to ourselves.
I wonder how many other voters did the same as me. Boris Johnson is one, I suspect: in his heart he genuinely wanted Leave, in his head he thought Remain would win anyway, and he would personally benefit.
I think he genuinely wanted Remain, so he could play the disgruntled leaver keeping the flame alive.
If the SNP had won Indyref, Nicola Sturgeon wouldn't even be a footnote.
Then he won, and now BoZo is completely screwed. Fortunately.
I have personally encountered Boris, and I think you are wrong, or half-wrong.
I think he wrote that notorious thinkpiece about Leave from the heart, because he is, at heart, a Leaver,
But yes, his head told him Remain would win, and he would benefit from his position as a Leaver that lost, so there was no disbenefit to plumping for Leave.
Sigh. And: hmm.
Nah, he's basically a remainer, but recognised that Leave played better both to his interests and character.
Unless you know him better than me (and fair enough if so) I will pull rank and say you are wrong.
On a sidenote, Jo Johnson walked past my door about an hour ago. He looked a bit nervous. Not sure why. He's in ultra-Remainery Camden.
He was walking past the only Leaver in NW1?
You're forgetting Jezza surely?
SeanT and Jezza have at least a couple of things in common.
EDIT: bugger, just realised Islington is N1 not NW1 - oh well, never mind.
I had drinks with two very old friends last night (hadn't seen either in 18 months). One is an ardent Remainer (and a very successful restaurateur), the other is a neutral apolitical ex lawyer who fled London for Devon.
All of us agreed that, if it weren't for family, friends and business, we would emigrate tomorrow - for the next few years at least - and we wouldn't emigrate anywhere else in the West (except maybe Australia) because Brexit is a symptom not a cause.
We generally agreed Thailand or perhaps Singapore were probably the best options. Low tax, nice food, low crime, sense of optimism, sunshine.
I give it a month, and then you'll miss the warm beer and drizzle.
On legalising marijuana, surely the only sane policy now is to wait a few years to see what the results of the mass field trial being run in Canada are?
We've certainly not seen any precipitous collapse in civilization in anywhere that has legalized cannabis.
Perhaps the greatest decriminalization success story is Portugal:
Meanwhile here in deepest Leaverstan the final piece of public squalor fell into place yesterday on the way up to church. We now have public street begging. We now have the complete set of behaviours associated with urban poverty in a town of 25K people in a rural location.
In the Anglican liturgy the preamble to the Nine Lessons and Carols service is beautiful and a passage focuses on poverty. It was quite haunting in the context. Then the sermon was quite a sophisticated meditation on food and plenty coupled with an appeal for help with our newish feeding project. 2018 was the year our Foodbank ' buckled ' and just isn't enough anymore.
The food is just a symptom however. It's a wide and deep social collapse linked to addiction, mental health and brutal public service cuts. The juxtaposition with the Westminster political crisis haunts me.
Was astonished by the homelessness in the West End this weekend. Huge numbers sleeping in Charing Cross Tube station - I counted about 20 sets of sleeping bags, and "camps", often of couples. Never seen anything like it since the '80s.
The bulk of homelessness in London is because of migration from Eastern Europe. Sad, but true.
It's not (in London) a symptom of Brexit, it's a CAUSE of Brexit.
These seemed to be largely white british people from outside the centre, judging by their accents. The exit to trafalgar to square had row after row of them in their sleeping bags.
Well, maybe. But I live in London. The homelessness is at its worst around Hyde Park Corner and Marble Arch, and it is almost exclusively Eastern European, and usually Roma.
Worth a read. Over-written, but brave and intriguing.
From your link:
"Judah might not trust statistics but he weaves them into his narrative, and at the end – in case we don’t trust them – he gives the sources, mostly from government surveys. In 40 years the percentage of white British in London has fallen from 86% to 45%; 600,000 of those in London are there illegally; the number of Africans would fill a city the size of Sheffield; 57% of births are to migrant mothers."
I am fairly certain that the driving force behind Brexit has been the pace of change. How can you have a society when so few share a common culture?
I suspect the legalisation of marijuana will be the next big thing.
Something that should be supported by any sane person, the Americans and the Canadians have already done it.
I personally believe there will be an enormous dividend for the first major party to come out in favour of legalisation, if the Tories had any sense they would put it in the next manifesto. Unfortunately we seem to be ruled by cretins who are more interested in regulating people having a hand shandy rather than taxing and regulating a drug that is de facto legal on the streets anyway.
I am sure labour are going to, i can see them going for the “medical” usage fudge that places like California had for years.
Which is why the Tories should go full on legalise it, tax it, regulate it. No fudge. In a stroke, it would add a huge amount to the coffers (which could go direct to the NHS) while reaffirming the party's libertarian credentials which are sorely lacking.
Richard .
Those of us who experienced the 1960s as late teen or early 20s are mid 60s to mid 70s now. We have seen ours and all subsequent generations use cannabis. Are we terrified by it?
I doubt it.
Are we terrified off drug dealers and violence on our doorstep?
I expect so.
Just legalise it now.
3 decades ago I would have agreed, but since then I have seen too many lives ruined by cannabis.
If we are to make a success off Brexit as a highly skilled and motivated workforce then being stoned and apathetic is the last thing that we should do.
Except for the fact that people are doing it anyway.
I really doubt there is a single person in the country who goes "mmm, I could really use a spliff. But it's illegal. So I won't."
The police don't enforce it and it's easy to get on the street within a few minutes. All that legalisation would be doing would be putting tax revenue in the NHS coffers. Which could go towards mental health services. For me it's a clear win-win. It's a drug with negative effects, yes, but so is alcohol. Prohibition doesn't work.
Correct. It is effectively legal but unregulated. The worst of all possible worlds. Our policy on cannabis will be superseded by the acts of our international peers. It is already legal in Canada, Netherlands several US states including California and Colorado. We are not far off from a tipping point in North America where a majority of the population live in permissive states.
Just watched a screener for "Vice". Same guy who brought you his take on the financial crash with "The Big Short" has turned his attention to Vice President Dick Cheney and the Bush gang. A film not without flaws, but those who enjoyed The Big Short will see a very similar style at play (sadly without Margot Robbie in a bubblebath....).
But it is remarkable for a superb portrayal of Dick Cheney by Christian Bale. Those who thought Gary Oldman gave a great portrayal of Churchill in Darkest Hour - prosthetics and all - Bale just raised the bar...
@GOsborneGenius (the artiste formerly known as tim) is a little gem, isn't he?
Meanwhile, what's this 'Theresa May is delaying the vote by almost a month' stuff? It's actually a few working days.
11th December to 11th Jan is a month in my book. Given the importance of this they should all be working days.
They can have 25th December, 26th December and 1st January off.
However the rest of the time there's no excuse for taking off at this point. They should be working until the issue is resolved.
It is not just MPs who have to be present when the House is in session. All the ancillary and administrative staff would also lose their time off - not to mention Police and security services.
Whilst it sounds easy to just increase the number of sitting days, it has a knock on effect.
And for very little purpose
I am not unsympathetic to staff, and while the days may be frittered away it does mean fewer cans can be claimed as necessary for later debates, so I would think staff and security could reasonably be asked to take on the burden. Even discounting emergency work and other 24 hour professions, loads of people work between Christmas and New Year anyway, it is not that big a deal.
It is if you have to do it at short notice - neither practical nor moral to ask that of employees. And it is hard to see what would be achieved in this time - everybody else is off (including the EU, which is also in recess)
Meanwhile here in deepest Leaverstan the final piece of public squalor fell into place yesterday on the way up to church. We now have public street begging. We now have the complete set of behaviours associated with urban poverty in a town of 25K people in a rural location.
In the Anglican liturgy the preamble to the Nine Lessons and Carols service is beautiful and a passage focuses on poverty. It was quite haunting in the context. Then the sermon was quite a sophisticated meditation on food and plenty coupled with an appeal for help with our newish feeding project. 2018 was the year our Foodbank ' buckled ' and just isn't enough anymore.
The food is just a symptom however. It's a wide and deep social collapse linked to addiction, mental health and brutal public service cuts. The juxtaposition with the Westminster political crisis haunts me.
Was astonished by the homelessness in the West End this weekend. Huge numbers sleeping in Charing Cross Tube station - I counted about 20 sets of sleeping bags, and "camps", often of couples. Never seen anything like it since the '80s.
The bulk of homelessness in London is because of migration from Eastern Europe. Sad, but true.
It's not (in London) a symptom of Brexit, it's a CAUSE of Brexit.
These seemed to be largely white british people from outside the centre, judging by their accents. The exit to trafalgar to square had row after row of them in their sleeping bags.
Well, maybe. But I live in London. The homelessness is at its worst around Hyde Park Corner and Marble Arch, and it is almost exclusively Eastern European, and usually Roma.
At worst, a large proportion of the Leaver vote was motivated by nativism: the idea that natural born Brits should be favoured in Britain, over incomers, and that we should therefore, inter alia, restrict the number of incomers. You may deplore this (and fair enough, tho I would argue it's human nature) but it is a looooooooong way from racism: the Nazi idea that one race is inherently superior to another.
If the advice actually helps them this time perhaps they would be best advised to just reveal it. Though surely extending A50 would be a matter for the ECJ, in which case our view could just be wrong again anyway.
A50 says it can be extended only by a unanimous vote of the EUCO.
EUCO has already made it clear they will only countenance an extension if there's a material change in the UK's political circumstances.
"We are too useless to make a decision" surely won't cut the euro-mustard.
But since it can be unilaterally revoked and reinstated by the UK, the EU would be foolish not to allow an extension.
That's subject to the ECJ's tests on whether invoking A50 again is abusive. Essentially we'd be substituting the veto of the Council with the veto of the ECJ.
The ECJ couldn't prevent an A50 invocation, whether it was the 2nd or nth (we'd just leave in a No Deal way if they tried it.)
They could, and probably would, disallow a 2nd A50 revocation though.
They have specifically said that it is the second invocation that would be abusive.
If I understood correctly it was that a second invocation would indicate that the revocation was abusive - so they could ignore the revocation and use the date of notice as being the date of the first invocation - this preventing a revocation and second invocation in short order from resetting the two year countdown.
At worst, a large proportion of the Leaver vote was motivated by nativism: the idea that natural born Brits should be favoured in Britain, over incomers, and that we should therefore, inter alia, restrict the number of incomers.
Yeahhhh, I'm gonna carry on calling that racism if that's okay with you.
Excellent idea. The PM should send Penny Mordaunt off to Brussels to start talks with the EU on the 'managed glidepath' to WTO, with instructions to report back on their response in time for the 'meaningful vote'.
Excellent idea. The PM should send Penny Mordaunt off to Brussels to start talks with the EU on the 'managed glidepath' to WTO, with instructions to report back on their response in time for the 'meaningful vote'.
I have a mental image of that time a Boeing 747 belly flopped into the Hudson River.
Excellent idea. The PM should send Penny Mordaunt off to Brussels to start talks with the EU on the 'managed glidepath' to WTO, with instructions to report back on their response in time for the 'meaningful vote'.
I have a mental image of that time a Boeing 747 belly flopped into the Hudson River.
Not a perfect analogy, everyone got out alive in that incident.
On legalising marijuana, surely the only sane policy now is to wait a few years to see what the results of the mass field trial being run in Canada are?
It’s been legalised in Colorado (population 5 million, heavily centred around the Denver metro area) for six years. How big a field trial do you want?
On legalising marijuana, surely the only sane policy now is to wait a few years to see what the results of the mass field trial being run in Canada are?
Aside from the removal of the criminal element and increased tax revenues it will end up much the same as the mass field trial they were previously running.
Quite possibly, but no-one really knows. I don't see much downside to waiting to see whether that is actually the case or not. It's not often we get the luxury of being able to observe a mass field-trial under real-life conditions at no cost or risk to ourselves.
Well there actually is a cost in terms of lost tax revenues...
I've always argued that whilst marijuana isn't a gateway drug in terms of trying it has some effect which makes you want try other recreational drugs it is a gateway drug in terms of it being peoples introduction to drug dealers. It takes away some of the fear or mystery from buying illegal drugs off a person. It also takes away the fear of illegal drugs. Kids are happy to try alcohol as they probably seen plenty of other people do it, illegal drugs are a bit rarer. Because marijuana is widely known to be less harmful than alcohol people start to question the relationship between legality of drugs and their safety and are more open to trying other illegal drugs.
Even if marijuana legalisation didn't affect usage levels I suspect it would make people reluctant to try the harder recreational drugs.
Also I do agree with @kyf_100 that it would be brilliant for the Tories. The main groups objecting would probably be the oldest age groups who are solidly behind the Tories anyway so they could probably afford to do it whilst making it part of an offer for those middle aged and below. It could help change their image a bit as well, I think for many under 40's praise for the Tories would begin and end with the words gay marriage.
If I understood correctly it was that a second invocation would indicate that the revocation was abusive - so they could ignore the revocation and use the date of notice as being the date of the first invocation - this preventing a revocation and second invocation in short order from resetting the two year countdown.
I checked earlier. The ECJ final opinion removed any and all text around abuse in the AG's opinion.
Essentially the ECJ's opinion is that member states may invoke and revoke A50 at will without censure. Which means the EU will want Article 50 amended or removed as a matter of some urgency, I should think.
At worst, a large proportion of the Leaver vote was motivated by nativism: the idea that natural born Brits should be favoured in Britain, over incomers, and that we should therefore, inter alia, restrict the number of incomers.
Yeahhhh, I'm gonna carry on calling that racism if that's okay with you.
lol. So, presumably, favouring one's own kids over others is also racism? I'm gonna keep calling you a witless fat twat, if that's OK with you.
I wonder how many other voters did the same as me. Boris Johnson is one, I suspect: in his heart he genuinely wanted Leave, in his head he thought Remain would win anyway, and he would personally benefit.
I think he genuinely wanted Remain, so he could play the disgruntled leaver keeping the flame alive.
If the SNP had won Indyref, Nicola Sturgeon wouldn't even be a footnote.
Then he won, and now BoZo is completely screwed. Fortunately.
snip
Sigh. And: hmm.
Nah, he's basically a remainer, but recognised that Leave played better both to his interests and character.
Unless you know him better than me (and fair enough if so) I will pull rank and say you are wrong.
On a sidenote, Jo Johnson walked past my door about an hour ago. He looked a bit nervous. Not sure why. He's in ultra-Remainery Camden.
He was walking past the only Leaver in NW1?
You're forgetting Jezza surely?
SeanT and Jezza have at least a couple of things in common.
EDIT: bugger, just realised Islington is N1 not NW1 - oh well, never mind.
I had drinks with two very old friends last night (hadn't seen either in 18 months). One is an ardent Remainer (and a very successful restaurateur), the other is a neutral apolitical ex lawyer who fled London for Devon.
All of us agreed that, if it weren't for family, friends and business, we would emigrate tomorrow - for the next few years at least - and we wouldn't emigrate anywhere else in the West (except maybe Australia) because Brexit is a symptom not a cause.
We generally agreed Thailand or perhaps Singapore were probably the best options. Low tax, nice food, low crime, sense of optimism, sunshine.
I give it a month, and then you'll miss the warm beer and drizzle.
Sadly, and for the first time ever, I don't think I would
I'm done with Britain, and London, for now, and if it weren't for my friends and my daughter, and my job, I would quit. I'd keep my London flat, and rent it out, with the hope of eventually returning. But I would go. The taxes are no longer worth the return.
If I feel that, as a patriotic Brit, how do flighty foreigners feel?
@GOsborneGenius (the artiste formerly known as tim) is a little gem, isn't he?
Meanwhile, what's this 'Theresa May is delaying the vote by almost a month' stuff? It's actually a few working days.
11th December to 11th Jan is a month in my book. Given the importance of this they should all be working days.
They can have 25th December, 26th December and 1st January off.
However the rest of the time there's no excuse for taking off at this point. They should be working until the issue is resolved.
It is not just MPs who have to be present when the House is in session. All the ancillary and administrative staff would also lose their time off - not to mention Police and security services.
Whilst it sounds easy to just increase the number of sitting days, it has a knock on effect.
And for very little purpose
I am not unsympathetic to staff, and while the days may be frittered away it does mean fewer cans can be claimed as necessary for later debates, so I would think staff and security could reasonably be asked to take on the burden. Even discounting emergency work and other 24 hour professions, loads of people work between Christmas and New Year anyway, it is not that big a deal.
It is if you have to do it at short notice - neither practical nor moral to ask that of employees. And it is hard to see what would be achieved in this time - everybody else is off (including the EU, which is also in recess)
Not moral? I rather think you are overdoing the outrage here, not least since I highly doubt you'd need all staff back. Either way, it would be being asked to come in at short notice, at worst for nearly all an inconvenience, not some immoral imposition, christ.
I wonder how many other voters did the same as me. Boris Johnson is one, I suspect: in his heart he genuinely wanted Leave, in his head he thought Remain would win anyway, and he would personally benefit.
I think he genuinely wanted Remain, so he could play the disgruntled leaver keeping the flame alive.
If the SNP had won Indyref, Nicola Sturgeon wouldn't even be a footnote.
Then he won, and now BoZo is completely screwed. Fortunately.
I have personally encountered Boris, and I think you are wrong, or half-wrong.
I think he wrote that notorious thinkpiece about Leave from the heart, because he is, at heart, a Leaver,
But yes, his head told him Remain would win, and he would benefit from his position as a Leaver that lost, so there was no disbenefit to plumping for Leave.
Sigh. And: hmm.
Nah, he's basically a remainer, but recognised that Leave played better both to his interests and character.
Unless you know him better than me (and fair enough if so) I will pull rank and say you are wrong.
On a sidenote, Jo Johnson walked past my door about an hour ago. He looked a bit nervous. Not sure why. He's in ultra-Remainery Camden.
He was walking past the only Leaver in NW1?
You're forgetting Jezza surely?
SeanT and Jezza have at least a couple of things in common.
EDIT: bugger, just realised Islington is N1 not NW1 - oh well, never mind.
I had drinks with two very old friends last night.
I give it a month, and then you'll miss the warm beer and drizzle.
Sadly, and for the first time ever, I don't think I would
I'm done with Britain, and London, for now, and if it weren't for my friends and my daughter, and my job, I would quit. I'd keep my London flat, and rent it out, with the hope of eventually returning. But I would go. The taxes are no longer worth the return.
If I feel that, as a patriotic Brit, how do flighty foreigners feel?
On legalising marijuana, surely the only sane policy now is to wait a few years to see what the results of the mass field trial being run in Canada are?
It’s been legalised in Colorado (population 5 million, heavily centred around the Denver metro area) for six years. How big a field trial do you want?
Yes, Colorado is also a useful field trial, under different conditions. It's more restrictive than the new Canadian legalisation.
If I understood correctly it was that a second invocation would indicate that the revocation was abusive - so they could ignore the revocation and use the date of notice as being the date of the first invocation - this preventing a revocation and second invocation in short order from resetting the two year countdown.
I checked earlier. The ECJ final opinion removed any and all text around abuse in the AG's opinion.
Essentially the ECJ's opinion is that member states may invoke and revoke A50 at will without censure. Which means the EU will want Article 50 amended or removed as a matter of some urgency, I should think.
Anything else in the opinion would have meant the ECJ was a legislative body.
It is also in line with the drafting of Article 50 being an unfit for purpose piece of shit.
Meanwhile here in deepest Leaverstan the final piece of public squalor fell into place yesterday on the way up to church. We now have public street begging. We now have the complete set of behaviours associated with urban poverty in a town of 25K people in a rural location.
The food is just a symptom however. It's a wide and deep social collapse linked to addiction, mental health and brutal public service cuts. The juxtaposition with the Westminster political crisis haunts me.
Was astonished by the homelessness in the West End this weekend. Huge numbers sleeping in Charing Cross Tube station - I counted about 20 sets of sleeping bags, and "camps", often of couples. Never seen anything like it since the '80s.
The bulk of homelessness in London is because of migration from Eastern Europe. Sad, but true.
It's not (in London) a symptom of Brexit, it's a CAUSE of Brexit.
These seemed to be largely white british people from outside the centre, judging by their accents. The exit to trafalgar to square had row after row of them in their sleeping bags.
Well, maybe. But I live in London. The homelessness is at its worst around Hyde Park Corner and Marble Arch, and it is almost exclusively Eastern European, and usually Roma.
Worth a read. Over-written, but brave and intriguing.
From your link:
London voted Remain.
Because there aren't many Brits left.
That cultural change is by and large from non-EU migration, which has been on the rise since the referendum.
There is almost no problem in Britain for which Brexit is the right answer, and usually so wrong that it makes the problem significantly worse.
Utter bollocks.
To be blunt, amongst many other EU related problems, Brexit is the right answer to Roma migration from Eastern Europe. And this is a big, big problem for those affected, whether you find this unseemly, or not.
Non EU migration, much of it Islamic, has risen since the Brexit vote. Those Poles are going home to be replaced by Pathans.
If I understood correctly it was that a second invocation would indicate that the revocation was abusive - so they could ignore the revocation and use the date of notice as being the date of the first invocation - this preventing a revocation and second invocation in short order from resetting the two year countdown.
I checked earlier. The ECJ final opinion removed any and all text around abuse in the AG's opinion.
Essentially the ECJ's opinion is that member states may invoke and revoke A50 at will without censure. Which means the EU will want Article 50 amended or removed as a matter of some urgency, I should think.
So much for the ECJ being a politically motivated body that only bolsters the power of the EU institutions.
@GOsborneGenius (the artiste formerly known as tim) is a little gem, isn't he?
Meanwhile, what's this 'Theresa May is delaying the vote by almost a month' stuff? It's actually a few working days.
11th December to 11th Jan is a month in my book. Given the importance of this they should all be working days.
They can have 25th December, 26th December and 1st January off.
However the rest of the time there's no excuse for taking off at this point. They should be working until the issue is resolved.
It is not just MPs who have to be present when the House is in session. All the ancillary and administrative staff would also lose their time off - not to mention Police and security services.
Whilst it sounds easy to just increase the number of sitting days, it has a knock on effect.
And for very little purpose
I am not unsympathetic to staff, and while the days may be frittered away it does mean fewer cans can be claimed as necessary for later debates, so I would think staff and security could reasonably be asked to take on the burden. Even discounting emergency work and other 24 hour professions, loads of people work between Christmas and New Year anyway, it is not that big a deal.
It is if you have to do it at short notice - neither practical nor moral to ask that of employees. And it is hard to see what would be achieved in this time - everybody else is off (including the EU, which is also in recess)
Not moral? I rather think you are overdoing the outrage here, not least since I highly doubt you'd need all staff back. Either way, it would be being asked to come in at short notice, at worst for nearly all an inconvenience, not some immoral imposition, christ.
Sorry I disagree. People - particularly those on lower incomes - have, over the years, seen their family lives compromised by disorganised employers who cannot rota properly and fail to honour holiday commitments, preventing them from planning and ruining their plans when they have made them. So yes, a moral issue - people with (and without) families cannot and should not be pressured into breaking holidays at short notice.
By the way, your use of the word ‘outrage’ demeans you. I was politely disagreeing with you, that is all. I am not outraged.
If more revenue is what we want from legalisation, other than removing the illegal element that is, then the government could grow marijuana in huge greenhouses/warehouses. I don't actually know the math but if it is done on a huge industrial scale then it should be an amount in pennies to the gram.
A gram in street value is £10. If the government takes over growing marijuana, even if it is distributed through pharmacists or newsagents that take a decent cut (as well as transportation) then the government would be making several pounds per gram.
If you consider the amount smoked in Britain that would generate incredible amounts of money.
On legalising marijuana, surely the only sane policy now is to wait a few years to see what the results of the mass field trial being run in Canada are?
It’s been legalised in Colorado (population 5 million, heavily centred around the Denver metro area) for six years. How big a field trial do you want?
Yes, Colorado is also a useful field trial, under different conditions. It's more restrictive than the new Canadian legalisation.
It’s not particularly restrictive. You could catch the next flight to Denver tonight and be chuffing on a phat one within a few minutes of leaving the airport.
I know a young white male Whitehall civil servant (Welsh, for what it is worth) who will bang on incessantly about how much he detests white men. He holds them in absolute contempt as the source of society's problems - which from his very "woke" perspective I can understand. Though since they themselves constitute 40% or so of the society he is employed to serve, the fact he would be happier if they were simply abolished might suggest some tax payers are not exactly getting value for money. Indeed, they are handing over their coin (and to some extent, power) to someone who is keen to act contrary to their essential interests.
"Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells" may be relieved to know he detests Islam as well, though.
I think it would be hard to be a young white male growing up in a media environment where the phrase "white male" is used almost exclusively in an accusatory manner, and rarely far from the word "privilege" (except when used to deal with the "white working class", who seem to be deemed a particularly homogeneous lump by those superiors who have appointed themselves as acting in their best interest, however much they dislike the views they have expressed on Brexit and immigration). What are the options? Neither self-abasement nor Trumpesque re-seizing of the identity strike me as healthy choices.
Again, I don't think this is a British-only problem by any means. I think it exposes one of the problems with identity politics in a world where majority groups feel increasingly insecure (and in localised areas, have been rendered the minority) due to immigration - at some point, their identity is going to become politicised too.
@GOsborneGenius (the artiste formerly known as tim) is a little gem, isn't he?
Meanwhile, what's this 'Theresa May is delaying the vote by almost a month' stuff? It's actually a few working days.
11th December to 11th Jan is a month in my book. Given the importance of this they should all be working days.
They can have 25th December, 26th December and 1st January off.
However the rest of the time there's no excuse for taking off at this point. They should be working until the issue is resolved.
It is no
I am deal.
It iss)
Not moral? I rather think you are overdoing the outrage here, not leas
Sorry I disagree. People - particularly those on lower incomes - have, over the years, seen their family lives compromised by disorganised employers who cannot rota properly and fail to honour holiday commitments, preventing them from planning and ruining their plans when they have made them. So yes, a moral issue - people with (and without) families cannot and should not be pressured into breaking holidays at short notice.
By the way, your use of the word ‘outrage’ demeans you. I was politely disagreeing with you, that is all. I am not outraged.
Respectfully, you were the one making it into a moral issue, escalating it into a far more significant issue than anyone else. If you do not think an immoral action is an outrage I would say that is a strange position to hold. Almost by definition if something is immoral it is an outrage.
So I cannot see what demeaning has occurred - whether you used the word itself or not you clearly believe asking people to come in at short notice is an outrage. And not a minor outrage at that, a moral outrage. You undermine so many genuine immoralities by comparing the inconvenience of being called into work at our national parliament to a moral issue. I am somewhat surprised you would belittle genuine problems by calling such a thing immoral.
If you like we can go four yorkshireman and compare how many people we know on low incomes and how many we think would regard being called in to work between xmas and new year at short notice bloody inconvenient, and how many would consider it a matter of morality.
Meanwhile here in deepest Leaverstan the final piece of public squalor fell into place yesterday on the way up to church. We now have public street begging. We now have the complete set of behaviours associated with urban poverty in a town of 25K people in a rural location.
The food is just a symptom however. It's a wide and deep social collapse linked to addiction, mental health and brutal public service cuts. The juxtaposition with the Westminster political crisis haunts me.
Was astonished by the homelessness in the West End this weekend. Huge numbers sleeping in Charing Cross Tube station - I counted about 20 sets of sleeping bags, and "camps", often of couples. Never seen anything like it since the '80s.
The bulk of homelessness in London is because of migration from Eastern Europe. Sad, but true.
It's not (in London) a symptom of Brexit, it's a CAUSE of Brexit.
These seemed to be largely white british people from outside the centre, judging by their accents. The exit to trafalgar to square had row after row of them in their sleeping bags.
Well, maybe. But I live in London. The homelessness is at its worst around Hyde Park Corner and Marble Arch, and it is almost exclusively Eastern European, and usually Roma.
It’s not particularly restrictive. You could catch the next flight to Denver tonight and be chuffing on a phat one within a few minutes of leaving the airport.
Sure, but you can't (for example) buy online, as you can in Canada:
All I'm saying is: we can learn from these implementations. We don't need to speculate on what might happen or what we want to happen or what we think logically ought to happen.
I wonder how many other voters did the same as me. Boris Johnson is one, I suspect: in his heart he genuinely wanted Leave, in his head he thought Remain would win anyway, and he would personally benefit.
I think he genuinely wanted Remain, so he could play the disgruntled leaver keeping the flame alive.
If the SNP had won Indyref, Nicola Sturgeon wouldn't even be a footnote.
Then he won, and now BoZo is completely screwed. Fortunately.
I have personally encountered Boris, and I think you are wrong, or half-wrong.
I think he wrote that notorious thinkpiece about Leave from the heart, because he is, at heart, a Leaver,
But yes, his head told him Remain would win, and he would benefit from his position as a Leaver that lost, so there was no disbenefit to plumping for Leave.
Sigh. And: hmm.
Nah, he's basically a remainer, but recognised that Leave played better both to his interests and character.
Unless you know him better than me (and fair enough if so) I will pull rank and say you are wrong.
On a sidenote, Jo Johnson walked past my door about an hour ago. He looked a bit nervous. Not sure why. He's in ultra-Remainery Camden.
He was walking past the only Leaver in NW1?
You're forgetting Jezza surely?
SeanT and Jezza have at least a couple of things in common.
EDIT: bugger, just realised Islington is N1 not NW1 - oh well, never mind.
I had drinks with two very old friends last night.
I give it a month, and then you'll miss the warm beer and drizzle.
Sadly, and for the first time ever, I don't think I would
I'm done with Britain, and London, for now, and if it weren't for my friends and my daughter, and my job, I would quit. I'd keep my London flat, and rent it out, with the hope of eventually returning. But I would go. The taxes are no longer worth the return.
If I feel that, as a patriotic Brit, how do flighty foreigners feel?
Another Leaver who votes Leave then Leaves?
Yeah, I'll 'fess to that.
It's bad enough in London, let alone Newcastle or Glasgow.
ENUFF. I demand a vote of No Confidence in British weather.
Rumour has it that Christmas week is going to be quite benign. Good walking to the pub weather. Spainards Inn and a roaring fire. Cheer up, old bean.
I know a young white male Whitehall civil servant (Welsh, for what it is worth) who will bang on incessantly about how much he detests white men. He holds them in absolute contempt as the source of society's problems - which from his very "woke" perspective I can understand. Though since they themselves constitute 40% or so of the society he is employed to serve, the fact he would be happier if they were simply abolished might suggest some tax payers are not exactly getting value for money. Indeed, they are handing over their coin (and to some extent, power) to someone who is keen to act contrary to their essential interests.
"Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells" may be relieved to know he detests Islam as well, though.
I think it would be hard to be a young white male growing up in a media environment where the phrase "white male" is used almost exclusively in an accusatory manner, and rarely far from the word "privilege" (except when used to deal with the "white working class", who seem to be deemed a particularly homogeneous lump by those superiors who have appointed themselves as acting in their best interest, however much they dislike the views they have expressed on Brexit and immigration). What are the options? Neither self-abasement nor Trumpesque re-seizing of the identity strike me as healthy choices.
Again, I don't think this is a British-only problem by any means. I think it exposes one of the problems with identity politics in a world where majority groups feel increasingly insecure (and in localised areas, have been rendered the minority) due to immigration - at some point, their identity is going to become politicised too.
Have you read Houellbecq's Submission?
One of the questions I often ask myself is what would happen in the UK if there was a Muslim party and they voted, more or less, as a bloc.
UKIP didn't need to win a single seat, nor poll above 13%, to effect dramatic change.
@GOsborneGenius (the artiste formerly known as tim) is a little gem, isn't he?
Meanwhile, what's this 'Theresa May is delaying the vote by almost a month' stuff? It's actually a few working days.
11th December to 11th Jan is a month in my book. Given the importance of this they should all be working days.
They can have 25th December, 26th December and 1st January off.
However the rest of the time there's no excuse for taking off at this point. They should be working until the issue is resolved.
It is no
I am deal.
It iss)
Not moral? I rather think you are overdoing the outrage here, not leas
Sorry I disagree. People - particularly those on lower incomes - have, over the years, seen their family lives compromised by disorganised employers who cannot rota properly and fail to honour holiday commitments, preventing them from planning and ruining their plans when they have made them. So yes, a moral issue - people with (and without) families cannot and should not be pressured into breaking holidays at short notice.
By the way, your use of the word ‘outrage’ demeans you. I was politely disagreeing with you, that is all. I am not outraged.
Respectfully, you were the one making it into a moral issue, escalating it into a far more significant issue than anyone else. If you do not think an immoral action is an outrage I would say that is a strange position to hold. Almost by definition if something is immoral it is an outrage.
So I cannot see what demeaning has occurred - whether you used the word itself or not you clearly believe asking people to come in at short notice is an outrage. And not a minor outrage at that, a moral outrage. You undermine so many genuine immoralities by comparing the inconvenience of being called into work at our national parliament to a moral issue. I am somewhat surprised you would belittle genuine problems by calling such a thing immoral.
If you like we can go four yorkshireman and compare how many people we know on low incomes and how many we think would regard being called in to work between xmas and new year at short notice bloody inconvenient, and how many would consider it a matter of morality.
Seriously, immorality is not an outrage?
Pure waffle. No, not all immorality is an outrage. There are degrees, like anything else.
I think he genuinely wanted Remain, so he could play the disgruntled leaver keeping the flame alive.
If the SNP had won Indyref, Nicola Sturgeon wouldn't even be a footnote.
Then he won, and now BoZo is completely screwed. Fortunately.
I have personally encountered Boris, and I think you are wrong, or half-wrong.
I think he wrote that notorious thinkpiece about Leave from the heart, because he is, at heart, a Leaver,
But yes, his head told him Remain would win, and he would benefit from his position as a Leaver that lost, so there was no disbenefit to plumping for Leave.
Sigh. And: hmm.
Nah, he's basically a remainer, but recognised that Leave played better both to his interests and character.
Unless you know him better than me (and fair enough if so) I will pull rank and say you are wrong.
On a sidenote, Jo Johnson walked past my door about an hour ago. He looked a bit nervous. Not sure why. He's in ultra-Remainery Camden.
He was walking past the only Leaver in NW1?
You're forgetting Jezza surely?
SeanT and Jezza have at least a couple of things in common.
EDIT: bugger, just realised Islington is N1 not NW1 - oh well, never mind.
I had drinks with two very old friends last night.
I give it a month, and then you'll miss the warm beer and drizzle.
Sadly, and for the first time ever, I don't think I would
I'm done with Britain, and London, for now, and if it weren't for my friends and my daughter, and my job, I would quit. I'd keep my London flat, and rent it out, with the hope of eventually returning. But I would go. The taxes are no longer worth the return.
If I feel that, as a patriotic Brit, how do flighty foreigners feel?
Another Leaver who votes Leave then Leaves?
Yeah, I'll 'fess to that.
It's bad enough in London, let alone Newcastle or Glasgow.
ENUFF. I demand a vote of No Confidence in British weather.
Rumour has it that Christmas week is going to be quite benign. Good walking to the pub weather. Spainards Inn and a roaring fire. Cheer up, old bean.
Forecasting the British weather a week in advance is rather courageous...
It’s not particularly restrictive. You could catch the next flight to Denver tonight and be chuffing on a phat one within a few minutes of leaving the airport.
Sure, but you can't (for example) buy online, as you can in Canada:
All I'm saying is: we can learn from these implementations. We don't need to speculate on what might happen or what we want to happen or what we think logically ought to happen.
I know a young white male Whitehall civil servant (Welsh, for what it is worth) who will bang on incessantly about how much he detests white men. He holds them in absolute contempt as the source of society's problems - which from his very "woke" perspective I can understand. Though since they themselves constitute 40% or so of the society he is employed to serve, the fact he would be happier if they were simply abolished might suggest some tax payers are not exactly getting value for money. Indeed, they are handing over their coin (and to some extent, power) to someone who is keen to act contrary to their essential interests.
"Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells" may be relieved to know he detests Islam as well, though.
I think it would be hard to be a young white male growing up in a media environment where the phrase "white male" is used almost exclusively in an accusatory manner, and rarely far from the word "privilege" (except when used to deal with the "white working class", who seem to be deemed a particularly homogeneous lump by those superiors who have appointed themselves as acting in their best interest, however much they dislike the views they have expressed on Brexit and immigration). What are the options? Neither self-abasement nor Trumpesque re-seizing of the identity strike me as healthy choices.
Again, I don't think this is a British-only problem by any means. I think it exposes one of the problems with identity politics in a world where majority groups feel increasingly insecure (and in localised areas, have been rendered the minority) due to immigration - at some point, their identity is going to become politicised too.
Have you read Houellbecq's Submission?
One of the questions I often ask myself is what would happen in the UK if there was a Muslim party and they voted, more or less, as a bloc.
UKIP didn't need to win a single seat, nor poll above 13%, to effect dramatic change.
They would definitely win seats - all of them directly from Labour.
It's too late to crunch the number in any details. Ask me again in the morning...
I think he genuinely wanted Remain, so he could play the disgruntled leaver keeping the flame alive.
If the SNP had won Indyref, Nicola Sturgeon wouldn't even be a footnote.
Then he won, and now BoZo is completely screwed. Fortunately.
I have personally encountered Boris, and I think you are wrong, or half-wrong.
I think he wrote that notorious thinkpiece about Leave from the heart, because he is, at heart, a Leaver,
But yes, his head told him Remain would win, and he would benefit from his position as a Leaver that lost, so there was no disbenefit to plumping for Leave.
Sigh. And: hmm.
Nah, he's basically a remainer, but recognised that Leave played better both to his interests and character.
Unless you know him better than me (and fair enough if so) I will pull rank and say you are wrong.
On a sidenote, Jo Johnson walked past my door about an hour ago. He looked a bit nervous. Not sure why. He's in ultra-Remainery Camden.
He was walking past the only Leaver in NW1?
You're forgetting Jezza surely?
SeanT and Jezza have at least a couple of things in common.
EDIT: bugger, just realised Islington is N1 not NW1 - oh well, never mind.
I had drinks with two very old friends last night.
I give it a month, and then you'll miss the warm beer and drizzle.
Sadly, and for the first time ever, I don't think I would
I'm done with Britain, and London, for now, and if it weren't for my friends and my daughter, and my job, I would quit. I'd keep my London flat, and rent it out, with the hope of eventually returning. But I would go. The taxes are no longer worth the return.
If I feel that, as a patriotic Brit, how do flighty foreigners feel?
Another Leaver who votes Leave then Leaves?
Yeah, I'll 'fess to that.
It's bad enough in London, let alone Newcastle or Glasgow.
ENUFF. I demand a vote of No Confidence in British weather.
Rumour has it that Christmas week is going to be quite benign. Good walking to the pub weather. Spainards Inn and a roaring fire. Cheer up, old bean.
Forecasting the British weather a week in advance is rather courageous...
At worst, a large proportion of the Leaver vote was motivated by nativism: the idea that natural born Brits should be favoured in Britain, over incomers, and that we should therefore, inter alia, restrict the number of incomers.
Yeahhhh, I'm gonna carry on calling that racism if that's okay with you.
Academic economists argue about this - when considering how a new policy (particularly one that affects migration even if that is not its primary concern) will affect the welfare of the population, what do you do about the utility gains experienced by immigrants?
If they come from a poor country, one with a poor health service or whatever, their utility gains simply from being let into the country would be very large - and may well overwhelm any other considerations in your calculus, including what the primary effects of the policy were intended to be. Indeed it would tend to favour any policy that opened the doors as wide as possible.
Should policies be judged purely by how much they help the people who were here in the first place, and the requisite migration seen in the light only of how much it helps the natives, or should migration policy effectively be seen as an act of charity to incomers? Or should you weight it as something in between? And what happens to that allocated weighting as the migrant makes the transition to becoming a fully-fledged Brit? Here's one such debate between Jonathan Portes and Martin Wolf:
Pure waffle. No, not all immorality is an outrage. There are degrees, like anything else.
I respond honestly but negatively to your assertion that being asked to come into work at short notice is a moral issue, and despite your purported upset at the use of a single word which has no pejorative value (outrage can be a justifiable reaction), you respond with a dismissive summation which includes a word which, by contrast, is only used pejoratively (waffle).
And I was the one being demeaning? Perhaps you should vacate that high horse given that remark. I see also you clearly do not believe there are degrees of outrage; not all outrages will be unreasonable - perhaps if you had been a little less inclined to jump to conclusions you might have not taken offence at wording where none was intended, so keen were you to turn this into a moral debate, a matter of fundamental right and wrong, for reasons that quite escape me. Are you under the impression that being outraged is some horrible insult? If you think this is a moral issue, of any degree, I would expect you to be outraged! To some degree.
What a bizarre conclusion to the day's proceedings. Apparently being outraged is beyond the pale, but actual insults and rude dismissal are fine manners. I have truly learned something this day, I shall have to remember that attacking someone's morality is perfectly acceptable, but suggesting someone is upset, now that is unconscionable.
Oh, and just because a response is lengthy and you disagree with it doesn't make it waffle. But if you prefer concision the part in bold indicates why your outrage, yes, outrage, was entirely misplaced under your own logic. If degrees of is fine in one sense it is in the other.
I think it would be hard to be a young white male growing up in a media environment where the phrase "white male" is used almost exclusively in an accusatory manner, and rarely far from the word "privilege" (except when used to deal with the "white working class", who seem to be deemed a particularly homogeneous lump by those superiors who have appointed themselves as acting in their best interest, however much they dislike the views they have expressed on Brexit and immigration). What are the options? Neither self-abasement nor Trumpesque re-seizing of the identity strike me as healthy choices.
Again, I don't think this is a British-only problem by any means. I think it exposes one of the problems with identity politics in a world where majority groups feel increasingly insecure (and in localised areas, have been rendered the minority) due to immigration - at some point, their identity is going to become politicised too.
I know lots of people like that. My wife was appalled to find a friend of hers telling another friend's five year old son, the other day, that "boys are bad, very bad, a0nd girls are always better". The poor indoctrinated boy was growing up nodding along to this, and believing it to be true: that his gender, by definition, made him inferior and somehow "wrong".
My wife was so inhibited by the identity wars that she said nothing. But she has resolved, next time, to step in and say No.
A warped SJW identitarian mindset is brooding a generation of self-hating males (especially white males) who will eventually rebel against this definition, and probably rebel very violently. How will this end? Badly.
For the first time in my life, and for so many reasons, I no longer believe western culture is superior to others, and I no longer believe we will prevail.
In the face of western madness, the Chinese maybe have the right attitude, however offensive.
"We are the best, detain those who disagree in huge camps, until they agree."
To be fair, Western culture has produced the greatest self-saboteurs in history: in our civilisation alone is the greatness of our achievements matched by our citizens' contempt for them.
On legalising marijuana, surely the only sane policy now is to wait a few years to see what the results of the mass field trial being run in Canada are?
New Zealand to hold binding referendum on the topic for personal use alongside next general election. Expected to pass.
I was in Nevada couple of weeks ago, legal there.
The dyke has been breached; within a decade marijuana will be legal everywhere. The war on drugs has been lost, as it was always going to be. Prohibition doesn't work, history teaches us this.
On legalising marijuana, surely the only sane policy now is to wait a few years to see what the results of the mass field trial being run in Canada are?
It's been proven to cause mental health problems in a significant percentage of the population IIRC.
On legalising marijuana, surely the only sane policy now is to wait a few years to see what the results of the mass field trial being run in Canada are?
It's been proven to cause mental health problems in a significant percentage of the population IIRC.
I think the medical profession would be interested in seeing that research...
Good grief just how thick are these cabinet ministers and the new fraud to dupe the public , managed no deal !
The latest nonsense from Penny Mordaunt and her stand alone transition period! So the UK will basically stay in the single market and customs union and pay half the money it owes . Half the money is for the transition period already , the other half for current commitments the UK agreed to whilst Cameron was in charge .
We’ve had Clean Global Brexit and now managed no deal . But you can see their logic if some people fell for unicorns during the ref campaign they’ll fall for yet more crap from the Leave politicians .
I think he genuinely wanted Remain, so he could play the disgruntled leaver keeping the flame alive.
If the SNP had won Indyref, Nicola Sturgeon wouldn't even be a footnote.
Then he won, and now BoZo is completely screwed. Fortunately.
I have personally encountered Boris, and I think you are wrong, or half-wrong.
I think he wrote that notorious thinkpiece about Leave from the heart, because he is, at heart, a Leaver,
But yes, his head told him Remain would win, and he would benefit from his position as a Leaver that lost, so there was no disbenefit to plumping for Leave.
Sigh. And: hmm.
Nah, he's basically a remainer, but recognised that Leave played better both to his interests and character.
Unless you know him better than me (and fair enough if so) I will pull rank and say you are wrong.
On a sidenote, Jo Johnson walked past my door about an hour ago. He looked a bit nervous. Not sure why. He's in ultra-Remainery Camden.
He was walking past the only Leaver in NW1?
You're forgetting Jezza surely?
SeanT and Jezza have at least a couple of things in common.
EDIT: bugger, just realised Islington is N1 not NW1 - oh well, never mind.
I had drinks with two very old friends last night.
I give it a month, and then you'll miss the warm beer and drizzle.
Sadly, and for the first time ever, I don't think I would
I'm done with Britain, and London, for now, and if it weren't for my friends and my daughter, and my job, I would quit. I'd keep my London flat, and rent it out, with the hope of eventually returning. But I would go. The taxes are no longer worth the return.
If I feel that, as a patriotic Brit, how do flighty foreigners feel?
Another Leaver who votes Leave then Leaves?
Yeah, I'll 'fess to that.
It's bad enough in London, let alone Newcastle or Glasgow.
ENUFF. I demand a vote of No Confidence in British weather.
Rumour has it that Christmas week is going to be quite benign. Good walking to the pub weather. Spainards Inn and a roaring fire. Cheer up, old bean.
Forecasting the British weather a week in advance is rather courageous...
A warped SJW identitarian mindset is brooding a generation of self-hating males (especially white males) who will eventually rebel against this definition, and probably rebel very violently. How will this end? Badly.
For the first time in my life, and for so many reasons, I no longer believe western culture is superior to others, and I no longer believe we will prevail.
In the face of western madness, the Chinese maybe have the right attitude, however offensive.
The Chinese attitude is certainly at variance with the western one! I think cultural superiority can be a difficult and dangerous notion, but clearly some cultures are better adapted for their times and situations than others. Western society seems to be stretching the limits of cultural relativism and absorption, and its cultural gatekeepers seem in some important senses to have lost faith in it. Whether this is as a consequence of critical over-analysis or po-mo or just out of a sense of guilt and exhaustion, I'm not qualified to judge, but only the West could have started self-flagellating over the problem of "cultural appropriation" for example.
I have my fingers crossed that at some point common sense will return, people living in Western countries will realise that hey, it's okay, we can all get along, we quite like being "British" even if the sense of the word has changed to become more inclusive, there's no point holding things against people for what their ancestors did 100 years ago... but I might be being too optimistic. Also worth pointing out that it isn't only Western countries undergoing demographic changes from migration - there are underlying economic and technological factors that have made people more mobile. So for example, there are lots of Nigerians in India, Somalis in Sri Lanka, millions of people in Africa living in adjoining African countries where the labour market is better, and so on. But my limited understanding is that the crisis of cultural self-confidence is a largely Western thing.
And what exactly should they be doing during this time? Talking to our EU friends, for example?
I think it's too late for that. If I understand correctly, the deal is pretty much in its final state: minor changes are possible but nothing more. Any adjustments the EU makes in a no-deal will be to its own benefit and we will have no input to them. So if we reject the deal then we are in a no-deal scenario with 101 days to go, yes? That's a crash, not a landing: different rules apply.
In a crash, one must acknowledge the situation and stop indulging in fantasies. We will not be helped by others so things like further negotiations with the EU is a waste of time. We have to assume there will be no deal and start assigning money to those bits that will fail hardest or soonest: the rest you can deal with later in the year.
At this point Parliament is just a waste of time: it's talking but not making any decisions. So the Government should sideline Parliament entirely and do what it can with orders-in-council, the Army and local authorities. Let the [redacted] MPs make speeches to their heart's content but ignore them and get on with the job.
On legalising marijuana, surely the only sane policy now is to wait a few years to see what the results of the mass field trial being run in Canada are?
It's been proven to cause mental health problems in a significant percentage of the population IIRC.
On legalising marijuana, surely the only sane policy now is to wait a few years to see what the results of the mass field trial being run in Canada are?
It's been proven to cause mental health problems in a significant percentage of the population IIRC.
It’s not particularly restrictive. You could catch the next flight to Denver tonight and be chuffing on a phat one within a few minutes of leaving the airport.
Sure, but you can't (for example) buy online, as you can in Canada:
All I'm saying is: we can learn from these implementations. We don't need to speculate on what might happen or what we want to happen or what we think logically ought to happen.
You keep vainly grasping for evidence based solutions . Feelz is a la mode.
On legalising marijuana, surely the only sane policy now is to wait a few years to see what the results of the mass field trial being run in Canada are?
New Zealand to hold binding referendum on the topic for personal use alongside next general election. Expected to pass.
I was in Nevada couple of weeks ago, legal there.
The dyke has been breached; within a decade marijuana will be legal everywhere. The war on drugs has been lost, as it was always going to be. Prohibition doesn't work, history teaches us this.
Conversely, the war on tobacco is being won. Politicians should reflect on that and act accordingly.
On legalising marijuana, surely the only sane policy now is to wait a few years to see what the results of the mass field trial being run in Canada are?
New Zealand to hold binding referendum on the topic for personal use alongside next general election. Expected to pass.
I was in Nevada couple of weeks ago, legal there.
The dyke has been breached; within a decade marijuana will be legal everywhere. The war on drugs has been lost, as it was always going to be. Prohibition doesn't work, history teaches us this.
Conversely, the war on tobacco is being won. Politicians should reflect on that and act accordingly.
One of the questions I often ask myself is what would happen in the UK if there was a Muslim party and they voted, more or less, as a bloc.
I have lots of Muslim friends of various sects and backgrounds, ranging from diehard vocal atheists to moderately religious to basically secular (the Muslim version of "Christmas and Easter" church-goers) to a full-blown Islamist who wants Britons to convert to Islam and the UK to adopt Shariah law. Lovely bloke, incidentally, he just assumes at some point we'll all "see the light", and very strongly opposed to Islamic fundamentalism (thinks Salafists are dangerous, corrupting medieval idiots) and completely sickened by violent extremism (thinks it's deeply wrong, and this is a perfect logical fit with his politico-religious aspirations - it's hardly going to make most Brits feel it's a beautiful religion they can draw a deep sense of justice and inner peace from, if the primary mental association they have with the word "Islam" is a guy packing a suicide vest).
Generally, but not exclusively, the younger ones are more westernised and this anecdata is in keeping with academic literature I've read on the topic. The picture is complicated by high levels of migration, internet/satellite TV, and the tendency of even third- or fourth-generation British Muslims to marry someone from overseas - so kids continue to have close relatives abroad (also logical, not just because of the value placed on tradition and family ties etc but because the prospect of a British visa in the marriage market means you can find someone who would otherwise be "out of your league").
I don't have any fear of a mass Muslim voting bloc because there's far too much heterogeneity (the large numbers of Ahmadis, Ismailis and Shia will testify very readily to that) and there is a continuum running from people who are essentially fully integrated into British society to those who are living a separate existence rather akin to British expat life in Spain (or the Yiddish-speaking Orthodox Jewish enclaves that existed in East London at the turn of the 20th century).
What I do wonder about is the kind of cultural synthesis that is going to take place in cities, not just London, which are "minority majority". Particularly where not only the white people have moved out, but many of the institutions where British culture was traditionally formed and transmitted have been cut out too - obviously the church, less obviously the pub, newspapers or the BBC (many young people don't have TV at all, families that do will often be watching satellite from the motherland). Do we end up with some kind of Pan-Western Multi-Culti Fusion where everyone watches the same Netflix/Youtube stuff from NY to London to Sydney? Or with the "bubble" effect of social media and personalised internet content, finish up with total fragmentation?
I am fairly certain that the driving force behind Brexit has been the pace of change. How can you have a society when so few share a common culture?
London voted Remain.
In fact it's the most monoculturally white places that were most likely to be very anti-imigration and therefore pro-leave.
It's almost as if a significant chunk of Leaverstan is motivated primarily by racism..?
That is not actually true. Some of the largest Leave percentages came in majority white areas that border more diverse areas. It's more a case of 'white fright' than ignorance born of zero contact. People see what the city's like when they commute in and don't want the same demographics back home.
What I do wonder about is the kind of cultural synthesis that is going to take place in cities, not just London, which are "minority majority". Particularly where not only the white people have moved out, but many of the institutions where British culture was traditionally formed and transmitted have been cut out too - obviously the church, less obviously the pub, newspapers or the BBC (many young people don't have TV at all, families that do will often be watching satellite from the motherland). Do we end up with some kind of Pan-Western Multi-Culti Fusion where everyone watches the same Netflix/Youtube stuff from NY to London to Sydney? Or with the "bubble" effect of social media and personalised internet content, finish up with total fragmentation?
I think you're right, and it's worrying me. Patriotism depends on the patria, but if the patria becomes abstract and entirely disconnected from the concrete state, then things can get bad. If one's affiliation is to the Anglosphere, an abstract concept, then why pay taxes to the British Exchequer, a concrete concept? It is ironic that those Leavers who most believe in the nation-state may in the end be those who destroy it thru neglect.
Just looking at this thing about the government getting "secret legal advice" that they can't have a second referendum because it would be illegal not to have the Euro elections. (You have to make things like this "secret", otherwise the newspaper editors won't be interested when you send it to them.)
I can't see the full text because it's paywalled but seems like fairly ridiculous spin: Clearly if you stayed in the EU, even if only for a few months, you'd have the elections, instead of illegally not having them. The EP has handled changes in its membership partway through the term before, and they've already made contingency plans in case they need to do it for the UK.
But what I wondered was: Given that you need to hold elections from May 23-26th, and the UK is currently not making any preparations to have them, is there a practical or legal lead-time that means that after date x, it's too late to organize them in time?
Just looking at this thing about the government getting "secret legal advice" that they can't have a second referendum because it would be illegal not to have the Euro elections. (You have to make things like this "secret", otherwise the newspaper editors won't be interested when you send it to them.)
I can't see the full text because it's paywalled but seems like fairly ridiculous spin: Clearly if you stayed in the EU, even if only for a few months, you'd have the elections, instead of illegally not having them. The EP has handled changes in its membership partway through the term before, and they've already made contingency plans in case they need to do it for the UK.
But what I wondered was: Given that you need to hold elections from May 23-26th, and the UK is currently not making any preparations to have them, is there a practical or legal lead-time that means that after date x, it's too late to organize them in time?
Tbh after reading the Telegraph article, I cannot really see how a second referendum is ruled out, other than by the assertion of unnamed ministers that there might not be time.
The advice states that Britain will be legally obliged to take part in European Parliament elections in May of next year if it extends Article 50 and subsequently send British MEPs to Brussels.
...
Ministers who have seen the advice argue that this means that July 2nd, the start of the next five-year session of the European Parliament, is a "hard" deadline for extending Article 50.
They say it will take at least a year to complete preparations and hold a second vote, making it technically impossible to have another EU referendum.
The Telegraph includes a handy table showing which of half a dozen different "plan Bs" have been endorsed by various Cabinet ministers. Ah, but Labour's position is unclear!
Tbh after reading the Telegraph article, I cannot really see how a second referendum is ruled out, other than by the assertion of unnamed ministers that there might not be time.
No, it all seems to be bollocks.
However, I'm wondering if there's a point somewhere between now and March, 29th when the EP elections actually *do* present a hurdle. I mean, if you imagine the elections were supposed to happen on April 1st, you couldn't suddenly schedule them on March, 29th, so potentially they really would take a last-minute extension off the table. May 23-26th just about feels like long enough, but these elections usually have *five years* notice - I wonder if there are legal hurdles with nomination deadlines, etc.
Tbh after reading the Telegraph article, I cannot really see how a second referendum is ruled out, other than by the assertion of unnamed ministers that there might not be time.
No, it all seems to be bollocks.
However, I'm wondering if there's a point somewhere between now and March, 29th when the EP elections actually *do* present a hurdle. I mean, if you imagine the elections were supposed to happen on April 1st, you couldn't suddenly schedule them on March, 29th, so potentially they really would take a last-minute extension off the table. May 23-26th just about feels like long enough, but these elections usually have *five years* notice - I wonder if there are legal hurdles with nomination deadlines, etc.
Presumably that is to be discussed at the Cabinet meeting called for today, given the not quite secret legal advice that elections will be needed if Article 50 is extended or revoked.
Hmm. It is playing games by having it be in PM rather than government, but I'm trying to imagine how it looks to the layman, and it does seem like it would be that the gov are running scared of the vote.
Indeed. And maybe this was what Labour wanted all along. It's an odd move on the part of the government really, if this genuinely would have united all the Tories and the DUP it would be in their interest to hold the vote.
May’s greatest weakness is she is risk adverse in that she avoids all risk rather than taking calculated risks
A year or so ago I made a comment that most healthcare companies were planning to move from uk regulation to EC regulation. This was dismissed as project fear. Well in this case I was right. Funny that I know more about my industry than armchair critics. The price for more control of freedom of movement is complete loss of control over the economy
If they want to operate in the U.K. they have to be MHRA approved
There is increasing convergence between authorities (eg FDA and EMA recognising each other’s inspections) but you can’t just simply “move from U.K. regulation to EV regulation”
What I do wonder about is the kind of cultural synthesis that is going to take place in cities, not just London, which are "minority majority". Particularly where not only the white people have moved out, but many of the institutions where British culture was traditionally formed and transmitted have been cut out too - obviously the church, less obviously the pub, newspapers or the BBC (many young people don't have TV at all, families that do will often be watching satellite from the motherland). Do we end up with some kind of Pan-Western Multi-Culti Fusion where everyone watches the same Netflix/Youtube stuff from NY to London to Sydney? Or with the "bubble" effect of social media and personalised internet content, finish up with total fragmentation?
I think you're right, and it's worrying me. Patriotism depends on the patria, but if the patria becomes abstract and entirely disconnected from the concrete state, then things can get bad. If one's affiliation is to the Anglosphere, an abstract concept, then why pay taxes to the British Exchequer, a concrete concept? It is ironic that those Leavers who most believe in the nation-state may in the end be those who destroy it thru neglect.
The principal driver of assimilation is schools for the children of immigrants. First generation Immigrants, like Brits in Spain, rarely progress that far, but the next generation will. It's a powerful argument against religious segregation in schooling.
A year or so ago I made a comment that most healthcare companies were planning to move from uk regulation to EC regulation. This was dismissed as project fear. Well in this case I was right. Funny that I know more about my industry than armchair critics. The price for more control of freedom of movement is complete loss of control over the economy
If they want to operate in the U.K. they have to be MHRA approved
There is increasing convergence between authorities (eg FDA and EMA recognising each other’s inspections) but you can’t just simply “move from U.K. regulation to EV regulation”
But that’s rather the point. There is likely to be a slow erosion of the UK’s life science industry, as at the margin, investment and scientists will migrate to Europe.
Hmm. It is playing games by having it be in PM rather than government, but I'm trying to imagine how it looks to the layman, and it does seem like it would be that the gov are running scared of the vote.
Indeed. And maybe this was what Labour wanted all along. It's an odd move on the part of the government really, if this genuinely would have united all the Tories and the DUP it would be in their interest to hold the vote.
May’s greatest weakness is she is risk adverse in that she avoids all risk rather than taking calculated risks
True - but she merely postpones risk rather than avoiding it. It’s almost pathological.
I'm not sure if I have admitted this on here, anyway I will say it, even if it makes me look a fool (hint: it does) - because it has lessons for the future of Brexit, and also people who vote Corbyn, etc
I voted Leave because I thought Remain would win. That is to say: I wrestled long and hard with my conscience, about how I should vote. I knew that, morally, I should vote Leave, even if it meant personal loss (London property prices, etc) because the democratic gain was worth it: sovereign nations are, in the end, happier nations. The UK had simply to look to its democratic offspring, Canada and Australia, to see great examples of what we should do and what we could be. I still believe that.
Yet my mind havered; even as my heart yearned for Brexit, I knew the initial cost would be dramatic, and personal.
On the last day I was reassured by the polls. Remain would win by a canter. I could vote with my conscience, confident in the expectation that I wouldn't have to suffer the financial consequences, as Remain would win.
To put it bluntly: I could look myself in the eye, and my flat would still increase in value.
Then Leave won, and I was filled with awe, hope, surprise, bewilderment and existential dread, all at the same time.
I wonder how many other voters did the same as me. Boris Johnson is one, I suspect: in his heart he genuinely wanted Leave, in his head he thought Remain would win anyway, and he would personally benefit.
Doesn’t make you look a fool at all.
It’s simple game theory.
You called it wrong but the way you acted was entirely logical
I have personally encountered Boris, and I think you are wrong, or half-wrong.
I think he wrote thaous thinkpiece about Leave from the heart, because he is, at heart, a Leaver,
But yes, his head told him Remain would win, and he would benefit from his position as a Leaver that lost, so there was no disbenefit to plumping for Leave.
Sigh. And: hmm.
Nah, he's basically a remainer, but recognised that Leave played better both to his interests and character.
Unless you know him better than me (and fair enough if so) I will pull rank and say you are wrong.
On a sidenote, Jo Johnson walked past my door about an hour ago. He looked a bit nervous. Not sure why. He's in ultra-Remainery Camden.
He was walking past the only Leaver in NW1?
You're forgetting Jezza surely?
SeanT and Jezza have at least a couple of things in common.
EDIT: bugger, just realised Islington is N1 not NW1 - oh well, never mind.
I had drinks with two very old friends last night.
I give it a month, and then you'll miss the warm beer and drizzle.
Sadly, and for the first time ever, I don't think I would
I'm done with Britain, and London, for now, and if it weren't for my friends and my daughter, and my job, I would quit. I'd keep my London flat, and rent it out, with the hope of eventually returning. But I would go. The taxes are no longer worth the return.
If I feel that, as a patriotic Brit, how do flighty foreigners feel?
Another Leaver who votes Leave then Leaves?
Yeah, I'll 'fess to that.
It's bad enough in London, let alone Newcastle or Glasgow.
ENUFF. I demand a vote of No Confidence in British weather.
Rumour has it that Christmas week is going to be quite benign. Good walking to the pub weather. Spainards Inn and a roaring fire. Cheer up, old bean.
Forecasting the British weather a week in advance is rather courageous...
And increasingly accurate.
Indeed, there are a few long term meteorological models now that have very good track records forecasting up to a month ahead. The challenge in Britain is that it only takes a small margin of error in the synoptic picture to swap one airmass for another, making forecasting for the Uk more difficult.
Saturday night's PB discussion of the 80s converted me to this argument. If you take Section 28 as an example of an 80s culture war the only way the Tories could ever atone was decades later pushing through Gay Marriage. I think ( most ) Brexiters are making the same mistake. They are insisting on winning in such a brutal, unpleasent, stigmatising and divisive manner the next generation will insist on a hegemonic counter revolution. The North remembers.
I think that seriously misreads the gay debate. The Tories didn't push through Gay marriage to atone for anything. They pushed it through because the world had changed - as had much of the membership of the Tory back benches. They had finally caught up with what the vast majority of the public already thought in the 80s and 90s.
If you think the events of the last couple of years are going to make people look more favourably on the EU then you are very much mistaken. Even if we do end up Remaining it will still be with huge reluctance and resentment and we can be sure the EU will do nothing to change that. Indeed based on past performance they can be almost guaranteed to stoke up even more resentment with their response to Brexit - whether it succeeds or not.
Err...the LibDem minister wanted to do it and May, to her credit but also aware of the risk of LibDems running it as their own political initiative, gave it her support. Tories were reacting not acting.
There is no evidence for that. It happened to be a Lib Dem because she was the Minister for Equalities.
It's what happened. I had several long conversations with her about it at the time.
Lynne played an important role but you don’t get a policy like that through without cabinet level support
I wonder how many other voters did the same as me. Boris Johnson is one, I suspect: in his heart he genuinely wanted Leave, in his head he thought Remain would win anyway, and he would personally benefit.
I think he genuinely wanted Remain, so he could play the disgruntled leaver keeping the flame alive.
If the SNP had won Indyref, Nicola Sturgeon wouldn't even be a footnote.
Then he won, and now BoZo is completely screwed. Fortunately.
I have personally encountered Boris, and I think you are wrong, or half-wrong.
I think he wrote that notorious thinkpiece about Leave from the heart, because he is, at heart, a Leaver,
But yes, his head told him Remain would win, and he would benefit from his position as a Leaver that lost, so there was no disbenefit to plumping for Leave.
Sigh. And: hmm.
Nah, he's basically a remainer, but recognised that Leave played better both to his interests and character.
Unless you know him better than me (and fair enough if so) I will pull rank and say you are wrong.
On a sidenote, Jo Johnson walked past my door about an hour ago. He looked a bit nervous. Not sure why. He's in ultra-Remainery Camden.
You don't have any rank to pull.
I'd wager I have spent more time with Boris than you, but we didn't talk about Brexit, so in the end it comes down to judgement. But there is plenty of evidence in his backstory, and his family, to indicate that his core values probably lean toward Remain. It also came as a surprise to people who were close to him when he went against Cameron and came out for Remain,
Anyhow, if he were that strong one way or the other, he wouldn't have farted about writing himself letters, and only declaring for the referendum at the last minute.
Saturday night's PB discussion of the 80s converted me to this argument. If you take Section 28 as an example of an 80s culture war the only way the Tories could ever atone was decades later pushing through Gay Marriage. I think ( most ) Brexiters are making the same mistake. They are insisting on winning in such a brutal, unpleasent, stigmatising and divisive manner the next generation will insist on a hegemonic counter revolution. The North remembers.
I think that seriously misreads the gay debate. The Tories didn't push through Gay marriage to atone for anything. They pushed it through because the world had changed - as had much of the membership of the Tory back benches. They had finally caught up with what the vast majority of the public already thought in the 80s and 90s.
If you think the events of the last couple of years are going to make people look more favourably on the EU then you are very much mistaken. Even if we do end up Remaining it will still be with huge reluctance and resentment and we can be sure the EU will do nothing to change that. Indeed based on past performance they can be almost guaranteed to stoke up even more resentment with their response to Brexit - whether it succeeds or not.
Err...the LibDem minister wanted to do it and May, to her credit but also aware of the risk of LibDems running it as their own political initiative, gave it her support. Tories were reacting not acting.
There is no evidence for that. It happened to be a Lib Dem because she was the Minister for Equalities.
It's what happened. I had several long conversations with her about it at the time.
Lynne played an important role but you don’t get a policy like that through without cabinet level support
It’s a credit to both of them
Of course (and equally of course, her side in the cabinet were all in support, from Clegg down). And Lynne is very fulsome about the role May played. In particular that once May has decided something she is completely committed and played a key role in batting off or grinding down the quite remarkable level of opposition that came her way from inside the Tory Party. We are seeing the same characteristic on display now.
On legalising marijuana, surely the only sane policy now is to wait a few years to see what the results of the mass field trial being run in Canada are?
It's been proven to cause mental health problems in a significant percentage of the population IIRC.
I think the medical profession would be interested in seeing that research...
There is no shortage of such evidence, such as the increases in Psychiatric Emergencies in Colorado following decriminalisation then legalisation:
Whilst stoners are very keen to justify their habit, there is ample evidence of harm from cannabis, particularly the high THC forms. The evidence from Colorado is of increased rates of usage.
Anyone wanting to worsen our mental health crisis in the young would give them two things: cannabis and a mobile phone.
I wonder how many other voters did the same as me. Boris Johnson is one, I suspect: in his heart he genuinely wanted Leave, in his head he thought Remain would win anyway, and he would personally benefit.
I think he genuinely wanted Remain, so he could play the disgruntled leaver keeping the flame alive.
If the SNP had won Indyref, Nicola Sturgeon wouldn't even be a footnote.
Then he won, and now BoZo is completely screwed. Fortunately.
I have personally encountered Boris, and I think you are wrong, or half-wrong.
I think he wrote that notorious thinkpiece about Leave from the heart, because he is, at heart, a Leaver,
But yes, his head told him Remain would win, and he would benefit from his position as a Leaver that lost, so there was no disbenefit to plumping for Leave.
Sigh. And: hmm.
Nah, he's basically a remainer, but recognised that Leave played better both to his interests and character.
Unless you know him better than me (and fair enough if so) I will pull rank and say you are wrong.
On a sidenote, Jo Johnson walked past my door about an hour ago. He looked a bit nervous. Not sure why. He's in ultra-Remainery Camden.
He was walking past the only Leaver in NW1?
You're forgetting Jezza surely?
SeanT and Jezza have at least a couple of things in common.
EDIT: bugger, just realised Islington is N1 not NW1 - oh well, never mind.
On legalising marijuana, surely the only sane policy now is to wait a few years to see what the results of the mass field trial being run in Canada are?
It's been proven to cause mental health problems in a significant percentage of the population IIRC.
I think the medical profession would be interested in seeing that research...
There is no shortage of such evidence, such as the increases in Psychiatric Emergencies in Colorado following decriminalisation then legalisation:
Whilst stoners are very keen to justify their habit, there is ample evidence of harm from cannabis, particularly the high THC forms. The evidence from Colorado is of increased rates of usage.
Anyone wanting to worsen our mental health crisis in the young would give them two things: cannabis and a mobile phone.
How do they know that it isn't the mentally flaky who are attracted towards it in the first place? Correlation and all that.....
On legalising marijuana, surely the only sane policy now is to wait a few years to see what the results of the mass field trial being run in Canada are?
Well one definite result is that those who invested in the right Canadian shares, last year, thereafter made an absolute killing
My Canadian stepmum, living in Cornwall, was ardently advising me to buy shares in Canadian weed.
I ignored her. I was wrong. She made a mint.
Oh well.
*stabs face with fork*
You made the right call
If you look at the market capitalisation of the sector as a whole compared to the potential opportunity it is massively over valued
There is a landgrab going on at the moment which will result in massive destruction of capital
But if you are lucky you can make money in a bubble
I know a young white male Whitehall civil servant (Welsh, for what it is worth) who will bang on incessantly about how much he detests white men. He holds them in absolute contempt as the source of society's problems - which from his very "woke" perspective I can understand. Though since they themselves constitute
"Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells" may be relieved to know he detests Islam as well, though.
I think it would be hard to be a young white male growing up in a media environment where the phrase "white male" is used almost exclusively in an accusatory manner, and rarely far from the word "privilege" (except when used to deal with the "white working class", who seem to be deemed a particularly homogeneous lump by those superiors who have appointed themselves as acting in their best interest, however much they dislike the views they have expressed on Brexit and immigration). What are the options? Neither self-abasement nor Trumpesque re-seizing of the identity strike me as healthy choices.
Again, I don't think this is a British-only problem by any means. I think it exposes one of the problems with identity politics in a world where majority groups feel increasingly insecure (and in localised areas, have been rendered the minority) due to immigration - at some point, their identity is going to become politicised too.
I know lots of people like that. My wife was appalled to find a friend of hers telling another friend's five year old son, the other day, that "boys are bad, very bad, a0nd girls are always better". The poor indoctrinated boy was growing up nodding along to this, and believing it to be true: that his gender, by definition, made him inferior and somehow "wrong".
My wife was so inhibited by the identity wars that she said nothing. But she has resolved, next time, to step in and say No.
A warped SJW identitarian mindset is brooding a generation of self-hating males (especially white males) who will eventually rebel against this definition, and probably rebel very violently. How will this end? Badly.
For the first time in my life, and for so many reasons, I no longer believe western culture is superior to others, and I no longer believe we will prevail.
In the face of western madness, the Chinese maybe have the right attitude, however offensive.
"We are the best, detain those who disagree in huge camps, until they agree."
Indeed, at the end of the path of identity politics the end of democracy lies.
On legalising marijuana, surely the only sane policy now is to wait a few years to see what the results of the mass field trial being run in Canada are?
It's been proven to cause mental health problems in a significant percentage of the population IIRC.
I think the medical profession would be interested in seeing that research...
There is no shortage of such evidence, such as the increases in Psychiatric Emergencies in Colorado following decriminalisation then legalisation:
Whilst stoners are very keen to justify their habit, there is ample evidence of harm from cannabis, particularly the high THC forms. The evidence from Colorado is of increased rates of usage.
Anyone wanting to worsen our mental health crisis in the young would give them two things: cannabis and a mobile phone.
How do they know that it isn't the mentally flaky who are attracted towards it in the first place? Correlation and all that.....
Yes, that has long been a discussion on that. It is not ethical to do an RCT on it, but what evidence we have is correlation.
Like I said, 30 years ago I would have had a different attitude to it, but I have seen too many casualties in friends and neighbours to be blase about the risks.
Is it really surprising that regular use of intoxicating psychoactive substances adversely affects brain chemistry and social function? This stuff is not chicken soup.
On legalising marijuana, surely the only sane policy now is to wait a few years to see what the results of the mass field trial being run in Canada are?
It's been proven to cause mental health problems in a significant percentage of the population IIRC.
I think the medical profession would be interested in seeing that research...
There is no shortage of such evidence, such as the increases in Psychiatric Emergencies in Colorado following decriminalisation then legalisation:
Whilst stoners are very keen to justify their habit, there is ample evidence of harm from cannabis, particularly the high THC forms. The evidence from Colorado is of increased rates of usage.
Anyone wanting to worsen our mental health crisis in the young would give them two things: cannabis and a mobile phone.
And the evidence for 'proven to cause mental health problems in a significant percentage of the population'?
Have you read the links or am I the only idiot here doing that and your just spamming me with links?
The first one doesn't prove that at all, it goes on about usage, how risky it is seen as, goes off into a little paragraph about K2 spice, the short term effects of being stoned. It actually mentions nothing about what you are talking about.
Whilst enthusiastic prohibitionists are very keen to justify their moralising some of us would actually prefer to go by the evidence. If you can provide me some links you read yourself and confirm as saying what you claim I will read them.
Also If you really want to mess kids up confuse Spice and other synthetic drugs with marijuana they are nothing alike and the people who intentionally confuse them to push their own political message are messing with young people's lives.
Edit: And the second link doesn't really provide much either, I have to log in to read the details.
If there was an overwhelming burden of proof rather than some low level correlation you would be able to provide more than this without it going off into mentions of Spice either.
Comments
Everything else is just a variation on the theme.
I think other posters are right that we are probably still a generation away. But to me the idea that weed should be illegal is as strange as the idea that gays shouldn't be allowed to marry.
If we don't have an economy
It's almost as if a significant chunk of Leaverstan is motivated primarily by racism..?
But by and large what I feel for England is... contempt.
But it is remarkable for a superb portrayal of Dick Cheney by Christian Bale. Those who thought Gary Oldman gave a great portrayal of Churchill in Darkest Hour - prosthetics and all - Bale just raised the bar...
It is if you have to do it at short notice - neither practical nor moral to ask that of employees. And it is hard to see what would be achieved in this time - everybody else is off (including the EU, which is also in recess)
https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/1074804404023382018
There is almost no problem in Britain for which Brexit is the right answer, and usually so wrong that it makes the problem significantly worse.
https://twitter.com/DominicRaab/status/1074372746384166920
I've always argued that whilst marijuana isn't a gateway drug in terms of trying it has some effect which makes you want try other recreational drugs it is a gateway drug in terms of it being peoples introduction to drug dealers. It takes away some of the fear or mystery from buying illegal drugs off a person. It also takes away the fear of illegal drugs. Kids are happy to try alcohol as they probably seen plenty of other people do it, illegal drugs are a bit rarer. Because marijuana is widely known to be less harmful than alcohol people start to question the relationship between legality of drugs and their safety and are more open to trying other illegal drugs.
Even if marijuana legalisation didn't affect usage levels I suspect it would make people reluctant to try the harder recreational drugs.
Also I do agree with @kyf_100 that it would be brilliant for the Tories. The main groups objecting would probably be the oldest age groups who are solidly behind the Tories anyway so they could probably afford to do it whilst making it part of an offer for those middle aged and below. It could help change their image a bit as well, I think for many under 40's praise for the Tories would begin and end with the words gay marriage.
Essentially the ECJ's opinion is that member states may invoke and revoke A50 at will without censure. Which means the EU will want Article 50 amended or removed as a matter of some urgency, I should think.
I give it two months.
It is also in line with the drafting of Article 50 being an unfit for purpose piece of shit.
Thanks for checking.
By the way, your use of the word ‘outrage’ demeans you. I was politely disagreeing with you, that is all. I am not outraged.
A gram in street value is £10. If the government takes over growing marijuana, even if it is distributed through pharmacists or newsagents that take a decent cut (as well as transportation) then the government would be making several pounds per gram.
If you consider the amount smoked in Britain that would generate incredible amounts of money.
It’s not particularly restrictive. You could catch the next flight to Denver tonight and be chuffing on a phat one within a few minutes of leaving the airport.
"Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells" may be relieved to know he detests Islam as well, though.
I think it would be hard to be a young white male growing up in a media environment where the phrase "white male" is used almost exclusively in an accusatory manner, and rarely far from the word "privilege" (except when used to deal with the "white working class", who seem to be deemed a particularly homogeneous lump by those superiors who have appointed themselves as acting in their best interest, however much they dislike the views they have expressed on Brexit and immigration). What are the options? Neither self-abasement nor Trumpesque re-seizing of the identity strike me as healthy choices.
Again, I don't think this is a British-only problem by any means. I think it exposes one of the problems with identity politics in a world where majority groups feel increasingly insecure (and in localised areas, have been rendered the minority) due to immigration - at some point, their identity is going to become politicised too.
I will just say that (mother tongue) English speakers will be a minority.
Ours was 7 nights out of Venice and we visited Olympia, Kotor (amazing views), Athens and Santorini amongst others.
Athens was much nicer than we expected
Would happily go again.
So I cannot see what demeaning has occurred - whether you used the word itself or not you clearly believe asking people to come in at short notice is an outrage. And not a minor outrage at that, a moral outrage. You undermine so many genuine immoralities by comparing the inconvenience of being called into work at our national parliament to a moral issue. I am somewhat surprised you would belittle genuine problems by calling such a thing immoral.
If you like we can go four yorkshireman and compare how many people we know on low incomes and how many we think would regard being called in to work between xmas and new year at short notice bloody inconvenient, and how many would consider it a matter of morality.
Seriously, immorality is not an outrage?
Everything that Brexiterrs loathe about modern Britain is about to be accelerated. It is the very definition of tragedy.
https://www.civilized.life/articles/reasons-to-go-to-canada-buy-marijuana/
One consequence is that the criminal supply in Colorado is still going quite strong:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/colorado-marijuana-black-market-1.4647198
All I'm saying is: we can learn from these implementations. We don't need to speculate on what might happen or what we want to happen or what we think logically ought to happen.
One of the questions I often ask myself is what would happen in the UK if there was a Muslim party and they voted, more or less, as a bloc.
UKIP didn't need to win a single seat, nor poll above 13%, to effect dramatic change.
It's too late to crunch the number in any details. Ask me again in the morning...
If they come from a poor country, one with a poor health service or whatever, their utility gains simply from being let into the country would be very large - and may well overwhelm any other considerations in your calculus, including what the primary effects of the policy were intended to be. Indeed it would tend to favour any policy that opened the doors as wide as possible.
Should policies be judged purely by how much they help the people who were here in the first place, and the requisite migration seen in the light only of how much it helps the natives, or should migration policy effectively be seen as an act of charity to incomers? Or should you weight it as something in between? And what happens to that allocated weighting as the migrant makes the transition to becoming a fully-fledged Brit? Here's one such debate between Jonathan Portes and Martin Wolf:
https://www.niesr.ac.uk/blog/economic-objectives-immigration-policy-dialogue-martin-wolf
And I was the one being demeaning? Perhaps you should vacate that high horse given that remark. I see also you clearly do not believe there are degrees of outrage; not all outrages will be unreasonable - perhaps if you had been a little less inclined to jump to conclusions you might have not taken offence at wording where none was intended, so keen were you to turn this into a moral debate, a matter of fundamental right and wrong, for reasons that quite escape me. Are you under the impression that being outraged is some horrible insult? If you think this is a moral issue, of any degree, I would expect you to be outraged! To some degree.
What a bizarre conclusion to the day's proceedings. Apparently being outraged is beyond the pale, but actual insults and rude dismissal are fine manners. I have truly learned something this day, I shall have to remember that attacking someone's morality is perfectly acceptable, but suggesting someone is upset, now that is unconscionable.
Oh, and just because a response is lengthy and you disagree with it doesn't make it waffle. But if you prefer concision the part in bold indicates why your outrage, yes, outrage, was entirely misplaced under your own logic. If degrees of is fine in one sense it is in the other.
Have a pleasant evening.
I think it would be hard to be a young white male growing up in a media environment where the phrase "white male" is used almost exclusively in an accusatory manner, and rarely far from the word "privilege" (except when used to deal with the "white working class", who seem to be deemed a particularly homogeneous lump by those superiors who have appointed themselves as acting in their best interest, however much they dislike the views they have expressed on Brexit and immigration). What are the options? Neither self-abasement nor Trumpesque re-seizing of the identity strike me as healthy choices.
Again, I don't think this is a British-only problem by any means. I think it exposes one of the problems with identity politics in a world where majority groups feel increasingly insecure (and in localised areas, have been rendered the minority) due to immigration - at some point, their identity is going to become politicised too.
I know lots of people like that. My wife was appalled to find a friend of hers telling another friend's five year old son, the other day, that "boys are bad, very bad, a0nd girls are always better". The poor indoctrinated boy was growing up nodding along to this, and believing it to be true: that his gender, by definition, made him inferior and somehow "wrong".
My wife was so inhibited by the identity wars that she said nothing. But she has resolved, next time, to step in and say No.
A warped SJW identitarian mindset is brooding a generation of self-hating males (especially white males) who will eventually rebel against this definition, and probably rebel very violently. How will this end? Badly.
For the first time in my life, and for so many reasons, I no longer believe western culture is superior to others, and I no longer believe we will prevail.
In the face of western madness, the Chinese maybe have the right attitude, however offensive.
"We are the best, detain those who disagree in huge camps, until they agree."
To be fair, Western culture has produced the greatest self-saboteurs in history: in our civilisation alone is the greatness of our achievements matched by our citizens' contempt for them.
(sorry, it's the pedantry gene)
I was in Nevada couple of weeks ago, legal there.
The dyke has been breached; within a decade marijuana will be legal everywhere. The war on drugs has been lost, as it was always going to be. Prohibition doesn't work, history teaches us this.
The latest nonsense from Penny Mordaunt and her stand alone transition period! So the UK will basically stay in the single market and customs union and pay half the money it owes . Half the money is for the transition period already , the other half for current commitments the UK agreed to whilst Cameron was in charge .
We’ve had Clean Global Brexit and now managed no deal . But you can see their logic if some people fell for unicorns during the ref campaign they’ll fall for yet more crap from the Leave politicians .
(The reaction of actual Chinese people in China to that bizarre US prom dress row is quite instructive, though there were Chinese Americans who were genuinely aggrieved by the issue.)
I have my fingers crossed that at some point common sense will return, people living in Western countries will realise that hey, it's okay, we can all get along, we quite like being "British" even if the sense of the word has changed to become more inclusive, there's no point holding things against people for what their ancestors did 100 years ago... but I might be being too optimistic. Also worth pointing out that it isn't only Western countries undergoing demographic changes from migration - there are underlying economic and technological factors that have made people more mobile. So for example, there are lots of Nigerians in India, Somalis in Sri Lanka, millions of people in Africa living in adjoining African countries where the labour market is better, and so on. But my limited understanding is that the crisis of cultural self-confidence is a largely Western thing.
In a crash, one must acknowledge the situation and stop indulging in fantasies. We will not be helped by others so things like further negotiations with the EU is a waste of time. We have to assume there will be no deal and start assigning money to those bits that will fail hardest or soonest: the rest you can deal with later in the year.
At this point Parliament is just a waste of time: it's talking but not making any decisions. So the Government should sideline Parliament entirely and do what it can with orders-in-council, the Army and local authorities. Let the [redacted] MPs make speeches to their heart's content but ignore them and get on with the job.
Edit: My favourite line is harmless looking cigarettes. Little did they know instead of being one of the biggest killers around it was marijuana!
Generally, but not exclusively, the younger ones are more westernised and this anecdata is in keeping with academic literature I've read on the topic. The picture is complicated by high levels of migration, internet/satellite TV, and the tendency of even third- or fourth-generation British Muslims to marry someone from overseas - so kids continue to have close relatives abroad (also logical, not just because of the value placed on tradition and family ties etc but because the prospect of a British visa in the marriage market means you can find someone who would otherwise be "out of your league").
I don't have any fear of a mass Muslim voting bloc because there's far too much heterogeneity (the large numbers of Ahmadis, Ismailis and Shia will testify very readily to that) and there is a continuum running from people who are essentially fully integrated into British society to those who are living a separate existence rather akin to British expat life in Spain (or the Yiddish-speaking Orthodox Jewish enclaves that existed in East London at the turn of the 20th century).
What I do wonder about is the kind of cultural synthesis that is going to take place in cities, not just London, which are "minority majority". Particularly where not only the white people have moved out, but many of the institutions where British culture was traditionally formed and transmitted have been cut out too - obviously the church, less obviously the pub, newspapers or the BBC (many young people don't have TV at all, families that do will often be watching satellite from the motherland). Do we end up with some kind of Pan-Western Multi-Culti Fusion where everyone watches the same Netflix/Youtube stuff from NY to London to Sydney? Or with the "bubble" effect of social media and personalised internet content, finish up with total fragmentation?
https://www.forexlive.com/news/!/brexit-uk-govmt-has-taken-secret-legal-advice-on-extending-article-50-20181217
I can't see the full text because it's paywalled but seems like fairly ridiculous spin: Clearly if you stayed in the EU, even if only for a few months, you'd have the elections, instead of illegally not having them. The EP has handled changes in its membership partway through the term before, and they've already made contingency plans in case they need to do it for the UK.
But what I wondered was: Given that you need to hold elections from May 23-26th, and the UK is currently not making any preparations to have them, is there a practical or legal lead-time that means that after date x, it's too late to organize them in time?
The advice states that Britain will be legally obliged to take part in European Parliament elections in May of next year if it extends Article 50 and subsequently send British MEPs to Brussels.
...
Ministers who have seen the advice argue that this means that July 2nd, the start of the next five-year session of the European Parliament, is a "hard" deadline for extending Article 50.
They say it will take at least a year to complete preparations and hold a second vote, making it technically impossible to have another EU referendum.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/12/17/exclusive-secret-legal-advice-extending-article-50-ministers/
The Telegraph includes a handy table showing which of half a dozen different "plan Bs" have been endorsed by various Cabinet ministers. Ah, but Labour's position is unclear!
However, I'm wondering if there's a point somewhere between now and March, 29th when the EP elections actually *do* present a hurdle. I mean, if you imagine the elections were supposed to happen on April 1st, you couldn't suddenly schedule them on March, 29th, so potentially they really would take a last-minute extension off the table. May 23-26th just about feels like long enough, but these elections usually have *five years* notice - I wonder if there are legal hurdles with nomination deadlines, etc.
There is increasing convergence between authorities (eg FDA and EMA recognising each other’s inspections) but you can’t just simply “move from U.K. regulation to EV regulation”
It’s simple game theory.
You called it wrong but the way you acted was entirely logical
It’s a credit to both of them
I'd wager I have spent more time with Boris than you, but we didn't talk about Brexit, so in the end it comes down to judgement. But there is plenty of evidence in his backstory, and his family, to indicate that his core values probably lean toward Remain. It also came as a surprise to people who were close to him when he went against Cameron and came out for Remain,
Anyhow, if he were that strong one way or the other, he wouldn't have farted about writing himself letters, and only declaring for the referendum at the last minute.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4939797/
47% those who have an acute Cannabis associated Psychosis later go on to develop schizophrenia or Bipolar disease. :
https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/abs/10.1176/appi.ajp.2017.17020223?af=R&
Whilst stoners are very keen to justify their habit, there is ample evidence of harm from cannabis, particularly the high THC forms. The evidence from Colorado is of increased rates of usage.
Anyone wanting to worsen our mental health crisis in the young would give them two things: cannabis and a mobile phone.
If you look at the market capitalisation of the sector as a whole compared to the potential opportunity it is massively over valued
There is a landgrab going on at the moment which will result in massive destruction of capital
But if you are lucky you can make money in a bubble
Like I said, 30 years ago I would have had a different attitude to it, but I have seen too many casualties in friends and neighbours to be blase about the risks.
Is it really surprising that regular use of intoxicating psychoactive substances adversely affects brain chemistry and social function? This stuff is not chicken soup.
Have you read the links or am I the only idiot here doing that and your just spamming me with links?
The first one doesn't prove that at all, it goes on about usage, how risky it is seen as, goes off into a little paragraph about K2 spice, the short term effects of being stoned. It actually mentions nothing about what you are talking about.
Whilst enthusiastic prohibitionists are very keen to justify their moralising some of us would actually prefer to go by the evidence. If you can provide me some links you read yourself and confirm as saying what you claim I will read them.
Also If you really want to mess kids up confuse Spice and other synthetic drugs with marijuana they are nothing alike and the people who intentionally confuse them to push their own political message are messing with young people's lives.
Edit: And the second link doesn't really provide much either, I have to log in to read the details.
If there was an overwhelming burden of proof rather than some low level correlation you would be able to provide more than this without it going off into mentions of Spice either.