The first speech as leader was very shouty about "inclusive", but she did seem to exclude a lot of people. Very tribal.
And she has a bit of a history of going Missing in Action when awkward questions arise - not possible for a leader.
And of course Layla Moran is still in post.
For many people like me not being Corbyn and not being Johnson is enough.The old duopoly couldn't really have done any more to help a LibDem revival and as we saw last night in the 2 Gloucester by elections they can take take seats and votes of either side.
Possibly. I'd be cautious, as Swinson has had little public scrutiny yet.
The little I have seen suggests that (putting it most charitably) she has a very steep learning curve to surmount if there is a GE in the Autumn.
Against Cameron and Blair, Jo Swinson would probably have disappeared without trace in a crowded middle ground.
Against Corbyn and Johnson, the bar is fairly low to attract a pretty big swathe of the uncommitted from the centrist wings of both parties. I don't think there'll be a massive move of activists or elected representatives. But voters?
I will be voting Lib Dem next time round simply because they are NOT Johnson or Corbyn (notice I do not say Tories or Labour. The parties may exist, but the cults are in control)
Hi Beverley. As a (new?) Lib Dem voter, what do you make of Jo Swinson? Would Ed Davey have been better?
I have no opinion on either of them. My support is tactical rather than ideological. They appear to be the least worst option at the moment.
Even if at best totally crap as the others. They would struggle to run a bath.
The obvious and glaring question is whether Brexit has overwhelmed all previously held tribal political beliefs. ie does it matter what the LDs vs Lab's NHS policy is if one is explicitly remain and one who knows (and of course Cons are explicitly leave). @HYUFD for example thinks it has, and posts endlessly things such as "...will lose/gain Lab Leave voters..." as though being a Labour Party supporter of X years means nothing vs Leave/Remain.
I am not so sure. And if that is the case (ie Brexit doesn't, ahem, trump everything) then the LDs as a not-Johnson not-Corbyn party must be in with a real shout everywhere.
If, say, Estonia is invaded by Russia at a time when Britain's Prime Minister is Jeremy Corbyn, do you think Britain would send troops
The Baltic membership of NATO is for deterrence purposes only. If that deterrent fails no NATO member is going to fight the Russian army through the streets of Tallinn no matter who the PM is.
Eh? How does that work as a deterrence then?
Probably not that well in the long term. Do you think the British public and government have the stomach to take hundreds of KIAs every day fighting for fucking Estonia? Because I don't. I was in Basra and the mission there just became don't do anything that might risk casualties and uncomfortable headlines.
I always thought the way it worked was that by risking hundred of casualties in Talinn, we avoid tens of thousands of casualties in Berlin.
Try getting on a soapbox and selling that concept during an election, as the coffins arrive every hour on non-stop news channels.
The first speech as leader was very shouty about "inclusive", but she did seem to exclude a lot of people. Very tribal.
And she has a bit of a history of going Missing in Action when awkward questions arise - not possible for a leader.
And of course Layla Moran is still in post.
For many people like me not being Corbyn and not being Johnson is enough.The old duopoly couldn't really have done any more to help a LibDem revival and as we saw last night in the 2 Gloucester by elections they can take take seats and votes of either side.
Possibly. I'd be cautious, as Swinson has had little public scrutiny yet.
The little I have seen suggests that (putting it most charitably) she has a very steep learning curve to surmount if there is a GE in the Autumn.
The LibDem revival didn't suddenly start last week with a new leader though. It has far more to do with Brexit and the leaders of Lab/Con than it has to do with who is Lib Dem leader.
As I said it could go either way, we've seen Lib Dem surges before. If the stars align and Corbyn stays on as Labour leader and Johnson leads us into a disastrous No Deal Brexit I can see the Lib Dems reaching a tipping point in which FPTP might actually assist them for once.
The Podsmead ward in Gloucester was the interesting one last night. Previously a Labour/Tory marginal and 67% leave voting. Lib Dems come from nowhere to win with 30%.
There are a lot of 'gloomsters and doomsters' on PB this morning! I wasn't a Boris fan but nobody I liked for the leadership could have given that commons performance. He's doing well so far.
I agree. The doom and gloom represent Johnson's perceived threat. People would be more relaxed about him if they thought he was ineffectual.
"The trio’s reunification sets up the most extraordinary denouement to the Brexit story, like one of those scenes in a rock bio-pic in which the ageing musicians decide to “get the band back together” for one last gig."
I haven't seen any reference to the huge tax cuts Boris was proposing prior to being elected nor the inconsistency with the huge spending he is proposing now.
There are a lot of 'gloomsters and doomsters' on PB this morning! I wasn't a Boris fan but nobody I liked for the leadership could have given that commons performance. He's doing well so far.
If, say, Estonia is invaded by Russia at a time when Britain's Prime Minister is Jeremy Corbyn, do you think Britain would send troops
The Baltic membership of NATO is for deterrence purposes only. If that deterrent fails no NATO member is going to fight the Russian army through the streets of Tallinn no matter who the PM is.
Eh? How does that work as a deterrence then?
Probably not that well in the long term. Do you think the British public and government have the stomach to take hundreds of KIAs every day fighting for fucking Estonia? Because I don't. I was in Basra and the mission there just became don't do anything that might risk casualties and uncomfortable headlines.
Modern democracies fighting wars is an issue unless clear and present case e.g. Falklands.
Mind you, whether we go in or not will be irrelevant as Trump certainly wouldn't and that would be the end of NATO overnight I suspect. Pretty sure NATO wont last his second term.
A short history of the Falklands War: 1) Thatcher government naval cuts tempt Argentina to invade 2) War 3) Even more Thatcher government naval cuts mean we could not do so again 4) John Nott walks out of interview when pressed on this point by the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation
Mr. Jessop, smart move having Allen McNish[sp] as W Series commentator.
Odd how Scots tend provide the best F1 coverage (McNish, McKenzie[sp], Coulthard).
McNish was a really good driver, and his relative lack of success in F1 shows how important it is to get a decent car. Three-times winner of the Le Mans 24 hours, and winner of the WEC. Yet he did nothing in his one year with Toyota - perhaps because they were a new team. (I actually thought he'd spent more than one year there, but wiki says only one).
As for Scots commentators: Scottish drivers have always hit above their weight in motorsport: there is a long and illustrious line of them that I hope will continue into the future. But Murray Walker, who will always be the best motorsports commentator, was English.
I've got something similar here, not working in Chrome, although Firefox is OK. Been this way for a week or two.
I can still see the embedded tweets in Firefox, though.
These are the errors I'm getting - apparently Chrome is applying a content security policy and thinks it's not allowed to load the iframe from vanilla, but I can't see anything in the headers or the source code that sets that, so I guess it's just a setting that Chrome made up.
Looking at those headers and doing some digging, the policy is not being made up by Chrome. The response from Vanilla that contains the comments has a header which includes the directive "Content-Security-Policy: frame-ancestors 'self' www2.politicalbetting.com *politicalbetting.com". That tells the browser that it should only embed the comments in a page from the same source as the comments (i.e. politicalbetting.vanillacommunity.com) or from any domain ending politicalbetting.com. The www2.politicalbetting.com bit of the directive is actually redundant because that will also match *politicalbetting.com. So it appears that Chrome thinks the main page is not from politicalbetting.com but from some other domain. Strange.
I can't understand much of your conversation with Edmund but I can't access any of the comments on Firefox though everything else seems normal. I'm having to access them on Chrome which is more difficult. Can either of you lend a solution?
For Firefox, enter "about:config" in the address bar (without the quotes) and hit Enter. Click on the button to accept the risk. Scroll down to security.csp.enable and double click on it so that the right hand column reads "false". This makes you less secure so use at your own risk.
Disclaimer: I've not tested it, the reviews are mixed and it makes you less secure, so use at your own risk.
Other options: Use Edge which seems quite happy with the current settings or wait for Vanilla to fix it.
If Vanilla is causing the problems, Vanilla can fix the problems.
I realise we are basket-case politics geeks, but don’t expect us to transmogrify into tech geeks too.
I appreciate this must be bloody frustrating Stuart but it cannot just be a Vanilla problem. I can see and use PB.com and the (horrible) vanillacommunity version fine with Safari on my Mac, Macbook, iPad and iPhone, so PB definitely can and does work with Safari.
Happy to compare Safari settings if that would help.
I actually kind of agree with him on that point. I don't think he is an awful speaker, he can entertain, exactly but I dont think hes great and without accent privilege I think it would get short shrift.
Yes. I agree. There is more to him than class privilege.
But there's no doubt that money / eton / oxford breeds a particular brand of self regard and confidence that together with connections forged puts a very loaded dice in your gilded palm.
This is why kids get sent to top public schools. That's what the parents get for their money. It's expensive but it's worth it. No, let's be more precise - it's worth it because it's expensive.
I've got something similar here, not working in Chrome, although Firefox is OK. Been this way for a week or two.
I can still see the embedded tweets in Firefox, though.
These are the errors I'm getting - apparently Chrome is applying a content security policy and thinks it's not allowed to load the iframe from vanilla, but I can't see anything in the headers or the source code that sets that, so I guess it's just a setting that Chrome made up.
Looking at those headers and doing some digging, the policy is not being made up by Chrome. The response from Vanilla that contains the comments has a header which includes the directive "Content-Security-Policy: frame-ancestors 'self' www2.politicalbetting.com *politicalbetting.com". That tells the browser that it should only embed the comments in a page from the same source as the comments (i.e. politicalbetting.vanillacommunity.com) or from any domain ending politicalbetting.com. The www2.politicalbetting.com bit of the directive is actually redundant because that will also match *politicalbetting.com. So it appears that Chrome thinks the main page is not from politicalbetting.com but from some other domain. Strange.
I can't understand much of your conversation with Edmund but I can't access any of the comments on Firefox though everything else seems normal. I'm having to access them on Chrome which is more difficult. Can either of you lend a solution?
For Firefox, enter "about:config" in the address bar (without the quotes) and hit Enter. Click on the button to accept the risk. Scroll down to security.csp.enable and double click on it so that the right hand column reads "false". This makes you less secure so use at your own risk.
The first speech as leader was very shouty about "inclusive", but she did seem to exclude a lot of people. Very tribal.
And she has a bit of a history of going Missing in Action when awkward questions arise - not possible for a leader.
And of course Layla Moran is still in post.
For many people like me not being Corbyn and not being Johnson is enough.The old duopoly couldn't really have done any more to help a LibDem revival and as we saw last night in the 2 Gloucester by elections they can take take seats and votes of either side.
Possibly. I'd be cautious, as Swinson has had little public scrutiny yet.
The little I have seen suggests that (putting it most charitably) she has a very steep learning curve to surmount if there is a GE in the Autumn.
The LibDem revival didn't suddenly start last week with a new leader though. It has far more to do with Brexit and the leaders of Lab/Con than it has to do with who is Lib Dem leader.
As I said it could go either way, we've seen Lib Dem surges before. If the stars align and Corbyn stays on as Labour leader and Johnson leads us into a disastrous No Deal Brexit I can see the Lib Dems reaching a tipping point in which FPTP might actually assist them for once.
The Podsmead ward in Gloucester was the interesting one last night. Previously a Labour/Tory marginal and 67% leave voting. Lib Dems come from nowhere to win with 30%.
Boris's sudden enthusiasm for GM crops (mentioned earlier) at the behest of our new American overlords might allow the LibDems to open a second front.
Mr. Jessop, smart move having Allen McNish[sp] as W Series commentator.
Odd how Scots tend provide the best F1 coverage (McNish, McKenzie[sp], Coulthard).
McNish was a really good driver, and his relative lack of success in F1 shows how important it is to get a decent car. Three-times winner of the Le Mans 24 hours, and winner of the WEC. Yet he did nothing in his one year with Toyota - perhaps because they were a new team. (I actually thought he'd spent more than one year there, but wiki says only one).
As for Scots commentators: Scottish drivers have always hit above their weight in motorsport: there is a long and illustrious line of them that I hope will continue into the future. But Murray Walker, who will always be the best motorsports commentator, was English.
The Scottish motor racing lineage is indeed honourable topped by my choice for "greatest driver of all time", the late Jim Clark.
Mr Dancer: would you not consider Jim Clark one of the "greats" ?
If, say, Estonia is invaded by Russia at a time when Britain's Prime Minister is Jeremy Corbyn, do you think Britain would send troops
The Baltic membership of NATO is for deterrence purposes only. If that deterrent fails no NATO member is going to fight the Russian army through the streets of Tallinn no matter who the PM is.
Eh? How does that work as a deterrence then?
Probably not that well in the long term. Do you think the British public and government have the stomach to take hundreds of KIAs every day fighting for fucking Estonia? Because I don't. I was in Basra and the mission there just became don't do anything that might risk casualties and uncomfortable headlines.
I always thought the way it worked was that by risking hundred of casualties in Talinn, we avoid tens of thousands of casualties in Berlin.
Per day. I was pl comd of a BCR platoon in Gulf 1 and the forecast was for 100-200 casualties per day. And this was a penny ante middle eastern dictator and attendant out of date kit.
"The trio’s reunification sets up the most extraordinary denouement to the Brexit story, like one of those scenes in a rock bio-pic in which the ageing musicians decide to “get the band back together” for one last gig."
If, say, Estonia is invaded by Russia at a time when Britain's Prime Minister is Jeremy Corbyn, do you think Britain would send troops
The Baltic membership of NATO is for deterrence purposes only. If that deterrent fails no NATO member is going to fight the Russian army through the streets of Tallinn no matter who the PM is.
Eh? How does that work as a deterrence then?
Probably not that well in the long term. Do you think the British public and government have the stomach to take hundreds of KIAs every day fighting for fucking Estonia? Because I don't. I was in Basra and the mission there just became don't do anything that might risk casualties and uncomfortable headlines.
Modern democracies fighting wars is an issue unless clear and present case e.g. Falklands.
Mind you, whether we go in or not will be irrelevant as Trump certainly wouldn't and that would be the end of NATO overnight I suspect. Pretty sure NATO wont last his second term.
1) Thatcher government naval cuts tempt Argentina to invade
LOL
Perfectly minding their own business Poles tempt Germany to invade.
There are a lot of 'gloomsters and doomsters' on PB this morning! I wasn't a Boris fan but nobody I liked for the leadership could have given that commons performance. He's doing well so far.
I agree. The doom and gloom represent Johnson's perceived threat. People would be more relaxed about him if they thought he was ineffectual.
The captain of the Titanic was ineffectual when it came to avoiding icebergs - 'ineffectual' can be very dangerous.
The first speech as leader was very shouty about "inclusive", but she did seem to exclude a lot of people. Very tribal.
And she has a bit of a history of going Missing in Action when awkward questions arise - not possible for a leader.
And of course Layla Moran is still in post.
For many people like me not being Corbyn and not being Johnson is enough.The old duopoly couldn't really have done any more to help a LibDem revival and as we saw last night in the 2 Gloucester by elections they can take take seats and votes of either side.
Possibly. I'd be cautious, as Swinson has had little public scrutiny yet.
The little I have seen suggests that (putting it most charitably) she has a very steep learning curve to surmount if there is a GE in the Autumn.
The LibDem revival didn't suddenly start last week with a new leader though. It has far more to do with Brexit and the leaders of Lab/Con than it has to do with who is Lib Dem leader.
As I said it could go either way, we've seen Lib Dem surges before. If the stars align and Corbyn stays on as Labour leader and Johnson leads us into a disastrous No Deal Brexit I can see the Lib Dems reaching a tipping point in which FPTP might actually assist them for once.
The Podsmead ward in Gloucester was the interesting one last night. Previously a Labour/Tory marginal and 67% leave voting. Lib Dems come from nowhere to win with 30%.
Boris's sudden enthusiasm for GM crops (mentioned earlier) at the behest of our new American overlords might allow the LibDems to open a second front.
Indeed. Very unpopular with public last time they tried to introduce. iirc even Daily Mail was raging against.
This is before we get into Putin's support for Brexit.
They have all the same friends as well, Bannon, Trump etc.
Putin's man is in Downing Street.
Very true. However, given Corbyn's own vacillation around Nato collective defence, and the Stalinist/anti-imperialist bilge of Milne and Murray, he'll be quite happy with your man next.
If, say, Estonia is invaded by Russia at a time when Britain's Prime Minister is Jeremy Corbyn, do you think Britain would send troops
The Baltic membership of NATO is for deterrence purposes only. If that deterrent fails no NATO member is going to fight the Russian army through the streets of Tallinn no matter who the PM is.
Eh? How does that work as a deterrence then?
Probably not that well in the long term. Do you think the British public and government have the stomach to take hundreds of KIAs every day fighting for fucking Estonia? Because I don't. I was in Basra and the mission there just became don't do anything that might risk casualties and uncomfortable headlines.
I always thought the way it worked was that by risking hundred of casualties in Talinn, we avoid tens of thousands of casualties in Berlin.
Try getting on a soapbox and selling that concept during an election, as the coffins arrive every hour on non-stop news channels.
I guess that's the real problem with politics right now.
I'm going to use an analogy. In the 1980s, the Mexican government got into really serious financial trouble, and the then US Treasury Secretary put in place a system where the US guaranteed Mexican debt. (These were named in his honour, Brady Bonds.)
This led to a huge amount of criticism: why were US taxpayers being put on the hook for the profligacy of Mexican politicians? But it was, of course, the right call. It would have been far more expensive for the US if the Mexican government had gone to the wall. The US recognised that taking on a small amount of risk now, was far cheaper in the long run.
And that's the principle of NATO. We accept that we need to defend places far from home, because stopping an aggressive and expansionary country gets more expensive each time around. Stopping Hitler in the Saarland would have resulted in far fewer deaths, wouldn't it?
Have our horizons become so shrunk, that we risk terrible outcomes to avoid local pain? It's the psychology of the heroin addict, shutting out the real world for now, irrespective of the long term consequences of our actions.
The obvious and glaring question is whether Brexit has overwhelmed all previously held tribal political beliefs. ie does it matter what the LDs vs Lab's NHS policy is if one is explicitly remain and one who knows (and of course Cons are explicitly leave). @HYUFD for example thinks it has, and posts endlessly things such as "...will lose/gain Lab Leave voters..." as though being a Labour Party supporter of X years means nothing vs Leave/Remain.
I am not so sure. And if that is the case (ie Brexit doesn't, ahem, trump everything) then the LDs as a not-Johnson not-Corbyn party must be in with a real shout everywhere.
Even if you think Brexit *is* the most important thing, there's a ready-made pool of 48% of 2016 voters, plus a fair few who wouldn't countenance No Deal.
I think there's enough evidence from the BXP and LD performances in the Euro-elections that clarity on Brexit one way or the other *is* quite a driving force in voter choice. That may not last forever.. but for the next six months it's a tricky time for splinters-in-the-bum parties (I'm looking at you, Labour).
Jo Swinson seems to be more bothered about Corbyn than Brexit. To be fair ,I guess it was the same with Brown. Lib dems when push comes to shuff always back up the conservatives. As they do in the city of York council.
It will definitely be a card he plays if he gets in trouble as pulling out of NATO would be fantastically popular with his base. Anybody who doubts this should take a look at The_Donald subreddit.
Jo Swinson seems to be more bothered about Corbyn than Brexit. To be fair ,I guess it was the same with Brown. Lib dems when push comes to snuff always back up the conservatives. As they do in the city of York council.
Quite simply untrue.
She used her acceptance speech to make an unequivocal statement about Brexit, attacking both the 'old parties.'
1) Boris Johnson doesn't care about Salisbury. He cares so little that he ducked out of a Cobra briefing on the subject to be photographed resigning.
2) In the grand scheme of things, Salisbury doesn't matter much to Vladimir Putin anyway. His main strategic aim in Europe is to foment chaos and disorder, so he can divide and rule. Boris Johnson is an ideal choice from that perspective.
Yes, I take your point. Although I think Johnson's plan (to the extent he has one - maybe "vague aim" would be better) is for close cooperation with the EU on matters that are important to us both - he's certainly not a Cash/Redwood type radical on the subject of Europe.
Otherwise, Johnson tends to be socially quite liberal and economically right wing. Pretty much the polar opposite of the authoritarian, socially conservative Putin.
Only one thing matters to Boris Johnson and that's Boris Johnson. Everything else will be thrown to the wolves sooner or later.
Vladimir Putin won't be very interested in Boris Johnson's views anyway. He's just a useful tool.
I'll put you down as "cautiously optimistic" about Johnson's premiership.
My original point (which you've now made also) was that Corbyn as PM would be a fantastic result for Putin. Maybe I shouldn't post at 5am - it seems I get carried away a bit.
It seems that nostalgia for the Soviet Union isn't limited to certain cliques in the Labour party. Putin isn't a communist except in a psychologically formative sense, he's an enthusiastic and unscrupulous exponents of Russian power & influence in a long tradition that predates and will long outlive the C20th 'experiment'. He would welcome Corbyn for almost exactly the same reasons as he'd welcomes BJ (& Trump, Salvini, Bolsanaro etc), a chaotic and weakened West. The idea that there's some sort of ideological affinity between V.V.Putin and J.B.Corbyn is for the birds.
I quite agree. Corbyn's reluctance to challenge Soviet exertion of power and influence is what makes him attractive to Putin, not his economic views.
Conversely, Johnson's tub-thumping harking back to the glory days of the Empire, and willingness to send troops abroad to defend British interests, is what (in theory) makes him a problem for Putin. Brexit notwithstanding.
Jo Swinson seems to be more bothered about Corbyn than Brexit. To be fair ,I guess it was the same with Brown. Lib dems when push comes to shuff always back up the conservatives. As they do in the city of York council.
It is an inheritance from her East Dunbartonshire battleground. She is going to have to make a huge effort aligning her cannons on the correct foe.
Boris should just disband the ERG. He's riding high at the moment - even elements of the Left are in awe. Do it now, Boris, while you're untouchable!
Jeez the bs coming on this is staggering.
Boris is so far from untouchable that this is risible. He's in the most precarious position of any prime minister in modern history, having irritated both the left and the far right. He has a wafer-thin majority in the Commons courtesy of the DUP who he also annoyed previously and only just over 1/2 of his MPs backed him despite five rounds of voting.
Every false move he makes, and there will be many, will be another nail in his and the tory party's coffin.
If, say, Estonia is invaded by Russia at a time when Britain's Prime Minister is Jeremy Corbyn, do you think Britain would send troops
The Baltic membership of NATO is for deterrence purposes only. If that deterrent fails no NATO member is going to fight the Russian army through the streets of Tallinn no matter who the PM is.
Eh? How does that work as a deterrence then?
Probably not that well in the long term. Do you think the British public and government have the stomach to take hundreds of KIAs every day fighting for fucking Estonia? Because I don't. I was in Basra and the mission there just became don't do anything that might risk casualties and uncomfortable headlines.
Modern democracies fighting wars is an issue unless clear and present case e.g. Falklands.
Mind you, whether we go in or not will be irrelevant as Trump certainly wouldn't and that would be the end of NATO overnight I suspect. Pretty sure NATO wont last his second term.
1) Thatcher government naval cuts tempt Argentina to invade
LOL
Perfectly minding their own business Poles tempt Germany to invade.
A short history of the Falklands War: 1) Thatcher government naval cuts tempt Argentina to invade 2) War 3) Even more Thatcher government naval cuts mean we could not do so again 4) John Nott walks out of interview when pressed on this point by the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation
Clearly it's time for Baker and Francois to bring down the government once again.
The nuclear option would be to defect to the Brexit Party and say the Tories can't be trusted because they're all diehard Remainers. Accuse the Tories of "institutional Europeanism".
Jo Swinson seems to be more bothered about Corbyn than Brexit. To be fair ,I guess it was the same with Brown. Lib dems when push comes to shuff always back up the conservatives. As they do in the city of York council.
Labour and the Lib Dems will probably need each other if they are to get a second referendum. I think there's plenty of common ground policy wise, but admittedly there is clearly some bad blood between them.
If, say, Estonia is invaded by Russia at a time when Britain's Prime Minister is Jeremy Corbyn, do you think Britain would send troops
The Baltic membership of NATO is for deterrence purposes only. If that deterrent fails no NATO member is going to fight the Russian army through the streets of Tallinn no matter who the PM is.
Eh? How does that work as a deterrence then?
Probably not that well in the long term. Do you think the British public and government have the stomach to take hundreds of KIAs every day fighting for fucking Estonia? Because I don't. I was in Basra and the mission there just became don't do anything that might risk casualties and uncomfortable headlines.
I always thought the way it worked was that by risking hundred of casualties in Talinn, we avoid tens of thousands of casualties in Berlin.
Try getting on a soapbox and selling that concept during an election, as the coffins arrive every hour on non-stop news channels.
I guess that's the real problem with politics right now.
I'm going to use an analogy. In the 1980s, the Mexican government got into really serious financial trouble, and the then US Treasury Secretary put in place a system where the US guaranteed Mexican debt. (These were named in his honour, Brady Bonds.)
This led to a huge amount of criticism: why were US taxpayers being put on the hook for the profligacy of Mexican politicians? But it was, of course, the right call. It would have been far more expensive for the US if the Mexican government had gone to the wall. The US recognised that taking on a small amount of risk now, was far cheaper in the long run.
And that's the principle of NATO. We accept that we need to defend places far from home, because stopping an aggressive and expansionary country gets more expensive each time around. Stopping Hitler in the Saarland would have resulted in far fewer deaths, wouldn't it?
Have our horizons become so shrunk, that we risk terrible outcomes to avoid local pain? It's the psychology of the heroin addict, shutting out the real world for now, irrespective of the long term consequences of our actions.
If, say, Estonia is invaded by Russia at a time when Britain's Prime Minister is Jeremy Corbyn, do you think Britain would send troops
The Baltic membership of NATO is for deterrence purposes only. If that deterrent fails no NATO member is going to fight the Russian army through the streets of Tallinn no matter who the PM is.
Eh? How does that work as a deterrence then?
Probably not that well in the long term. Do you think the British public and government have the stomach to take hundreds of KIAs every day fighting for fucking Estonia? Because I don't. I was in Basra and the mission there just became don't do anything that might risk casualties and uncomfortable headlines.
Modern democracies fighting wars is an issue unless clear and present case e.g. Falklands.
Mind you, whether we go in or not will be irrelevant as Trump certainly wouldn't and that would be the end of NATO overnight I suspect. Pretty sure NATO wont last his second term.
1) Thatcher government naval cuts tempt Argentina to invade
LOL
Perfectly minding their own business Poles tempt Germany to invade.
A short history of the Falklands War: 1) Thatcher government naval cuts tempt Argentina to invade 2) War 3) Even more Thatcher government naval cuts mean we could not do so again 4) John Nott walks out of interview when pressed on this point by the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation
If, say, Estonia is invaded by Russia at a time when Britain's Prime Minister is Jeremy Corbyn, do you think Britain would send troops
The Baltic membership of NATO is for deterrence purposes only. If that deterrent fails no NATO member is going to fight the Russian army through the streets of Tallinn no matter who the PM is.
Eh? How does that work as a deterrence then?
Probably not that well in the long term. Do you think the British public and government have the stomach to take hundreds of KIAs every day fighting for fucking Estonia? Because I don't. I was in Basra and the mission there just became don't do anything that might risk casualties and uncomfortable headlines.
I always thought the way it worked was that by risking hundred of casualties in Talinn, we avoid tens of thousands of casualties in Berlin.
Try getting on a soapbox and selling that concept during an election, as the coffins arrive every hour on non-stop news channels.
I guess that's the real problem with politics right now.
I'm going to use an analogy. In the 1980s, the Mexican government got into really serious financial trouble, and the then US Treasury Secretary put in place a system where the US guaranteed Mexican debt. (These were named in his honour, Brady Bonds.)
This led to a huge amount of criticism: why were US taxpayers being put on the hook for the profligacy of Mexican politicians? But it was, of course, the right call. It would have been far more expensive for the US if the Mexican government had gone to the wall. The US recognised that taking on a small amount of risk now, was far cheaper in the long run.
And that's the principle of NATO. We accept that we need to defend places far from home, because stopping an aggressive and expansionary country gets more expensive each time around. Stopping Hitler in the Saarland would have resulted in far fewer deaths, wouldn't it?
Have our horizons become so shrunk, that we risk terrible outcomes to avoid local pain? It's the psychology of the heroin addict, shutting out the real world for now, irrespective of the long term consequences of our actions.
Putin is not going to invade, but if he did, why would a Brexit Britain that just told the Balts and Poles to piss off be interested?
I've got something similar here, not working in Chrome, although Firefox is OK. Been this way for a week or two.
I can still see the embedded tweets in Firefox, though.
These are the errors I'm getting - apparently Chrome is applying a content security policy and thinks it's not allowed to load the iframe from vanilla, but I can't see anything in the headers or the source code that sets that, so I guess it's just a setting that Chrome made up.
Looking at those headers and doing some digging, the policy is not being made up by Chrome. The response from Vanilla that contains the comments has a header which includes the directive "Content-Security-Policy: frame-ancestors 'self' www2.politicalbetting.com *politicalbetting.com". That tells the browser that it should only embed the comments in a page from the same source as the comments (i.e. politicalbetting.vanillacommunity.com) or from any domain ending politicalbetting.com. The www2.politicalbetting.com bit of the directive is actually redundant because that will also match *politicalbetting.com. So it appears that Chrome thinks the main page is not from politicalbetting.com but from some other domain. Strange.
I can't understand much of your conversation with Edmund but I can't access any of the comments on Firefox though everything else seems normal. I'm having to access them on Chrome which is more difficult. Can either of you lend a solution?
For Firefox, enter "about:config" in the address bar (without the quotes) and hit Enter. Click on the button to accept the risk. Scroll down to security.csp.enable and double click on it so that the right hand column reads "false". This makes you less secure so use at your own risk.
Disclaimer: I've not tested it, the reviews are mixed and it makes you less secure, so use at your own risk.
Other options: Use Edge which seems quite happy with the current settings or wait for Vanilla to fix it.
If Vanilla is causing the problems, Vanilla can fix the problems.
I realise we are basket-case politics geeks, but don’t expect us to transmogrify into tech geeks too.
I don't expect people to become tech geeks. I only posted this because Roger asked for a solution. I agree that the right thing is for Vanilla to fix it. The solutions I've suggested should only be regarded as a temporary workaround for anyone who wants a quick fix rather than waiting for Vanilla.
Johnson is a populist and will fight a populist campaign, pitting external end internal enemies against the will of the people and fighting to uphold the latter against the former. The EU and the Irish will be the enemies without. Parliament and Remainers will be the enemies within. The Scots and the majority in Northern Ireland opposed to no deal will fall between the two groups. It will be ugly and divisive. Will it work? I have a terrible fear that it might but I actually don't think it will, because Remainers are no longer complacent like they were in 2016.
If, say, Estonia is invaded by Russia at a time when Britain's Prime Minister is Jeremy Corbyn, do you think Britain would send troops
The Baltic membership of NATO is for deterrence purposes only. If that deterrent fails no NATO member is going to fight the Russian army through the streets of Tallinn no matter who the PM is.
Eh? How does that work as a deterrence then?
Probably not that well in the long term. Do you think the British public and government have the stomach to take hundreds of KIAs every day fighting for fucking Estonia? Because I don't. I was in Basra and the mission there just became don't do anything that might risk casualties and uncomfortable headlines.
I always thought the way it worked was that by risking hundred of casualties in Talinn, we avoid tens of thousands of casualties in Berlin.
Try getting on a soapbox and selling that concept during an election, as the coffins arrive every hour on non-stop news channels.
I guess that's the real problem with politics right now.
I'm going to use an analogy. In the 1980s, the Mexican government got into really serious financial trouble, and the then US Treasury Secretary put in place a system where the US guaranteed Mexican debt. (These were named in his honour, Brady Bonds.)
This led to a huge amount of criticism: why were US taxpayers being put on the hook for the profligacy of Mexican politicians? But it was, of course, the right call. It would have been far more expensive for the US if the Mexican government had gone to the wall. The US recognised that taking on a small amount of risk now, was far cheaper in the long run.
And that's the principle of NATO. We accept that we need to defend places far from home, because stopping an aggressive and expansionary country gets more expensive each time around. Stopping Hitler in the Saarland would have resulted in far fewer deaths, wouldn't it?
Have our horizons become so shrunk, that we risk terrible outcomes to avoid local pain? It's the psychology of the heroin addict, shutting out the real world for now, irrespective of the long term consequences of our actions.
If, say, Estonia is invaded by Russia at a time when Britain's Prime Minister is Jeremy Corbyn, do you think Britain would send troops
The Baltic membership of NATO is for deterrence purposes only. If that deterrent fails no NATO member is going to fight the Russian army through the streets of Tallinn no matter who the PM is.
Eh? How does that work as a deterrence then?
Probably not that well in the long term. Do you think the British public and government have the stomach to take hundreds of KIAs every day fighting for fucking Estonia? Because I don't. I was in Basra and the mission there just became don't do anything that might risk casualties and uncomfortable headlines.
I always thought the way it worked was that by risking hundred of casualties in Talinn, we avoid tens of thousands of casualties in Berlin.
Try getting on a soapbox and selling that concept during an election, as the coffins arrive every hour on non-stop news channels.
I guess that's the real problem with politics right now.
I'm going to use an analogy. In the 1980s, the Mexican government got into really serious financial trouble, and the then US Treasury Secretary put in place a system where the US guaranteed Mexican debt. (These were named in his honour, Brady Bonds.)
This led to a huge amount of criticism: why were US taxpayers being put on the hook for the profligacy of Mexican politicians? But it was, of course, the right call. It would have been far more expensive for the US if the Mexican government had gone to the wall. The US recognised that taking on a small amount of risk now, was far cheaper in the long run.
And that's the principle of NATO. We accept that we need to defend places far from home, because stopping an aggressive and expansionary country gets more expensive each time around. Stopping Hitler in the Saarland would have resulted in far fewer deaths, wouldn't it?
Have our horizons become so shrunk, that we risk terrible outcomes to avoid local pain? It's the psychology of the heroin addict, shutting out the real world for now, irrespective of the long term consequences of our actions.
Putin is not going to invade, but if he did, why would a Brexit Britain that just told the Balts and Poles to piss off be interested?
Boris should just disband the ERG. He's riding high at the moment - even elements of the Left are in awe. Do it now, Boris, while you're untouchable!
How does he achieve that? Even if he was untouchable, which is debatable, the ERG is a group of Conservative MPs. It is not a Conservative Party owned or funded group, nor is it answerable to the government. Boris is not a member of the ERG. So how can he disband it?
Johnson is a populist and will fight a populist campaign, pitting external end internal enemies against the will of the people and fighting to uphold the latter against the former. The EU and the Irish will be the enemies without. Parliament and Remainers will be the enemies within. The Scots and the majority in Northern Ireland opposed to no deal will fall between the two groups. It will be ugly and divisive. Will it work? I have a terrible fear that it might but I actually don't think it will, because Remainers are no longer complacent like they were in 2016.
But Remainers are split across parties.
Greens and LibDems seem to be struggling to create a united campaign, never mind with Jezza.
Huge insult to those people that you think they are only there as tokens. Sajid you think is just tokenism?
Take a look at yourself.
Javid? Certainly not just tokenism. Was Home Sec. Popular. Seems able enough. Will do as he is told. .
Er, no, actually. Not popular. Deeply disliked by civil servants who think he's only interested in himself. Whilst that might be true of many politicians, they think he exudes self-promotion to the detriment of his work.
Huge insult to those people that you think they are only there as tokens. Sajid you think is just tokenism?
Take a look at yourself.
It would be if I just assumed every female or BAME or LGBT or blue collar or disabled person who got a top job got it for mainly that reason.
But I don't. In fact I tend to assume otherwise because most preferment goes the other way.
However one should not be so consumed by Political Correctness as to be scared to identify tokenism where it looks overwhelmingly likely.
Javid? Certainly not just tokenism. Was Home Sec. Popular. Seems able enough. Will do as he is told.
And good optics given Johnson and the party's islamophobia problem to promote the only high profile Muslim in cabinet.
So some appointments of Conservative BAME MPs to high office are tokenism and others aren't. Thank goodness you are able so acutely to distinguish which is which.
If, say, Estonia is invaded by Russia at a time when Britain's Prime Minister is Jeremy Corbyn, do you think Britain would send troops
The Baltic membership of NATO is for deterrence purposes only. If that deterrent fails no NATO member is going to fight the Russian army through the streets of Tallinn no matter who the PM is.
Eh? How does that work as a deterrence then?
Probably not that well in the long term. Do you think the British public and government have the stomach to take hundreds of KIAs every day fighting for fucking Estonia? Because I don't. I was in Basra and the mission there just became don't do anything that might risk casualties and uncomfortable headlines.
Modern democracies fighting wars is an issue unless clear and present case e.g. Falklands.
Mind you, whether we go in or not will be irrelevant as Trump certainly wouldn't and that would be the end of NATO overnight I suspect. Pretty sure NATO wont last his second term.
1) Thatcher government naval cuts tempt Argentina to invade
LOL
Perfectly minding their own business Poles tempt Germany to invade.
A short history of the Falklands War: 1) Thatcher government naval cuts tempt Argentina to invade 2) War 3) Even more Thatcher government naval cuts mean we could not do so again 4) John Nott walks out of interview when pressed on this point by the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation
1) Mrs Thatcher cut the navy. 2) Argentina (as had been predicted and as the government had been warned) invaded. 3) War. 4) Mrs Thatcher made yet more cuts to the navy so the armada could not be re-assembled. 5) John Nott walked out when challenged on this by Robin Day.
For all your sophistry, you do not seem to be challenging the facts of the cuts. It is Conservative governments that have decimated the armed forces. Putin would vote Tory.
Johnson is a populist and will fight a populist campaign, pitting external end internal enemies against the will of the people and fighting to uphold the latter against the former. The EU and the Irish will be the enemies without. Parliament and Remainers will be the enemies within. The Scots and the majority in Northern Ireland opposed to no deal will fall between the two groups. It will be ugly and divisive. Will it work? I have a terrible fear that it might but I actually don't think it will, because Remainers are no longer complacent like they were in 2016.
But Remainers are split across parties.
Greens and LibDems seem to be struggling to create a united campaign, never mind with Jezza.
That is my chief source of fear. But I think there will be unprecedented tactical voting as long as Labour pivots properly to Remain (which I think they will, and essentially have already).
Jo Swinson seems to be more bothered about Corbyn than Brexit. To be fair ,I guess it was the same with Brown. Lib dems when push comes to snuff always back up the conservatives. As they do in the city of York council.
Quite simply untrue.
She used her acceptance speech to make an unequivocal statement about Brexit, attacking both the 'old parties.'
To the right on some things - economic competence matters to me. But to the left on others - I have become much more socially liberal, much greener - and I dislike the move to a 19th century sort of economy (insecurity at the bottom, tremendous wealth at the top and a disdain for people outside one’s immediate circle). I am very keen on freedom of speech / civil rights, trial by jury, innocent until proven guilty etc: traditional liberal causes, which do not seem to me to be much supported by the left. Loathe ID cards. And I do believe in communities, the nation, society. I have a healthy scepticism of the state, any sort of power really. The state should be the servant of the people not its master. No idea where that puts me on the spectrum. But feel quite disgusted by both main parties currently.
Anyway having successfully managed to sell something to an ex-investment banker (even one from Lehmans!) it’s time for bed. 31degrees here at midnight!
New Labour were very authoritarian but it was the left that opposed many of Blairs anti civil liberty measures, it is where many of Corbyn's much criticised rebellions come from.
It is one thing that attracted me to the Labour left, less of an authoritarian view and more respect for civil liberties.
As an outsider it would appear that the Corbyn gang are against anyone else being authoritarian, but are very happy to be authoritarian themselves, as shown by their handling of disagreements and complaints within the party. In other words your typical hypocritical bullies.
If he was authoritarian in internal party affairs we would have far less problems and he would have actually got rid of his enemies, rather than let them run amok. Whilst I am attracted by the anti authoritarian streak it can go too far in terms of party management.
Ok perhaps, just perhaps, if you are going to try and welcome anti-authoritarian ideology you might start by not describing people in your party you disagree with as enemies.
I can understand not liking the term traitor for example and I would rather papers didn't brand people traitors on their front pages but someone using the term x's enemy to denote a politicians opponents in a non ranty post seems fairly bland. Talking of Boris enemies for example wouldn't be my way of saying those people are bad, just that those people oppose Boris and want to work against him / stop him.
“Opponents” is the word. Not “enemies” or “traitors”.
Er, no, actually. Not popular. Deeply disliked by civil servants who think he's only interested in himself. Whilst that might be true of many politicians, they think he exudes self-promotion to the detriment of his work.
That rings true. Trouble is, Matt Hancock has cornered that so all others look full of integrity by comparison.
But I meant popular in the party. Which I understand he is.
Carole Cadwalladr gets a lot of abuse, even from some of the less usual suspects on here.
It’s a pretty poor show in my opinion.
She is wrong, too often, about the small details, but right about the big thing: that Cambridge Analytica weaponised illegally and unethically obtained social media data, quite possibly with the full connivance of Facebook, to support the Brexit and Trump campaigns.
Basically, the hyper-targeting of “fake news”.
Only yesterday it emerged that Facebook actually sold CA such data whereas previously they had claimed that CA were using it illicitly.
Johnson is a populist and will fight a populist campaign, pitting external end internal enemies against the will of the people and fighting to uphold the latter against the former. The EU and the Irish will be the enemies without. Parliament and Remainers will be the enemies within. The Scots and the majority in Northern Ireland opposed to no deal will fall between the two groups. It will be ugly and divisive. Will it work? I have a terrible fear that it might but I actually don't think it will, because Remainers are no longer complacent like they were in 2016.
But Remainers are split across parties.
Greens and LibDems seem to be struggling to create a united campaign, never mind with Jezza.
That is my chief source of fear. But I think there will be unprecedented tactical voting as long as Labour pivots properly to Remain (which I think they will, and essentially have already).
Boris's extra 20,000 bobbies on the beat looks to be a masterstroke. Even Labour are welcoming the move, albeit through gritted teeth. Yes, I know it was Theresa who cut them, but everyone now agrees she was just some strange old mad lady who should never have been in any position of authority to begin with. This is Year Zero.
1) Mrs Thatcher cut the navy. 2) Argentina (as had been predicted and as the government had been warned) invaded. 3) War. 4) Mrs Thatcher made yet more cuts to the navy so the armada could not be re-assembled. 5) John Nott walked out when challenged on this by Robin Day.
For all your sophistry, you do not seem to be challenging the facts of the cuts. It is Conservative governments that have decimated the armed forces. Putin would vote Tory.
Your point is that by cutting policemen it is all of a sudden the victims' fault that they are mugged/shot/burgled. And by cutting the Royal Navy, it was Thatcher's fault that Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands.
That would be quite funny if it wasn't so worrying.
If, say, Estonia is invaded by Russia at a time when Britain's Prime Minister is Jeremy Corbyn, do you think Britain would send troops
The Baltic membership of NATO is for deterrence purposes only. If that deterrent fails no NATO member is going to fight the Russian army through the streets of Tallinn no matter who the PM is.
Eh? How does that work as a deterrence then?
Probably not that well in the long term. Do you think the British public and government have the stomach to take hundreds of KIAs every day fighting for fucking Estonia? Because I don't. I was in Basra and the mission there just became don't do anything that might risk casualties and uncomfortable headlines.
I always thought the way it worked was that by risking hundred of casualties in Talinn, we avoid tens of thousands of casualties in Berlin.
Try getting on a soapbox and selling that concept during an election, as the coffins arrive every hour on non-stop news channels.
That kind of total war might harden public opinion in favour of the war, rather than turn it against.
It's not as if the UK would be fighting on its own in Estonia, in any case.
My problem with Corbyn was well-established long before he became leader and has little to do with his policies. It has to do with his character, his association with anti-semites and men of violence, his default instincts which seem to be to be illiberal and not democratic and the particular strand of the hard left he comes from and has spent all his political life in.
quite convincing. I'm buying. Yes - bought.
But I bet you have moved to the right since you voted for Kinnock - i.e. you are comparing apples (you 30 years ago) to pears (you today). As it were.
To the right on some things - economic competence matters to me. But to the left on others - I have become much more socially liberal, much greener - and I dislike the move to a 19th century sort of economy (insecurity at the bottom, tremendous wealth at the top and a disdain for people outside one’s immediate circle). I am very keen on freedom of speech / civil rights, trial by jury, innocent until proven guilty etc: traditional liberal causes, which do not seem to me to be much supported by the left. Loathe ID cards. And I do believe in communities, the nation, society. I have a healthy scepticism of the state, any sort of power really. The state should be the servant of the people not its master. No idea where that puts me on the spectrum. But feel quite disgusted by both main parties currently.
Anyway having successfully managed to sell something to an ex-investment banker (even one from Lehmans!) it’s time for bed. 31degrees here at midnight!
New Labour were very authoritarian but it was the left that opposed many of Blairs anti civil liberty measures, it is where many of Corbyn's much criticised rebellions come from.
It is one thing that attracted me to the Labour left, less of an authoritarian view and more respect for civil liberties.
A fair point. Abbott made a very good speech against 90 day detention, for which I will give her credit. Blair’s descent into authoritarianism and a sort of weary dismissal of civil liberties was a low point in his administration. For me anyway. Far more so than Iraq.
But there has not been much follow through by Corbyn, despite his earlier rebellions. It does raise for me the question of whether it was more about rebelling against Blair than about a deeply held attachment to those principles. For instance, see the failure to set up a robust independent investigative and disciplinary process within Labour, which is not that hard if you keep those principles at the forefront of your mind. And the Far Left’s record on free speech has been abysmal. To me that is the most important, because freedom to think and speak freely is the fons and origo of all other freedoms.
If, say, Estonia is invaded by Russia at a time when Britain's Prime Minister is Jeremy Corbyn, do you think Britain would send troops
The Baltic membership of NATO is for deterrence purposes only. If that deterrent fails no NATO member is going to fight the Russian army through the streets of Tallinn no matter who the PM is.
Eh? How does that work as a deterrence then?
Probably not that well in the long term. Do you think the British public and government have the stomach to take hundreds of KIAs every day fighting for fucking Estonia? Because I don't. I was in Basra and the mission there just became don't do anything that might risk casualties and uncomfortable headlines.
I always thought the way it worked was that by risking hundred of casualties in Talinn, we avoid tens of thousands of casualties in Berlin.
Try getting on a soapbox and selling that concept during an election, as the coffins arrive every hour on non-stop news channels.
I guess that's the real problem with politics right now.
I'm going to use an analogy. In the 1980s, the Mexican government got into really serious financial trouble, and the then US Treasury Secretary put in place a system where the US guaranteed Mexican debt. (These were named in his honour, Brady Bonds.)
This led to a huge amount of criticism: why were US taxpayers being put on the hook for the profligacy of Mexican politicians? But it was, of course, the right call. It would have been far more expensive for the US if the Mexican government had gone to the wall. The US recognised that taking on a small amount of risk now, was far cheaper in the long run.
And that's the principle of NATO. We accept that we need to defend places far from home, because stopping an aggressive and expansionary country gets more expensive each time around. Stopping Hitler in the Saarland would have resulted in far fewer deaths, wouldn't it?
Have our horizons become so shrunk, that we risk terrible outcomes to avoid local pain? It's the psychology of the heroin addict, shutting out the real world for now, irrespective of the long term consequences of our actions.
Similar to Osborne’s bailout of RoI.
And I thought it was out of the goodness of the collective Brit heart. That's certainly the impression one gets from the wilder shores of Brexitania and their cries of 'ungrateful Paddys' (or Murphys as our new PM would prefer to call them).
So some appointments of Conservative BAME MPs to high office are tokenism and others aren't. Thank goodness you are able so acutely to distinguish which is which.
☺
Well I am notoriously objective.
But I will admit it was the Patel bomb that triggered me here.
And to offer something less churlish - no ifs no buts the simple uncaveated fact that a Conservative cabinet has strong asian representation is a Good Thing.
Johnson is a populist and will fight a populist campaign, pitting external end internal enemies against the will of the people and fighting to uphold the latter against the former. The EU and the Irish will be the enemies without. Parliament and Remainers will be the enemies within. The Scots and the majority in Northern Ireland opposed to no deal will fall between the two groups. It will be ugly and divisive. Will it work? I have a terrible fear that it might but I actually don't think it will, because Remainers are no longer complacent like they were in 2016.
But Remainers are split across parties.
Greens and LibDems seem to be struggling to create a united campaign, never mind with Jezza.
That is my chief source of fear. But I think there will be unprecedented tactical voting as long as Labour pivots properly to Remain (which I think they will, and essentially have already).
I doubt it. Seamus and Len wont have it.
Maybe. I am not sure about Len, I think his position is more nuanced. McDonnell and other MPs in the inner circle are strongly for Remain now. I think Seumas can be overruled. But who knows. I know it is dangerous to view any election as a rerun of the last one, but I think the lesson of 2017 was that there is a majority opposed to no deal or hard Brexit that will probably find a way of making itself heard.
So some appointments of Conservative BAME MPs to high office are tokenism and others aren't. Thank goodness you are able so acutely to distinguish which is which.
☺
Well I am notoriously objective.
But I will admit it was the Patel bomb that triggered me here.
And to offer something less churlish - no ifs no buts the simple uncaveated fact that a Conservative cabinet has strong asian representation is a Good Thing.
The appointment of Patel would rightly bring out Bodhidharma in a frothing rage.
So some appointments of Conservative BAME MPs to high office are tokenism and others aren't. Thank goodness you are able so acutely to distinguish which is which.
☺
Well I am notoriously objective.
But I will admit it was the Patel bomb that triggered me here.
And to offer something less churlish - no ifs no buts the simple uncaveated fact that a Conservative cabinet has strong asian representation is a Good Thing.
In yet more tokenism to knock back accusations of May-era prejudice against the old school tie, Boris has five Etonians in the government.
Stodge: “Parties in Government have a duty to the whole country not just those who voted for them or for a particular policy.”
Very old-fashioned. Quaint even.
By that criterion, out of the five governments in these islands, only the ones in Dublin and Edinburgh are fulfilling their duty.
You may well be right but that's how I see it, my friend. We can't have a Government in Westminster whose sole concerns are those who voted for one option in a referendum over three years ago. It sounds absurd just writing it.
The world has moved on yet the UK seems as always stuck in the ruts of its own history.
I agree with you and have said so in thread headers too. It is a shame that such basic things need to be repeated.
So some appointments of Conservative BAME MPs to high office are tokenism and others aren't. Thank goodness you are able so acutely to distinguish which is which.
☺
Well I am notoriously objective.
But I will admit it was the Patel bomb that triggered me here.
And to offer something less churlish - no ifs no buts the simple uncaveated fact that a Conservative cabinet has strong asian representation is a Good Thing.
The appointment of Patel would rightly bring out Bodhidharma in a frothing rage.
It ought to bring everyone out in a frothing rage.
If, say, Estonia is invaded by Russia at a time when Britain's Prime Minister is Jeremy Corbyn, do you think Britain would send troops
The Baltic membership of NATO is for deterrence purposes only. If that deterrent fails no NATO member is going to fight the Russian army through the streets of Tallinn no matter who the PM is.
Eh? How does that work as a deterrence then?
Probably not that well in the long term. Do you think the British public and government have the stomach to take hundreds of KIAs every day fighting for fucking Estonia? Because I don't. I was in Basra and the mission there just became don't do anything that might risk casualties and uncomfortable headlines.
I always thought the way it worked was that by risking hundred of casualties in Talinn, we avoid tens of thousands of casualties in Berlin.
Try getting on a soapbox and selling that concept during an election, as the coffins arrive every hour on non-stop news channels.
I guess that's the real problem with politics right now.
I'm going to use an analogy. In the 1980s, the Mexican government got into really serious financial trouble, and the then US Treasury Secretary put in place a system where the US guaranteed Mexican debt. (These were named in his honour, Brady Bonds.)
This led to a huge amount of criticism: why were US taxpayers being put on the hook for the profligacy of Mexican politicians? But it was, of course, the right call. It would have been far more expensive for the US if the Mexican government had gone to the wall. The US recognised that taking on a small amount of risk now, was far cheaper in the long run.
And that's the principle of NATO. We accept that we need to defend places far from home, because stopping an aggressive and expansionary country gets more expensive each time around. Stopping Hitler in the Saarland would have resulted in far fewer deaths, wouldn't it?
Have our horizons become so shrunk, that we risk terrible outcomes to avoid local pain? It's the psychology of the heroin addict, shutting out the real world for now, irrespective of the long term consequences of our actions.
Similar to Osborne’s bailout of RoI.
And I thought it was out of the goodness of the collective Brit heart. That's certainly the impression one gets from the wilder shores of Brexitania and their cries of 'ungrateful Paddys' (or Murphys as our new PM would prefer to call them).
Interesting. A Boris-Jezza pact looks to be on the cards. Boris's having no qualms about humiliating the ERG certainly fits in with that.
Whether Boris's plan is the same as Cummings' plan is as yet unclear. As previously suggested, a massive extension of the transition period would allow a halloween Brexit with everyone satisfied or at least able to save face, which is the next best thing in politics as in life.
I can imagine Clare Fox defecting from the RCP side of things. Brendan was virtually having orgasms over Boris's cabinet selection yesterday.
Bet Widdecombe is feeling like a right idiot this week.
I can remember Boris and Widdy appearing on Question Time (or some such) early on in Boris's political career. She literally had her head in her hands as Boris uttered what can only be described as verbal salad - a stream of senseless and unconnected pseudo-sentences - in response to a question on higher education. It was all very odd.
America has been interfering in other states' democracies (and dictatorships) for decades. That is not to exonerate Russia, as many on the winning side seem to want.
I'd like to see some detailed polling about how Boris Johnson is regarded by older women. My anecdotal experience is that even fervent Leavers in that group are not impressed.
So some appointments of Conservative BAME MPs to high office are tokenism and others aren't. Thank goodness you are able so acutely to distinguish which is which.
Javid is a former high flying banker who has previously held a great office of state. Patel is a former tobacco/alcohol lobbyist who recently was fired/resigned from cabinet in disgrace for conducting her own foreign policy and lying to the PM.
I wonder who he thinks Boris is going to negotiate with? AIUI, the EU Team is disbanded. Gone. Exit stage left pursued by a Johnson
People keep saying this "EU team is disbanded" stuff but actually Barnier is still there and he said even yesterday that he remains available for talks with the UK through the summer.
If the talks hit a breakthrough, whether it be with Barnier or Varadkar, it won't take long to fill the formalities to get an amendment made. Though it does look like the EU may decide to see what the next General Election brings instead.
Comments
I am not so sure. And if that is the case (ie Brexit doesn't, ahem, trump everything) then the LDs as a not-Johnson not-Corbyn party must be in with a real shout everywhere.
Odd how Scots tend provide the best F1 coverage (McNish, McKenzie[sp], Coulthard).
As I said it could go either way, we've seen Lib Dem surges before. If the stars align and Corbyn stays on as Labour leader and Johnson leads us into a disastrous No Deal Brexit I can see the Lib Dems reaching a tipping point in which FPTP might actually assist them for once.
The Podsmead ward in Gloucester was the interesting one last night. Previously a Labour/Tory marginal and 67% leave voting. Lib Dems come from nowhere to win with 30%.
"The trio’s reunification sets up the most extraordinary denouement to the Brexit story, like one of those scenes in a rock bio-pic in which the ageing musicians decide to “get the band back together” for one last gig."
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/michael-gove-can-go-from-frenemy-to-tory-hero-psf3sj9z6
I very much doubt they will now. The stuff on 'backstop has to be removed' entirely was the end for EU side, I think.
We are headed to an early election based on 'Back Boris' and 'Back No Deal'. Most important election since the War?
1) Thatcher government naval cuts tempt Argentina to invade
2) War
3) Even more Thatcher government naval cuts mean we could not do so again
4) John Nott walks out of interview when pressed on this point by the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation
As for Scots commentators: Scottish drivers have always hit above their weight in motorsport: there is a long and illustrious line of them that I hope will continue into the future. But Murray Walker, who will always be the best motorsports commentator, was English.
I appreciate this must be bloody frustrating Stuart but it cannot just be a Vanilla problem. I can see and use PB.com and the (horrible) vanillacommunity version fine with Safari on my Mac, Macbook, iPad and iPhone, so PB definitely can and does work with Safari.
Happy to compare Safari settings if that would help.
But there's no doubt that money / eton / oxford breeds a particular brand of self regard and confidence that together with connections forged puts a very loaded dice in your gilded palm.
This is why kids get sent to top public schools. That's what the parents get for their money. It's expensive but it's worth it. No, let's be more precise - it's worth it because it's expensive.
Mr Dancer: would you not consider Jim Clark one of the "greats" ?
Perfectly minding their own business Poles tempt Germany to invade.
Has the public changed?
Traitors all.
I'm going to use an analogy. In the 1980s, the Mexican government got into really serious financial trouble, and the then US Treasury Secretary put in place a system where the US guaranteed Mexican debt. (These were named in his honour, Brady Bonds.)
This led to a huge amount of criticism: why were US taxpayers being put on the hook for the profligacy of Mexican politicians? But it was, of course, the right call. It would have been far more expensive for the US if the Mexican government had gone to the wall. The US recognised that taking on a small amount of risk now, was far cheaper in the long run.
And that's the principle of NATO. We accept that we need to defend places far from home, because stopping an aggressive and expansionary country gets more expensive each time around. Stopping Hitler in the Saarland would have resulted in far fewer deaths, wouldn't it?
Have our horizons become so shrunk, that we risk terrible outcomes to avoid local pain? It's the psychology of the heroin addict, shutting out the real world for now, irrespective of the long term consequences of our actions.
I think there's enough evidence from the BXP and LD performances in the Euro-elections that clarity on Brexit one way or the other *is* quite a driving force in voter choice. That may not last forever.. but for the next six months it's a tricky time for splinters-in-the-bum parties (I'm looking at you, Labour).
They'll probably decide that No Deal is unacceptable as well, seeing as Calais is not returned to the English.
To be fair ,I guess it was the same with Brown.
Lib dems when push comes to shuff always back up the conservatives.
As they do in the city of York council.
So, a deal on Northern Labour leave seats with BXP looks tempting then for Johnson?
1. Steve Baker
2. Graham Brady
She used her acceptance speech to make an unequivocal statement about Brexit, attacking both the 'old parties.'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0obz_l1XvGM
Sorry that facts get in the way of your position.
Conversely, Johnson's tub-thumping harking back to the glory days of the Empire, and willingness to send troops abroad to defend British interests, is what (in theory) makes him a problem for Putin. Brexit notwithstanding.
Boris is so far from untouchable that this is risible. He's in the most precarious position of any prime minister in modern history, having irritated both the left and the far right. He has a wafer-thin majority in the Commons courtesy of the DUP who he also annoyed previously and only just over 1/2 of his MPs backed him despite five rounds of voting.
Every false move he makes, and there will be many, will be another nail in his and the tory party's coffin.
1) Thatcher government naval cuts tempt Argentina to invade
2) War
3) Even more Thatcher government naval cuts mean we could not do so again
4) John Nott walks out of interview when pressed on this point by the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation
Re point 1, see for instance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Endurance_(1967)
Sky said this morning that word is coming out that Dominic Cummings does not want no deal and no doubt the 'spartans' are beginning to panic
But I don't. In fact I tend to assume otherwise because most preferment goes the other way.
However one should not be so consumed by Political Correctness as to be scared to identify tokenism where it looks overwhelmingly likely.
Javid? Certainly not just tokenism. Was Home Sec. Popular. Seems able enough. Will do as he is told.
And good optics given Johnson and the party's islamophobia problem to promote the only high profile Muslim in cabinet.
Greens and LibDems seem to be struggling to create a united campaign, never mind with Jezza.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/kit-malthouse-says-plan-to-hire-police-is-at-risk-from-lack-of-lockers-6dsnplnjn
1) Mrs Thatcher cut the navy.
2) Argentina (as had been predicted and as the government had been warned) invaded.
3) War.
4) Mrs Thatcher made yet more cuts to the navy so the armada could not be re-assembled.
5) John Nott walked out when challenged on this by Robin Day.
For all your sophistry, you do not seem to be challenging the facts of the cuts. It is Conservative governments that have decimated the armed forces. Putin would vote Tory.
I watched her on politics live, discussing with Clive Lewis MP.
You should watch it.
https://quillette.com/2019/07/25/the-many-lies-of-carl-beech/
But I meant popular in the party. Which I understand he is.
That would be quite funny if it wasn't so worrying.
It's not as if the UK would be fighting on its own in Estonia, in any case.
A fair point. Abbott made a very good speech against 90 day detention, for which I will give her credit. Blair’s descent into authoritarianism and a sort of weary dismissal of civil liberties was a low point in his administration. For me anyway. Far more so than Iraq.
But there has not been much follow through by Corbyn, despite his earlier rebellions. It does raise for me the question of whether it was more about rebelling against Blair than about a deeply held attachment to those principles. For instance, see the failure to set up a robust independent investigative and disciplinary process within Labour, which is not that hard if you keep those principles at the forefront of your mind. And the Far Left’s record on free speech has been abysmal. To me that is the most important, because freedom to think and speak freely is the fons and origo of all other freedoms.
Well I am notoriously objective.
But I will admit it was the Patel bomb that triggered me here.
And to offer something less churlish - no ifs no buts the simple uncaveated fact that a Conservative cabinet has strong asian representation is a Good Thing.
Asian? Who cares?
Patel is a former tobacco/alcohol lobbyist who recently was fired/resigned from cabinet in disgrace for conducting her own foreign policy and lying to the PM.
If the talks hit a breakthrough, whether it be with Barnier or Varadkar, it won't take long to fill the formalities to get an amendment made. Though it does look like the EU may decide to see what the next General Election brings instead.