Whilst its fascinating to see @HYUFD waxing lyrical about the joys of free trade and EFTA his wing of his party have delusionally told us that EFTA/EEA and EU are the same thing. So we can't possibly be EEA members as that makes us a "vassal state".
It will be entertaining to watch the about face as the realities of the giant shit sandwich they are now handing to leave supporters are understood. You see that EFTA - that one we demonised. Thats a really good outcome for us that it. And having to accept rules made by the EU that EFTA have no say in is absolutely not us being rule takers, and is definitely better than making those rules as we used to do.
I mean yes absolutely and I appreciate you have recanted but between you and @HYUFD, only one of you had the foresight at the time to realise what a shitshow this would be and one didn't.
You are correct in that if I recall Rochdale voted Leave while I voted Remain, now I am a democrat and accepted the result but on polling day 2016 it was me who voted Remain in the Referendum, it was Rochdale who voted Leave so I am not going to take lectures from him about being responsible for all the consequences of Brexit
*giggles*. I voted to leave the EU. As I keep pointing out the EEA is not the EU. As you keep pointing out "naah I don't care about anything that isn't my perceived interests of the Conservative Party and if that brings millions to ruin they voted for it".
Leaving the EU is not our problem. Leaving the EEA and CU are our problems. We could have delivered the referendum, rejoined EFTA and by now be a sizeable non-EU player in the EEA forcing them to open up trade. Instead, narrow minded partisan fools like your good self have literally cheered on this fiasco. "Its all about stopping migration". So stop migration then - as we always could. Under the existing EU/EEA rules. No job, no right to remain.
Of course had Blair imposed transition controls on free movement from the new accession countries for 7 years from 2007 as Germany did for instance much of the resentment over uncontrolled immigration would never have arrived in the first place
Or if Blair / Cameron heck even Boris had moved our welfare system to something that required contributions prior to payment...
Yes the current system where someone can appear penniless from another country with children, get free healthcare and benefits and go straight to the top of the housing list because they have the greatest need is complete madness.
That's also Daily Mail bollocks and completely untrue.
My missus who worked in the housing department in a small Northern town can confirm first hand it is actually true.
But of course anyone stating facts these days must have got it from the Daily Mail.
Well they aren't facts, so there's that.
EU citizens who come here without a job are not simply entitled to benefits automatically. That's not how it works.
On a separate note, are you suggesting that women with children should not be prioritised for housing? What is the alternative, throwing them out on the street?
Anyway we're out of the EU now. I'm sure the situation will improve. Spoiler: it won't.
The people being housed were not from the EU, some were asylum seekers and some were not.
"On a separate note, are you suggesting that women with children should not be prioritised for housing?"
Not foreign women with children no, it creates endless demand and the locals will get nothing. What's the point of paying into a pot for years and never be able to receive one of the most basic services?
There is no "pot" used to pay benefits. You pay tax which the government spends. NI is just a type of tax.
In some other countries benefits are paid for using an insurance system. That is not so in the UK.
I know that.
My point was that those that have paid tax for years should get priority over housing compared to those that turned up yesterday.
Do you want to live in a town that has mothers and children begging on the street?
Lol sure the only choice is to give them all the government housing rather than stopping them coming here in the first place and deporting those that manage to turn up.
Genuine asylum seekers can not and should not be deported until their cases have been heard. Are you suggested we take no asylum seekers?
Asylum processing centres shouldn't be in the UK - that way deportation would be automatic.
Out of interest, where would you put them @Luckyguy1983 ?
Probably one in India, one in Africa. I'd also put prisons for violent criminals in the same place. That way you can be taking prisoners from the UK, and returning successful asylum applicants back to the UK.
And what if the population of India doesn't want the criminally insane British in their country? I can see that being unpopular.
I can't see why they wouldn't - they have prisons for their own criminals. As for insane, those are put in mental institutions (or should be), not prisons. We are talking about modern prisons and asylum processing centres providing hundreds of good jobs in guarding, administration, catering etc.. If India didn't want those jobs, another country would. For example, Nepal, Pakistan - etc.
@Benpointer@OnlyLivingBoy - to answer your question - yes. Do you think the Governments of those own nations would prefer their populations to rifle through dustbins to eat rather than have good solid jobs?
Put yourself in their position... What happens to the UK asylum seekers who lose their case? Who is responsible for deporting them back to their country of origin?
I think @Cyclefree's idea of placing the asylum centres on the Falklands might have more mileage.
The Bennies would rather join Argentina than submit to that. It's a fucking stupid idea that would be both impractical and incredibly expensive.
I tend to agree. It's a fairly mean spirited idea all round.
No goodies and no baddies. Complicated. Lack of correspondents on the ground for heart rending video. No side to take. Not much UK can do about it. Lack of anyone who knows about it to pontificate their position at length. In short, not suited to rolling news.
And, no-one in the UK cares?
We are very much (all sides of politics here) interested largely in a domestic circle-jerk when it comes to the world and seeing everything through our own prism.
Quite reasonably too.
Its also the same all over the globe. Every country pays more attention to themselves and to countries they can relate to.
Much has been made in the past about how much attention we pay to America, but what often gets over looked is how much attention relatively the Americans pay to us too, compared to other similar sized countries, which makes sense because we share a language and many cultural artifacts.
One of my favourite songs is We Didn't Start The Fire, where Billy Joel sings through the major news stories of his life until then - naturally its very American-centric and has many Soviet references too considering the era it covers, but by my count 8 of the 118 involve news or entertainment coming from Britain.
4 of the people named on that song are still living. Care to name them? Without googling. Would make an interesting dinner party. Edit. 5.
Whilst its fascinating to see @HYUFD waxing lyrical about the joys of free trade and EFTA his wing of his party have delusionally told us that EFTA/EEA and EU are the same thing. So we can't possibly be EEA members as that makes us a "vassal state".
It will be entertaining to watch the about face as the realities of the giant shit sandwich they are now handing to leave supporters are understood. You see that EFTA - that one we demonised. Thats a really good outcome for us that it. And having to accept rules made by the EU that EFTA have no say in is absolutely not us being rule takers, and is definitely better than making those rules as we used to do.
I mean yes absolutely and I appreciate you have recanted but between you and @HYUFD, only one of you had the foresight at the time to realise what a shitshow this would be and one didn't.
You are correct in that if I recall Rochdale voted Leave while I voted Remain, now I am a democrat and accepted the result but on polling day 2016 it was me who voted Remain in the Referendum, it was Rochdale who voted Leave so I am not going to take lectures from him about being responsible for all the consequences of Brexit
*giggles*. I voted to leave the EU. As I keep pointing out the EEA is not the EU. As you keep pointing out "naah I don't care about anything that isn't my perceived interests of the Conservative Party and if that brings millions to ruin they voted for it".
Leaving the EU is not our problem. Leaving the EEA and CU are our problems. We could have delivered the referendum, rejoined EFTA and by now be a sizeable non-EU player in the EEA forcing them to open up trade. Instead, narrow minded partisan fools like your good self have literally cheered on this fiasco. "Its all about stopping migration". So stop migration then - as we always could. Under the existing EU/EEA rules. No job, no right to remain.
Of course had Blair imposed transition controls on free movement from the new accession countries for 7 years from 2007 as Germany did for instance much of the resentment over uncontrolled immigration would never have arrived in the first place
Or if Blair / Cameron heck even Boris had moved our welfare system to something that required contributions prior to payment...
Yes the current system where someone can appear penniless from another country with children, get free healthcare and benefits and go straight to the top of the housing list because they have the greatest need is complete madness.
That's also Daily Mail bollocks and completely untrue.
My missus who worked in the housing department in a small Northern town can confirm first hand it is actually true.
But of course anyone stating facts these days must have got it from the Daily Mail.
Well they aren't facts, so there's that.
EU citizens who come here without a job are not simply entitled to benefits automatically. That's not how it works.
On a separate note, are you suggesting that women with children should not be prioritised for housing? What is the alternative, throwing them out on the street?
Anyway we're out of the EU now. I'm sure the situation will improve. Spoiler: it won't.
The people being housed were not from the EU, some were asylum seekers and some were not.
"On a separate note, are you suggesting that women with children should not be prioritised for housing?"
Not foreign women with children no, it creates endless demand and the locals will get nothing. What's the point of paying into a pot for years and never be able to receive one of the most basic services?
Locals on council estates permanently on benefits having been paying into a "pot" at all. I would suspect if you add up all the taxes etc of working immigrants v local benefit people it would be obvious.
It is not all or nothing though.
We have some free riders born in this country, that is true. We have hard working people born in this country, that is also true.
We have hard working migrants in this country, that is true. We have some free riders migrating into this country, that is also true.
There is no reason we can't do what most of the world does which is allow in hard working migrants while denying benefits and free riding to the minority who want to exploit the system. What is wrong with that?
Just because a minority do the wrong thing is no reason to tarnish the majority who do not. Just because most people do the right thing is no reason not to try to stop the minority who exploit the system.
That's an interesting couplet presentation, Philip. Do you have a tune for it yet?
I tried humming it to the tune of I Vow to Thee My Country, but it doesn’t quite scan...
People haven't accepted that Brexit means the UK being a client of the EU across the areas that agreement covers. This reluctance to accept reality has included Remainers as well as Leavers. Right now the decision is between minimal agreement and no agreement on anything to ensure no client status applies. No-one voted Leave to be controlled. Eventually we will probably agree to quite a lot on EU terms because it's better to have agreement than have no agreement when agreement is possible. That can be seen to be a "close relationship", albeit as a client.
Given the 52% to 48% result was pretty close anyway an EFTA style relationship is probably the likely long term outcome of our relationship with the EU, however that would require a Sunak or Starmer premiership rather than a Boris premiership in all likelihood to get there
I agree. But the EFTA style relationship won't be a comfortable one for a UK (if it still exists) with a well developed sense of self-importance.
Britain is not a superpower like the US, China and increasingly India and should not act like one however it is a medium sized power alongside France, Germany, Japan, Brazil and Russia and still has a role to play as a G7, G20, NATO and UN Security Council member
Britain's superpower status (pre 1950s) derived from the fact it could call upon reflexive loyalty of Canada, NZ, Australia and South Africa, and leverage manpower from India - and to a lesser extent East Africa. This allowed it to play at least a 30-40% partner role with the USA, as opposed to the 10% partner role we play today.
If that existed today, the UK would more than double the weight of its army and navy with the "Dominions". Still not a superpower but comfortably exceeding any other Western power, except the USA. If you added India/Africa on top - with their huge manpower - you'd then have a quasi-superpower, provided you had the logistical and staff capabilities to leverage it.
Without any of that we are just a leading European military with blue-water deployment capability.
Sounds about right but I'd love to see you present that one over a few pints in the pubs and clubs of Leave Nation.
"There's nothing special about us. We're not some massive power these days. That's all gone FFS so stop getting all hoarse and misty-eyed about it. We're just a leading European military with blue-water deployment capability."
You'll need to be buying otherwise there might be fisticuffs.
Your first sentence is redundant and unnecessarily confrontation which may be why you'd be expecting upset. Otherwise its pretty uncontroversial.
But the first sentence is key. The belief that we are a little bit special is at the heart of Brexit and of much of what has gone wrong with our Covid response.
But we are special.
Every country is special it its own way. We are not just some utilitarian cog that is interchangeable.
In the landscape and architectural and cultural sense, every country is special in its own way. And every individual person is special in their own way. But no country's population is in any way special. When you randomly or by nationality aggregate groups of people up to large numbers each group is in essence the same. The false belief that this is not so lies at the root of much misapprehension and mischief, and in extremis of much evil.
That's just not true.
Prove it.
Culturally every country is different. The idea that we are in aggregate essentially the same is preposterous bullshit.
If you think we are in aggregate no different to Americans, or in aggregate no different to Egyptians or in aggregate no different to the Chinese or in aggregate no different to Russans then I would suggest that you broaden your horizons and consider learning about elsewhere.
My post specifically distinguished between the feeling of being culturally and physically different (which is both justified and harmless) and that of being intrinsically better (which is unjustified and toxic). I made this distinction in order to close off the banal and unproductive alley down which you have nevertheless plunged. Only the unwary and those with much time on their hands will follow.
No goodies and no baddies. Complicated. Lack of correspondents on the ground for heart rending video. No side to take. Not much UK can do about it. Lack of anyone who knows about it to pontificate their position at length. In short, not suited to rolling news.
And, no-one in the UK cares?
We are very much (all sides of politics here) interested largely in a domestic circle-jerk when it comes to the world and seeing everything through our own prism.
Quite reasonably too.
Its also the same all over the globe. Every country pays more attention to themselves and to countries they can relate to.
Much has been made in the past about how much attention we pay to America, but what often gets over looked is how much attention relatively the Americans pay to us too, compared to other similar sized countries, which makes sense because we share a language and many cultural artifacts.
One of my favourite songs is We Didn't Start The Fire, where Billy Joel sings through the major news stories of his life until then - naturally its very American-centric and has many Soviet references too considering the era it covers, but by my count 8 of the 118 involve news or entertainment coming from Britain.
4 of the people named on that song are still living. Care to name them? Without googling. Would make an interesting dinner party.
Queen Elizabeth II, Bernie Goetz, the two surviving Beatles?
Simple, criticism of Turkey (Azerbaijan would not start a war if not overtly supported by Erdogan) is heavily regulated by the mainstream media. How many times have you heard them wail about Yemen or the Palestinians etc, but not the effective genocide Turks are prosecuting against the Kurds? Or in fact anywhere, Turkey's aggression against Greece was also barely touched.
Whilst its fascinating to see @HYUFD waxing lyrical about the joys of free trade and EFTA his wing of his party have delusionally told us that EFTA/EEA and EU are the same thing. So we can't possibly be EEA members as that makes us a "vassal state".
It will be entertaining to watch the about face as the realities of the giant shit sandwich they are now handing to leave supporters are understood. You see that EFTA - that one we demonised. Thats a really good outcome for us that it. And having to accept rules made by the EU that EFTA have no say in is absolutely not us being rule takers, and is definitely better than making those rules as we used to do.
I mean yes absolutely and I appreciate you have recanted but between you and @HYUFD, only one of you had the foresight at the time to realise what a shitshow this would be and one didn't.
You are correct in that if I recall Rochdale voted Leave while I voted Remain, now I am a democrat and accepted the result but on polling day 2016 it was me who voted Remain in the Referendum, it was Rochdale who voted Leave so I am not going to take lectures from him about being responsible for all the consequences of Brexit
*giggles*. I voted to leave the EU. As I keep pointing out the EEA is not the EU. As you keep pointing out "naah I don't care about anything that isn't my perceived interests of the Conservative Party and if that brings millions to ruin they voted for it".
Leaving the EU is not our problem. Leaving the EEA and CU are our problems. We could have delivered the referendum, rejoined EFTA and by now be a sizeable non-EU player in the EEA forcing them to open up trade. Instead, narrow minded partisan fools like your good self have literally cheered on this fiasco. "Its all about stopping migration". So stop migration then - as we always could. Under the existing EU/EEA rules. No job, no right to remain.
Of course had Blair imposed transition controls on free movement from the new accession countries for 7 years from 2007 as Germany did for instance much of the resentment over uncontrolled immigration would never have arrived in the first place
Or if Blair / Cameron heck even Boris had moved our welfare system to something that required contributions prior to payment...
Yes the current system where someone can appear penniless from another country with children, get free healthcare and benefits and go straight to the top of the housing list because they have the greatest need is complete madness.
That's also Daily Mail bollocks and completely untrue.
My missus who worked in the housing department in a small Northern town can confirm first hand it is actually true.
But of course anyone stating facts these days must have got it from the Daily Mail.
Well they aren't facts, so there's that.
EU citizens who come here without a job are not simply entitled to benefits automatically. That's not how it works.
On a separate note, are you suggesting that women with children should not be prioritised for housing? What is the alternative, throwing them out on the street?
Anyway we're out of the EU now. I'm sure the situation will improve. Spoiler: it won't.
The people being housed were not from the EU, some were asylum seekers and some were not.
"On a separate note, are you suggesting that women with children should not be prioritised for housing?"
Not foreign women with children no, it creates endless demand and the locals will get nothing. What's the point of paying into a pot for years and never be able to receive one of the most basic services?
There is no "pot" used to pay benefits. You pay tax which the government spends. NI is just a type of tax.
In some other countries benefits are paid for using an insurance system. That is not so in the UK.
I know that.
My point was that those that have paid tax for years should get priority over housing compared to those that turned up yesterday.
Do you want to live in a town that has mothers and children begging on the street?
Lol sure the only choice is to give them all the government housing rather than stopping them coming here in the first place and deporting those that manage to turn up.
Genuine asylum seekers can not and should not be deported until their cases have been heard. Are you suggested we take no asylum seekers?
Asylum processing centres shouldn't be in the UK - that way deportation would be automatic.
Out of interest, where would you put them @Luckyguy1983 ?
Probably one in India, one in Africa. I'd also put prisons for violent criminals in the same place. That way you can be taking prisoners from the UK, and returning successful asylum applicants back to the UK.
And what if the population of India doesn't want the criminally insane British in their country? I can see that being unpopular.
I can't see why they wouldn't - they have prisons for their own criminals. As for insane, those are put in mental institutions (or should be), not prisons. We are talking about modern prisons and asylum processing centres providing hundreds of good jobs in guarding, administration, catering etc.. If India didn't want those jobs, another country would. For example, Nepal, Pakistan - etc.
@Benpointer@OnlyLivingBoy - to answer your question - yes. Do you think the Governments of those own nations would prefer their populations to rifle through dustbins to eat rather than have good solid jobs?
Put yourself in their position... What happens to the UK asylum seekers who lose their case? Who is responsible for deporting them back to their country of origin?
I think @Cyclefree's idea of placing the asylum centres on the Falklands might have more mileage.
I think putting them in the Falklands would be rather cruel - how is a genuine asylum seeker to get to a remote Island in the South Atlantic without severe danger to life and limb? It is dinghies in the channel on speed. The idea is to put them in places where genuine asylum seekers can reach them easily.
Surely where asylum seekers are processed, and how they get to the UK are two separate issues.
It seems that countries are responsible for assessing asylum seekers that arrive on their shores (or in their airports), but where they are processed is entirely at the discretion of the government.
In any case, this all misses the big problem with the UK system.
Thanks to large cuts to budget in the last seven or eight years (and, frankly, not helped by Brexit diverting attention and spending) we take more than five years on average to judge asylum cases. This means that (a) we spend a lot of money on people sitting around doing nothing, and (b) it's very easy for those asylum seekers who see they are likely to lose to disappear into the 'informal' economy.
It would seem that spending a bit more money on the assessment process would (a) speed this up, (b) reduce the number of people disappearing, and (c) discourage those with tenuous asylum claims. All of which would, in the medium term, probably save money.
I suspect the Trumpian tax revelations will do no harm at all to his existing base. Many Americans seem to resent paying even 1¢ in tax. The more rabid right-wingers, Qanon brigade, etc, etc, will probably admire a man who foxed the system to the point he managed to pay no tax at all.
With that voter base, it probably a plus
Yes but that voter base is (a) already sewn up and (b) nowhere near enough to win. The question is how the independent white voters who swung to Trump in 2016 in sufficient numbers to tip some states his way feel about it.
If I was a public sector worker or a small business owner not rich enough to employ fancy accountants or a middle manager who gets thumped for tax how would I feel about it? Some might take it as evidence of how "clever" he is to play the system but others might be pissed and those are the ones that Biden is going for.
And presumably there are a large number of independent voters who will reflect on how the armed forces, the police etc. are going to be paid for if everyone was as slopey-shouldered as Trump.
They will look after their own law and order. Second Amendment etc. Personal responsibility, citizens' militia...
I do wonder if the US will ever get back on an even keel. I bumped into an American I thought was a sensible bloke and he is voting Trump to " ... bring down the media and their conspiracies". Donald is a good guy (apparently). This is someone who has been out of the USA for a few years. Heaven only knows what it is like over there.
No goodies and no baddies. Complicated. Lack of correspondents on the ground for heart rending video. No side to take. Not much UK can do about it. Lack of anyone who knows about it to pontificate their position at length. In short, not suited to rolling news.
And, no-one in the UK cares?
We are very much (all sides of politics here) interested largely in a domestic circle-jerk when it comes to the world and seeing everything through our own prism.
Quite reasonably too.
Its also the same all over the globe. Every country pays more attention to themselves and to countries they can relate to.
Much has been made in the past about how much attention we pay to America, but what often gets over looked is how much attention relatively the Americans pay to us too, compared to other similar sized countries, which makes sense because we share a language and many cultural artifacts.
One of my favourite songs is We Didn't Start The Fire, where Billy Joel sings through the major news stories of his life until then - naturally its very American-centric and has many Soviet references too considering the era it covers, but by my count 8 of the 118 involve news or entertainment coming from Britain.
4 of the people named on that song are still living. Care to name them? Without googling. Would make an interesting dinner party.
Queen Elizabeth II, Bernie Goetz, the two surviving Beatles?
The Beatles aren't named individually I believe. And I missed Goetz. So that's 2 of the 5. 3 to get..
Mr. B, sorry for the much delayed reply, been trying to catch up with things.
Hard to say what I would've bet on. Bottas does have a good record at Russia, and Hamilton a poor one, but the result turned on the random penalties, and Hamilton achieved the hard part of retaining pole.
People haven't accepted that Brexit means the UK being a client of the EU across the areas that agreement covers. This reluctance to accept reality has included Remainers as well as Leavers. Right now the decision is between minimal agreement and no agreement on anything to ensure no client status applies. No-one voted Leave to be controlled. Eventually we will probably agree to quite a lot on EU terms because it's better to have agreement than have no agreement when agreement is possible. That can be seen to be a "close relationship", albeit as a client.
Given the 52% to 48% result was pretty close anyway an EFTA style relationship is probably the likely long term outcome of our relationship with the EU, however that would require a Sunak or Starmer premiership rather than a Boris premiership in all likelihood to get there
I agree. But the EFTA style relationship won't be a comfortable one for a UK (if it still exists) with a well developed sense of self-importance.
Britain is not a superpower like the US, China and increasingly India and should not act like one however it is a medium sized power alongside France, Germany, Japan, Brazil and Russia and still has a role to play as a G7, G20, NATO and UN Security Council member
Britain's superpower status (pre 1950s) derived from the fact it could call upon reflexive loyalty of Canada, NZ, Australia and South Africa, and leverage manpower from India - and to a lesser extent East Africa. This allowed it to play at least a 30-40% partner role with the USA, as opposed to the 10% partner role we play today.
If that existed today, the UK would more than double the weight of its army and navy with the "Dominions". Still not a superpower but comfortably exceeding any other Western power, except the USA. If you added India/Africa on top - with their huge manpower - you'd then have a quasi-superpower, provided you had the logistical and staff capabilities to leverage it.
Without any of that we are just a leading European military with blue-water deployment capability.
Sounds about right but I'd love to see you present that one over a few pints in the pubs and clubs of Leave Nation.
"There's nothing special about us. We're not some massive power these days. That's all gone FFS so stop getting all hoarse and misty-eyed about it. We're just a leading European military with blue-water deployment capability."
You'll need to be buying otherwise there might be fisticuffs.
Your first sentence is redundant and unnecessarily confrontation which may be why you'd be expecting upset. Otherwise its pretty uncontroversial.
But the first sentence is key. The belief that we are a little bit special is at the heart of Brexit and of much of what has gone wrong with our Covid response.
Everywhere thinks they are a bit special. Sweden, France, Germany, everyone. How they react to feeling a bit special varies but the 'debate' around apparent English exceptionalism is one of the laziest and quite frankly stupidest on the Internet, as seen by how quickly people leap to extreme and usually caricatures of what the other side (each of them) believe.
It frequently results in a rather ridiculous situation where the belief in the level of exceptionalism is itself exceptional.
I regard it is as along the same lines as doddering politicians who bang on about Thatcher, positive and negative, to relive the glory days, and youngsters who ape that as its easier.
By which I mean the things people argue about exist, people with those views exist, but a lot less than suggested and people antibit seem to bang on about it more than the pros.
Well that's right but it's also wrong. Yes, all countries probably do believe they are special but if so they are all mistaken. Not about things like food and landscape. I'm not talking about stuff like that. I'm talking about populations believing they are intrinsically better than other populations. More hard working, say, or intelligent. Or braver. More robust. Friendlier. More tolerant. Whatever. All of that is bollocks. We're all the same. So the question is, are "we" - the English - more susceptible to this toxic sort of exceptionalism than most others. I think we are. The evidence is all around us. Why is this? I don't know. It's hard to measure and it's hard to diagnose. My sense is that it has something to do with Empire - that we quite recently ruled 25% of the globe - and with WW2 when we stood alone and eventually prevailed in the defining event of the 20th century, the event which shaped the modern world.
"alone". Er ... Australia, Canada, India, and less voluntarily Egypt, etc. etc. Not to mention quite a lot of Southern Irish (in the wording of the time), and Poles, Czechoslovaks, etc. But the common Brexiter failure to recognise that is itself revealing.
The media dod this last time and it backfired on them as Boris declared all of his income normally and Ken used a dodgy service company setup to shelter income into corporation tax.
No goodies and no baddies. Complicated. Lack of correspondents on the ground for heart rending video. No side to take. Not much UK can do about it. Lack of anyone who knows about it to pontificate their position at length. In short, not suited to rolling news.
And, no-one in the UK cares?
We are very much (all sides of politics here) interested largely in a domestic circle-jerk when it comes to the world and seeing everything through our own prism.
Quite reasonably too.
Its also the same all over the globe. Every country pays more attention to themselves and to countries they can relate to.
Much has been made in the past about how much attention we pay to America, but what often gets over looked is how much attention relatively the Americans pay to us too, compared to other similar sized countries, which makes sense because we share a language and many cultural artifacts.
One of my favourite songs is We Didn't Start The Fire, where Billy Joel sings through the major news stories of his life until then - naturally its very American-centric and has many Soviet references too considering the era it covers, but by my count 8 of the 118 involve news or entertainment coming from Britain.
4 of the people named on that song are still living. Care to name them? Without googling. Would make an interesting dinner party.
Queen Elizabeth II, Bernie Goetz, the two surviving Beatles?
Whilst its fascinating to see @HYUFD waxing lyrical about the joys of free trade and EFTA his wing of his party have delusionally told us that EFTA/EEA and EU are the same thing. So we can't possibly be EEA members as that makes us a "vassal state".
It will be entertaining to watch the about face as the realities of the giant shit sandwich they are now handing to leave supporters are understood. You see that EFTA - that one we demonised. Thats a really good outcome for us that it. And having to accept rules made by the EU that EFTA have no say in is absolutely not us being rule takers, and is definitely better than making those rules as we used to do.
I mean yes absolutely and I appreciate you have recanted but between you and @HYUFD, only one of you had the foresight at the time to realise what a shitshow this would be and one didn't.
You are correct in that if I recall Rochdale voted Leave while I voted Remain, now I am a democrat and accepted the result but on polling day 2016 it was me who voted Remain in the Referendum, it was Rochdale who voted Leave so I am not going to take lectures from him about being responsible for all the consequences of Brexit
*giggles*. I voted to leave the EU. As I keep pointing out the EEA is not the EU. As you keep pointing out "naah I don't care about anything that isn't my perceived interests of the Conservative Party and if that brings millions to ruin they voted for it".
Leaving the EU is not our problem. Leaving the EEA and CU are our problems. We could have delivered the referendum, rejoined EFTA and by now be a sizeable non-EU player in the EEA forcing them to open up trade. Instead, narrow minded partisan fools like your good self have literally cheered on this fiasco. "Its all about stopping migration". So stop migration then - as we always could. Under the existing EU/EEA rules. No job, no right to remain.
Of course had Blair imposed transition controls on free movement from the new accession countries for 7 years from 2007 as Germany did for instance much of the resentment over uncontrolled immigration would never have arrived in the first place
Or if Blair / Cameron heck even Boris had moved our welfare system to something that required contributions prior to payment...
Yes the current system where someone can appear penniless from another country with children, get free healthcare and benefits and go straight to the top of the housing list because they have the greatest need is complete madness.
That's also Daily Mail bollocks and completely untrue.
My missus who worked in the housing department in a small Northern town can confirm first hand it is actually true.
But of course anyone stating facts these days must have got it from the Daily Mail.
Well they aren't facts, so there's that.
EU citizens who come here without a job are not simply entitled to benefits automatically. That's not how it works.
On a separate note, are you suggesting that women with children should not be prioritised for housing? What is the alternative, throwing them out on the street?
Anyway we're out of the EU now. I'm sure the situation will improve. Spoiler: it won't.
The people being housed were not from the EU, some were asylum seekers and some were not.
"On a separate note, are you suggesting that women with children should not be prioritised for housing?"
Not foreign women with children no, it creates endless demand and the locals will get nothing. What's the point of paying into a pot for years and never be able to receive one of the most basic services?
There is no "pot" used to pay benefits. You pay tax which the government spends. NI is just a type of tax.
In some other countries benefits are paid for using an insurance system. That is not so in the UK.
I know that.
My point was that those that have paid tax for years should get priority over housing compared to those that turned up yesterday.
Do you want to live in a town that has mothers and children begging on the street?
Lol sure the only choice is to give them all the government housing rather than stopping them coming here in the first place and deporting those that manage to turn up.
Genuine asylum seekers can not and should not be deported until their cases have been heard. Are you suggested we take no asylum seekers?
Asylum processing centres shouldn't be in the UK - that way deportation would be automatic.
Out of interest, where would you put them @Luckyguy1983 ?
Probably one in India, one in Africa. I'd also put prisons for violent criminals in the same place. That way you can be taking prisoners from the UK, and returning successful asylum applicants back to the UK.
And what if the population of India doesn't want the criminally insane British in their country? I can see that being unpopular.
I can't see why they wouldn't - they have prisons for their own criminals. As for insane, those are put in mental institutions (or should be), not prisons. We are talking about modern prisons and asylum processing centres providing hundreds of good jobs in guarding, administration, catering etc.. If India didn't want those jobs, another country would. For example, Nepal, Pakistan - etc.
@Benpointer@OnlyLivingBoy - to answer your question - yes. Do you think the Governments of those own nations would prefer their populations to rifle through dustbins to eat rather than have good solid jobs?
Put yourself in their position... What happens to the UK asylum seekers who lose their case? Who is responsible for deporting them back to their country of origin?
I think @Cyclefree's idea of placing the asylum centres on the Falklands might have more mileage.
I think putting them in the Falklands would be rather cruel - how is a genuine asylum seeker to get to a remote Island in the South Atlantic without severe danger to life and limb? It is dinghies in the channel on speed. The idea is to put them in places where genuine asylum seekers can reach them easily.
Surely where asylum seekers are processed, and how they get to the UK are two separate issues.
It seems that countries are responsible for assessing asylum seekers that arrive on their shores (or in their airports), but where they are processed is entirely at the discretion of the government.
In any case, this all misses the big problem with the UK system.
Thanks to large cuts to budget in the last seven or eight years (and, frankly, not helped by Brexit diverting attention and spending) we take more than five years on average to judge asylum cases. This means that (a) we spend a lot of money on people sitting around doing nothing, and (b) it's very easy for those asylum seekers who see they are likely to lose to disappear into the 'informal' economy.
It would seem that spending a bit more money on the assessment process would (a) speed this up, (b) reduce the number of people disappearing, and (c) discourage those with tenuous asylum claims. All of which would, in the medium term, probably save money.
I completely agree on all counts - but having the centres abroad would only help those aims. There would be far fewer to process, because whilst the claim was being processed, the claimants woudn't be living in (and on) the desired country. There would be nobody 'disappearing' because where would they be disappearing to?
No goodies and no baddies. Complicated. Lack of correspondents on the ground for heart rending video. No side to take. Not much UK can do about it. Lack of anyone who knows about it to pontificate their position at length. In short, not suited to rolling news.
And, no-one in the UK cares?
We are very much (all sides of politics here) interested largely in a domestic circle-jerk when it comes to the world and seeing everything through our own prism.
Quite reasonably too.
Its also the same all over the globe. Every country pays more attention to themselves and to countries they can relate to.
Much has been made in the past about how much attention we pay to America, but what often gets over looked is how much attention relatively the Americans pay to us too, compared to other similar sized countries, which makes sense because we share a language and many cultural artifacts.
One of my favourite songs is We Didn't Start The Fire, where Billy Joel sings through the major news stories of his life until then - naturally its very American-centric and has many Soviet references too considering the era it covers, but by my count 8 of the 118 involve news or entertainment coming from Britain.
4 of the people named on that song are still living. Care to name them? Without googling. Would make an interesting dinner party.
Queen Elizabeth II, Bernie Goetz, the two surviving Beatles?
No goodies and no baddies. Complicated. Lack of correspondents on the ground for heart rending video. No side to take. Not much UK can do about it. Lack of anyone who knows about it to pontificate their position at length. In short, not suited to rolling news.
And, no-one in the UK cares?
We are very much (all sides of politics here) interested largely in a domestic circle-jerk when it comes to the world and seeing everything through our own prism.
Quite reasonably too.
Its also the same all over the globe. Every country pays more attention to themselves and to countries they can relate to.
Much has been made in the past about how much attention we pay to America, but what often gets over looked is how much attention relatively the Americans pay to us too, compared to other similar sized countries, which makes sense because we share a language and many cultural artifacts.
One of my favourite songs is We Didn't Start The Fire, where Billy Joel sings through the major news stories of his life until then - naturally its very American-centric and has many Soviet references too considering the era it covers, but by my count 8 of the 118 involve news or entertainment coming from Britain.
4 of the people named on that song are still living. Care to name them? Without googling. Would make an interesting dinner party.
Queen Elizabeth II, Bernie Goetz, the two surviving Beatles?
The Beatles aren't named individually I believe. And I missed Goetz. So that's 2 of the 5. 3 to get..
Fun game. I don't know if Bardot still alive? Or Chubby Checker?
People haven't accepted that Brexit means the UK being a client of the EU across the areas that agreement covers. This reluctance to accept reality has included Remainers as well as Leavers. Right now the decision is between minimal agreement and no agreement on anything to ensure no client status applies. No-one voted Leave to be controlled. Eventually we will probably agree to quite a lot on EU terms because it's better to have agreement than have no agreement when agreement is possible. That can be seen to be a "close relationship", albeit as a client.
Given the 52% to 48% result was pretty close anyway an EFTA style relationship is probably the likely long term outcome of our relationship with the EU, however that would require a Sunak or Starmer premiership rather than a Boris premiership in all likelihood to get there
I agree. But the EFTA style relationship won't be a comfortable one for a UK (if it still exists) with a well developed sense of self-importance.
Britain is not a superpower like the US, China and increasingly India and should not act like one however it is a medium sized power alongside France, Germany, Japan, Brazil and Russia and still has a role to play as a G7, G20, NATO and UN Security Council member
Britain's superpower status (pre 1950s) derived from the fact it could call upon reflexive loyalty of Canada, NZ, Australia and South Africa, and leverage manpower from India - and to a lesser extent East Africa. This allowed it to play at least a 30-40% partner role with the USA, as opposed to the 10% partner role we play today.
If that existed today, the UK would more than double the weight of its army and navy with the "Dominions". Still not a superpower but comfortably exceeding any other Western power, except the USA. If you added India/Africa on top - with their huge manpower - you'd then have a quasi-superpower, provided you had the logistical and staff capabilities to leverage it.
Without any of that we are just a leading European military with blue-water deployment capability.
Sounds about right but I'd love to see you present that one over a few pints in the pubs and clubs of Leave Nation.
"There's nothing special about us. We're not some massive power these days. That's all gone FFS so stop getting all hoarse and misty-eyed about it. We're just a leading European military with blue-water deployment capability."
You'll need to be buying otherwise there might be fisticuffs.
Your first sentence is redundant and unnecessarily confrontation which may be why you'd be expecting upset. Otherwise its pretty uncontroversial.
But the first sentence is key. The belief that we are a little bit special is at the heart of Brexit and of much of what has gone wrong with our Covid response.
Everywhere thinks they are a bit special. Sweden, France, Germany, everyone. How they react to feeling a bit special varies but the 'debate' around apparent English exceptionalism is one of the laziest and quite frankly stupidest on the Internet, as seen by how quickly people leap to extreme and usually caricatures of what the other side (each of them) believe.
It frequently results in a rather ridiculous situation where the belief in the level of exceptionalism is itself exceptional.
I regard it is as along the same lines as doddering politicians who bang on about Thatcher, positive and negative, to relive the glory days, and youngsters who ape that as its easier.
By which I mean the things people argue about exist, people with those views exist, but a lot less than suggested and people antibit seem to bang on about it more than the pros.
Well that's right but it's also wrong. Yes, all countries probably do believe they are special but if so they are all mistaken. Not about things like food and landscape. I'm not talking about stuff like that. I'm talking about populations believing they are intrinsically better than other populations. More hard working, say, or intelligent. Or braver. More robust. Friendlier. More tolerant. Whatever. All of that is bollocks. We're all the same. So the question is, are "we" - the English - more susceptible to this toxic sort of exceptionalism than most others. I think we are. The evidence is all around us. Why is this? I don't know. It's hard to measure and it's hard to diagnose. My sense is that it has something to do with Empire - that we quite recently ruled 25% of the globe - and with WW2 when we stood alone and eventually prevailed in the defining event of the 20th century, the event which shaped the modern world.
"alone". Er ... Australia, Canada, India, and less voluntarily Egypt, etc. etc. Not to mention quite a lot of Southern Irish (in the wording of the time), and Poles, Czechoslovaks, etc. But the common Brexiter failure to recognise that is itself revealing.
But in the popular imagination - and tbf it's not wholly wrong - we did for a time stand alone (ish) in Europe as Germany conquered or enlisted our neighbours.
I'd like to see the videos, but from what they are describing it sounds very hard to deny. It sounds basically the same as what Lutfur Rahman did in Tower Hamlets.
Whilst its fascinating to see @HYUFD waxing lyrical about the joys of free trade and EFTA his wing of his party have delusionally told us that EFTA/EEA and EU are the same thing. So we can't possibly be EEA members as that makes us a "vassal state".
It will be entertaining to watch the about face as the realities of the giant shit sandwich they are now handing to leave supporters are understood. You see that EFTA - that one we demonised. Thats a really good outcome for us that it. And having to accept rules made by the EU that EFTA have no say in is absolutely not us being rule takers, and is definitely better than making those rules as we used to do.
I mean yes absolutely and I appreciate you have recanted but between you and @HYUFD, only one of you had the foresight at the time to realise what a shitshow this would be and one didn't.
You are correct in that if I recall Rochdale voted Leave while I voted Remain, now I am a democrat and accepted the result but on polling day 2016 it was me who voted Remain in the Referendum, it was Rochdale who voted Leave so I am not going to take lectures from him about being responsible for all the consequences of Brexit
*giggles*. I voted to leave the EU. As I keep pointing out the EEA is not the EU. As you keep pointing out "naah I don't care about anything that isn't my perceived interests of the Conservative Party and if that brings millions to ruin they voted for it".
Leaving the EU is not our problem. Leaving the EEA and CU are our problems. We could have delivered the referendum, rejoined EFTA and by now be a sizeable non-EU player in the EEA forcing them to open up trade. Instead, narrow minded partisan fools like your good self have literally cheered on this fiasco. "Its all about stopping migration". So stop migration then - as we always could. Under the existing EU/EEA rules. No job, no right to remain.
Of course had Blair imposed transition controls on free movement from the new accession countries for 7 years from 2007 as Germany did for instance much of the resentment over uncontrolled immigration would never have arrived in the first place
Or if Blair / Cameron heck even Boris had moved our welfare system to something that required contributions prior to payment...
Yes the current system where someone can appear penniless from another country with children, get free healthcare and benefits and go straight to the top of the housing list because they have the greatest need is complete madness.
That's also Daily Mail bollocks and completely untrue.
My missus who worked in the housing department in a small Northern town can confirm first hand it is actually true.
But of course anyone stating facts these days must have got it from the Daily Mail.
Well they aren't facts, so there's that.
EU citizens who come here without a job are not simply entitled to benefits automatically. That's not how it works.
On a separate note, are you suggesting that women with children should not be prioritised for housing? What is the alternative, throwing them out on the street?
Anyway we're out of the EU now. I'm sure the situation will improve. Spoiler: it won't.
The people being housed were not from the EU, some were asylum seekers and some were not.
"On a separate note, are you suggesting that women with children should not be prioritised for housing?"
Not foreign women with children no, it creates endless demand and the locals will get nothing. What's the point of paying into a pot for years and never be able to receive one of the most basic services?
There is no "pot" used to pay benefits. You pay tax which the government spends. NI is just a type of tax.
In some other countries benefits are paid for using an insurance system. That is not so in the UK.
I know that.
My point was that those that have paid tax for years should get priority over housing compared to those that turned up yesterday.
Do you want to live in a town that has mothers and children begging on the street?
Lol sure the only choice is to give them all the government housing rather than stopping them coming here in the first place and deporting those that manage to turn up.
Genuine asylum seekers can not and should not be deported until their cases have been heard. Are you suggested we take no asylum seekers?
Asylum processing centres shouldn't be in the UK - that way deportation would be automatic.
Out of interest, where would you put them @Luckyguy1983 ?
Probably one in India, one in Africa. I'd also put prisons for violent criminals in the same place. That way you can be taking prisoners from the UK, and returning successful asylum applicants back to the UK.
You're presumably assuming those places will accept hosting our penal camps?
Ironic that the country we set up as a penal colony is now intent on setting them up elsewhere.
Well, the history of penal settlement in Australia was that by the 1830's transportation to NSW was no longer much of a punishment. Most convicts were paroled as workers on the dockside in Sydney. The authorities then had to set up harsher settlements in other places. Apart from South Australia, all Australian states started as penal colonies. There was a particularly brutal one for those who offended in Colony at Norfolk Island.
Tasmania (Van Diemans Land) got the bulk, and few free settlers, so is particularly British ethnically. It is a particularly interesting place for genetic research as vast family trees can be drawn going back to the first arrivals.
No goodies and no baddies. Complicated. Lack of correspondents on the ground for heart rending video. No side to take. Not much UK can do about it. Lack of anyone who knows about it to pontificate their position at length. In short, not suited to rolling news.
And, no-one in the UK cares?
We are very much (all sides of politics here) interested largely in a domestic circle-jerk when it comes to the world and seeing everything through our own prism.
Quite reasonably too.
Its also the same all over the globe. Every country pays more attention to themselves and to countries they can relate to.
Much has been made in the past about how much attention we pay to America, but what often gets over looked is how much attention relatively the Americans pay to us too, compared to other similar sized countries, which makes sense because we share a language and many cultural artifacts.
One of my favourite songs is We Didn't Start The Fire, where Billy Joel sings through the major news stories of his life until then - naturally its very American-centric and has many Soviet references too considering the era it covers, but by my count 8 of the 118 involve news or entertainment coming from Britain.
4 of the people named on that song are still living. Care to name them? Without googling. Would make an interesting dinner party.
Queen Elizabeth II, Bernie Goetz, the two surviving Beatles?
The Beatles aren't named individually I believe. And I missed Goetz. So that's 2 of the 5. 3 to get..
Fun game. I don't know if Bardot still alive? Or Chubby Checker?
The media dod this last time and it backfired on them as Boris declared all of his income normally and Ken used a dodgy service company setup to shelter income into corporation tax.
Boris was so lazy he didn't even bother to do as basically every member of the media who does any sideline work and set up a limited company for this income.
No goodies and no baddies. Complicated. Lack of correspondents on the ground for heart rending video. No side to take. Not much UK can do about it. Lack of anyone who knows about it to pontificate their position at length. In short, not suited to rolling news.
And, no-one in the UK cares?
We are very much (all sides of politics here) interested largely in a domestic circle-jerk when it comes to the world and seeing everything through our own prism.
Quite reasonably too.
Its also the same all over the globe. Every country pays more attention to themselves and to countries they can relate to.
Much has been made in the past about how much attention we pay to America, but what often gets over looked is how much attention relatively the Americans pay to us too, compared to other similar sized countries, which makes sense because we share a language and many cultural artifacts.
One of my favourite songs is We Didn't Start The Fire, where Billy Joel sings through the major news stories of his life until then - naturally its very American-centric and has many Soviet references too considering the era it covers, but by my count 8 of the 118 involve news or entertainment coming from Britain.
4 of the people named on that song are still living. Care to name them? Without googling. Would make an interesting dinner party.
Queen Elizabeth II, Bernie Goetz, the two surviving Beatles?
The Beatles aren't named individually I believe. And I missed Goetz. So that's 2 of the 5. 3 to get..
Fun game. I don't know if Bardot still alive? Or Chubby Checker?
Peter Pan never died, did he ?
The boy who never grew up would be a ripe old age now.
No goodies and no baddies. Complicated. Lack of correspondents on the ground for heart rending video. No side to take. Not much UK can do about it. Lack of anyone who knows about it to pontificate their position at length. In short, not suited to rolling news.
And, no-one in the UK cares?
We are very much (all sides of politics here) interested largely in a domestic circle-jerk when it comes to the world and seeing everything through our own prism.
Quite reasonably too.
Its also the same all over the globe. Every country pays more attention to themselves and to countries they can relate to.
Much has been made in the past about how much attention we pay to America, but what often gets over looked is how much attention relatively the Americans pay to us too, compared to other similar sized countries, which makes sense because we share a language and many cultural artifacts.
One of my favourite songs is We Didn't Start The Fire, where Billy Joel sings through the major news stories of his life until then - naturally its very American-centric and has many Soviet references too considering the era it covers, but by my count 8 of the 118 involve news or entertainment coming from Britain.
4 of the people named on that song are still living. Care to name them? Without googling. Would make an interesting dinner party.
Queen Elizabeth II, Bernie Goetz, the two surviving Beatles?
The Beatles aren't named individually I believe. And I missed Goetz. So that's 2 of the 5. 3 to get..
Fun game. I don't know if Bardot still alive? Or Chubby Checker?
You got them! Bob Dylan, Chubby Checker, Bardot, HM Queen and Bernie Goetz (The Subway Vigilante). Imagine they would have some stories. Incidentally everyone named on Madonna's Vogue is dead.
I knew that my "kill the first born male child from every household" satire wasn't that far from the current edge of the Overton window. We get weekly Farage videos where he sails out into the channel and practically demands the navy sink boats full of migrants. We've read above that foreigners should be thrown out of the shitebox nobody wanted to live there asylum seeker housing and be deported.
Surely if people want to be that intolerant of people who don't look and sound like them they should move back to Essicksinnit so we can wall them off like we are Kent.
When did having secure borders and having a sensible immigration policy that benefitted the country turn into hate speech?
Ironically you're the one dripping with hatred of the white working classes as you can see from your comment about Essex and Kent.
Ah give over - I AM white working class. We do not have secure borders. Why? Because the Tories axed money from the Border Force so that they can't even do the basics like check people's covid status coming in. What is sensible about Farage saying tow the boats into French waters? We want to stop the trickle of migration that we have we need to work internationally with our neighbours who have far larger numbers of migrants.
Hate speech, honestly. Yes, I hate small minded bigots who see the foreigners and the poor as beneath them. But "hate speech"? "Send them home" is hate speech, not calling out the racist saying "send them home"
I think both he and Red Ken published their taxes in a mayoral election. Johnson had made no real use of tax dodges, perhaps because he has never paid much attention to money, having always had loads, at least until recently.
No goodies and no baddies. Complicated. Lack of correspondents on the ground for heart rending video. No side to take. Not much UK can do about it. Lack of anyone who knows about it to pontificate their position at length. In short, not suited to rolling news.
And, no-one in the UK cares?
We are very much (all sides of politics here) interested largely in a domestic circle-jerk when it comes to the world and seeing everything through our own prism.
Quite reasonably too.
Its also the same all over the globe. Every country pays more attention to themselves and to countries they can relate to.
Much has been made in the past about how much attention we pay to America, but what often gets over looked is how much attention relatively the Americans pay to us too, compared to other similar sized countries, which makes sense because we share a language and many cultural artifacts.
One of my favourite songs is We Didn't Start The Fire, where Billy Joel sings through the major news stories of his life until then - naturally its very American-centric and has many Soviet references too considering the era it covers, but by my count 8 of the 118 involve news or entertainment coming from Britain.
4 of the people named on that song are still living. Care to name them? Without googling. Would make an interesting dinner party.
Queen Elizabeth II, Bernie Goetz, the two surviving Beatles?
The Beatles aren't named individually I believe. And I missed Goetz. So that's 2 of the 5. 3 to get..
Fun game. I don't know if Bardot still alive? Or Chubby Checker?
Bardot yes, Chubby no I think.
BB still an ardent supporter of the Le Pens I believe.
Edt: CC still with us I see! Got mixed up with Fats Domino.
I knew that my "kill the first born male child from every household" satire wasn't that far from the current edge of the Overton window. We get weekly Farage videos where he sails out into the channel and practically demands the navy sink boats full of migrants. We've read above that foreigners should be thrown out of the shitebox nobody wanted to live there asylum seeker housing and be deported.
Surely if people want to be that intolerant of people who don't look and sound like them they should move back to Essicksinnit so we can wall them off like we are Kent.
When did having secure borders and having a sensible immigration policy that benefitted the country turn into hate speech?
Ironically you're the one dripping with hatred of the white working classes as you can see from your comment about Essex and Kent.
Ah give over - I AM white working class. We do not have secure borders. Why? Because the Tories axed money from the Border Force so that they can't even do the basics like check people's covid status coming in. What is sensible about Farage saying tow the boats into French waters? We want to stop the trickle of migration that we have we need to work internationally with our neighbours who have far larger numbers of migrants.
Hate speech, honestly. Yes, I hate small minded bigots who see the foreigners and the poor as beneath them. But "hate speech"? "Send them home" is hate speech, not calling out the racist saying "send them home"
Not a very liberal Lib Dem. Some things never change.
No goodies and no baddies. Complicated. Lack of correspondents on the ground for heart rending video. No side to take. Not much UK can do about it. Lack of anyone who knows about it to pontificate their position at length. In short, not suited to rolling news.
And, no-one in the UK cares?
We are very much (all sides of politics here) interested largely in a domestic circle-jerk when it comes to the world and seeing everything through our own prism.
Quite reasonably too.
Its also the same all over the globe. Every country pays more attention to themselves and to countries they can relate to.
Much has been made in the past about how much attention we pay to America, but what often gets over looked is how much attention relatively the Americans pay to us too, compared to other similar sized countries, which makes sense because we share a language and many cultural artifacts.
One of my favourite songs is We Didn't Start The Fire, where Billy Joel sings through the major news stories of his life until then - naturally its very American-centric and has many Soviet references too considering the era it covers, but by my count 8 of the 118 involve news or entertainment coming from Britain.
4 of the people named on that song are still living. Care to name them? Without googling. Would make an interesting dinner party.
Queen Elizabeth II, Bernie Goetz, the two surviving Beatles?
The Beatles aren't named individually I believe. And I missed Goetz. So that's 2 of the 5. 3 to get..
Fun game. I don't know if Bardot still alive? Or Chubby Checker?
Bardot yes, Chubby no I think.
BB still an ardent supporter of the Le Pens I believe.
No goodies and no baddies. Complicated. Lack of correspondents on the ground for heart rending video. No side to take. Not much UK can do about it. Lack of anyone who knows about it to pontificate their position at length. In short, not suited to rolling news.
And, no-one in the UK cares?
We are very much (all sides of politics here) interested largely in a domestic circle-jerk when it comes to the world and seeing everything through our own prism.
Quite reasonably too.
Its also the same all over the globe. Every country pays more attention to themselves and to countries they can relate to.
Much has been made in the past about how much attention we pay to America, but what often gets over looked is how much attention relatively the Americans pay to us too, compared to other similar sized countries, which makes sense because we share a language and many cultural artifacts.
One of my favourite songs is We Didn't Start The Fire, where Billy Joel sings through the major news stories of his life until then - naturally its very American-centric and has many Soviet references too considering the era it covers, but by my count 8 of the 118 involve news or entertainment coming from Britain.
4 of the people named on that song are still living. Care to name them? Without googling. Would make an interesting dinner party.
Queen Elizabeth II, Bernie Goetz, the two surviving Beatles?
The Beatles aren't named individually I believe. And I missed Goetz. So that's 2 of the 5. 3 to get..
Fun game. I don't know if Bardot still alive? Or Chubby Checker?
You got them! Bob Dylan, Chubby Checker, Bardot, HM Queen and Bernie Goetz (The Subway Vigilante). Imagine they would have some stories. Incidentally everyone named on Madonna's Vogue is dead.
Would be a very interesting dinner party, though possibly leave out Goetz.
I wasn't sure if Chubby Checker died recently, I recall a singer of that era dying recently but I couldn't recall if it was him or not.
EDIT: It was Little Richard I was thinking about who'd died recently.
People haven't accepted that Brexit means the UK being a client of the EU across the areas that agreement covers. ave agreement than have no agreement when agreement is possible. That can be seen to be a "close relationship", albeit as a client.
Given the 52% to 48% result was pretty close anyway an EFTA style relationship is owever that would require there
I agree. But the EFTA style relationship won't be a comfortable one for a UK (if it still exists) with a well developed sense of self-importance.
Britain is not a superpower like the US, China and increasingly India and member
Britain's superpower status (pre 1950s) derived from the fact it could call upon reflexive loyalty of Canada, NZ, Australia and partner role we play today.
If that existed today, the UK would more than double the weight of its army and navy with the "Dominions". Still not a superpower but comfortably exceeding any other Western power, except the USA. If you added India/Africa on top - with
Without any of that we are just a leading European military with blue-water deployment capability.
Sounds about right but I'd love to see you present that one over a few pints in the pubs and clubs of Leave Nation.
"There's nothing special about us. We're not some massive power
You'll need to be buying otherwise there might be fisticuffs.
Your first sentence is redundant and unnecessarily confrontation which may be why you'd be expecting upset. Otherwise its pretty uncontroversial.
But the first sentence is key. The belief that we are a little bit special is at the heart of Brexit and of much of what has gone wrong with our Covid response.
Everywhere thinks they are a bit special. Sweden, France, Germany, everyone. How they dest on the Internet, as seen by how e.
It frequently results in a rather ridiculous situation where the belief in the level of exceptionalism is itself exceptional.
I regard it is as
By which I mean the things people argue about exist, people with those views exist, but a lot less than suggested and people antibit seem to bang on about it more than the pros.
Well that's right but it's also wrong. Yes, all countries probably do believe they are special but if so they are all mistaken. Not about things like food and landscape. I'm not talking about stuff like that. I'm talking about populations believing they are intrinsically better than other populations. More hard working, say, or intelligent. Or braver. More robust. Friendlier. More tolerant. Whatever. All of that is bollocks. We're all the same. So the question is, are "we" - the English - more susceptible to this toxic sort of exceptionalism than most others. I think we are. The evidence is all around us. Why is this? I don't know. It's hard to measure and it's hard to diagnose. My sense is that it has something to do with Empire - that we quite recently ruled 25% of the globe - and with WW2 when we stood alone and eventually prevailed in the defining event of the 20th century, the event which shaped the modern world.
I agree the question is are we more susceptible and if so why, however the lazy and stupid part is that is not how it is usually framed at all, in fact quite the opposite it is presented as, well, English being exceptional,positively or negatively, as a fact, most often to make a very stupid point which is no point at all.
Arguing it as a question of degree would be more useful a question but is rare
Oh well, she'll just have to wait until 2024 to get the Trump Party endorsement. GOP have lost it totally.
Whatever happens in November we might be looking at Ivanka vs Kamala next cycle.
Pence will likely be the GOP nominee in 2024, early polling has him on 34% to just 3% for Ivanka.
Last time an incumbent president lost after only one term of his party in the Oval Office, Carter in 1980, Carter's VP Mondale was the Democratic nominee against Reagan in 1984.
Plus if the President is re elected and the VP wants to run he normally gets it eg Gore 2000, Bush 41 1988, Humphrey 1968, Nixon 1960 etc
I knew that my "kill the first born male child from every household" satire wasn't that far from the current edge of the Overton window. We get weekly Farage videos where he sails out into the channel and practically demands the navy sink boats full of migrants. We've read above that foreigners should be thrown out of the shitebox nobody wanted to live there asylum seeker housing and be deported.
Surely if people want to be that intolerant of people who don't look and sound like them they should move back to Essicksinnit so we can wall them off like we are Kent.
When did having secure borders and having a sensible immigration policy that benefitted the country turn into hate speech?
Ironically you're the one dripping with hatred of the white working classes as you can see from your comment about Essex and Kent.
Ah give over - I AM white working class. We do not have secure borders. Why? Because the Tories axed money from the Border Force so that they can't even do the basics like check people's covid status coming in. What is sensible about Farage saying tow the boats into French waters? We want to stop the trickle of migration that we have we need to work internationally with our neighbours who have far larger numbers of migrants.
Hate speech, honestly. Yes, I hate small minded bigots who see the foreigners and the poor as beneath them. But "hate speech"? "Send them home" is hate speech, not calling out the racist saying "send them home"
Which white working class area do you live in?
The Tories are as useless at securing the borders as Labour.
Saying you should send home illegal immigrants or having a policy that prevents foreigners coming here who are a net drain on the taxpayer is not hate speech, but I suppose it beats having to think of a logical argument why it is a bad idea.
Hillary "deplorables" Clinton yet again telling it like it is.
As Trump often replied 'wrong".
He paid some. Just not enough, apparently.
For the little people, isn't it, paying full whack.
Given he doesn't have a salaried job, it isn't surprising his income tax is so low. The question should be how much has he paid in total. I suspect it will add up to a fair sum.
On the subject of benefits, I think this winter sadly a lot of people are going to find that benefits are harder to get, more meagre to live on and not a cushy life at all.
Hillary "deplorables" Clinton yet again telling it like it is.
As Trump often replied 'wrong".
He paid some. Just not enough, apparently.
For the little people, isn't it, paying full whack.
Which makes me wonder why left-wingers insist higher taxes for the wealthy are the way forward. The super rich avoid them, even the rather rich have a few tricks up their sleeves if they're sensible, the medium get clobbered, nobody wins.
I think both he and Red Ken published their taxes in a mayoral election. Johnson had made no real use of tax dodges, perhaps because he has never paid much attention to money, having always had loads, at least until recently.
An interesting way of turning a positive point in his favour into a negative.
It might be true and perhaps he's changed his approach, but it seems he couldn't win there. Dodge tax, or its because he's too wealthy to give a crap. Though that doesn't seem to stop most rich people.
Oh well, she'll just have to wait until 2024 to get the Trump Party endorsement. GOP have lost it totally.
Whatever happens in November we might be looking at Ivanka vs Kamala next cycle.
Pence will likely be the GOP nominee in 2024, early polling has him on 34% to just 3% for Ivanka.
Last time an incumbent president lost after only one term of his party in the Oval Office, Carter in 1980, Carter's VP Mondale was the Democratic nominee against Reagan in 1984.
Plus if the President is re elected and the VP wants to run he normally gets it eg Gore 2000, Bush 41 1988, Humphrey 1968, Nixon 1960 etc
On the subject of benefits, I think this winter sadly a lot of people are going to find that benefits are harder to get, more meagre to live on and not a cushy life at all.
... even though HMG has increased the UC standard allowance from £74 to £94 p.w. as a one-off Covid change. Those who are sadly going to be having to call on the benefits system for the first time will no doubt find it tough, but it would have been even tougher pre-Covid.
I think both he and Red Ken published their taxes in a mayoral election. Johnson had made no real use of tax dodges, perhaps because he has never paid much attention to money, having always had loads, at least until recently.
Surely the last time (and possibly only time) a Tory PM published their tax return was David Cameron after his father's firm showed up in the Panama Papers.
Hillary "deplorables" Clinton yet again telling it like it is.
As Trump often replied 'wrong".
He paid some. Just not enough, apparently.
For the little people, isn't it, paying full whack.
Which makes me wonder why left-wingers insist higher taxes for the wealthy are the way forward. The super rich avoid them, even the rather rich have a few tricks up their sleeves if they're sensible, the medium get clobbered, nobody wins.
It's why you end up with wealth taxes that are based on property - it's just about the only thing that can't be denied.
Whilst its fascinating to see @HYUFD waxing lyrical about the joys of free trade and EFTA his wing of his party have delusionally told us that EFTA/EEA and EU are the same thing. So we can't possibly be EEA members as that makes us a "vassal state".
It will be entertaining to watch the about face as the realities of the giant shit sandwich they are now handing to leave supporters are understood. You see that EFTA - that one we demonised. Thats a really good outcome for us that it. And having to accept rules made by the EU that EFTA have no say in is absolutely not us being rule takers, and is definitely better than making those rules as we used to do.
I mean yes absolutely and I appreciate you have recanted but between you and @HYUFD, only one of you had the foresight at the time to realise what a shitshow this would be and one didn't.
You are correct in that if I recall Rochdale voted Leave while I voted Remain, now I am a democrat and accepted the result but on polling day 2016 it was me who voted Remain in the Referendum, it was Rochdale who voted Leave so I am not going to take lectures from him about being responsible for all the consequences of Brexit
*giggles*. I voted to leave the EU. As I keep pointing out the EEA is not the EU. As you keep pointing out "naah I don't care about anything that isn't my perceived interests of the Conservative Party and if that brings millions to ruin they voted for it".
Leaving the EU is not our problem. Leaving the EEA and CU are our problems. We could have delivered the referendum, rejoined EFTA and by now be a sizeable non-EU player in the EEA forcing them to open up trade. Instead, narrow minded partisan fools like your good self have literally cheered on this fiasco. "Its all about stopping migration". So stop migration then - as we always could. Under the existing EU/EEA rules. No job, no right to remain.
Of course had Blair imposed transition controls on free movement from the new accession countries for 7 years from 2007 as Germany did for instance much of the resentment over uncontrolled immigration would never have arrived in the first place
Or if Blair / Cameron heck even Boris had moved our welfare system to something that required contributions prior to payment...
Yes the current system where someone can appear penniless from another country with children, get free healthcare and benefits and go straight to the top of the housing list because they have the greatest need is complete madness.
That's also Daily Mail bollocks and completely untrue.
My missus who worked in the housing department in a small Northern town can confirm first hand it is actually true.
But of course anyone stating facts these days must have got it from the Daily Mail.
Well they aren't facts, so there's that.
EU citizens who come here without a job are not simply entitled to benefits automatically. That's not how it works.
On a separate note, are you suggesting that women with children should not be prioritised for housing? What is the alternative, throwing them out on the street?
Anyway we're out of the EU now. I'm sure the situation will improve. Spoiler: it won't.
The people being housed were not from the EU, some were asylum seekers and some were not.
"On a separate note, are you suggesting that women with children should not be prioritised for housing?"
Not foreign women with children no, it creates endless demand and the locals will get nothing. What's the point of paying into a pot for years and never be able to receive one of the most basic services?
There is no "pot" used to pay benefits. You pay tax which the government spends. NI is just a type of tax.
In some other countries benefits are paid for using an insurance system. That is not so in the UK.
I know that.
My point was that those that have paid tax for years should get priority over housing compared to those that turned up yesterday.
Do you want to live in a town that has mothers and children begging on the street?
Lol sure the only choice is to give them all the government housing rather than stopping them coming here in the first place and deporting those that manage to turn up.
Genuine asylum seekers can not and should not be deported until their cases have been heard. Are you suggested we take no asylum seekers?
Asylum processing centres shouldn't be in the UK - that way deportation would be automatic.
Out of interest, where would you put them @Luckyguy1983 ?
Probably one in India, one in Africa. I'd also put prisons for violent criminals in the same place. That way you can be taking prisoners from the UK, and returning successful asylum applicants back to the UK.
And what if the population of India doesn't want the criminally insane British in their country? I can see that being unpopular.
I can't see why they wouldn't - they have prisons for their own criminals. As for insane, those are put in mental institutions (or should be), not prisons. We are talking about modern prisons and asylum processing centres providing hundreds of good jobs in guarding, administration, catering etc.. If India didn't want those jobs, another country would. For example, Nepal, Pakistan - etc.
@Benpointer@OnlyLivingBoy - to answer your question - yes. Do you think the Governments of those own nations would prefer their populations to rifle through dustbins to eat rather than have good solid jobs?
Put yourself in their position... What happens to the UK asylum seekers who lose their case? Who is responsible for deporting them back to their country of origin?
I think @Cyclefree's idea of placing the asylum centres on the Falklands might have more mileage.
I think putting them in the Falklands would be rather cruel - how is a genuine asylum seeker to get to a remote Island in the South Atlantic without severe danger to life and limb? It is dinghies in the channel on speed. The idea is to put them in places where genuine asylum seekers can reach them easily.
Surely where asylum seekers are processed, and how they get to the UK are two separate issues.
It seems that countries are responsible for assessing asylum seekers that arrive on their shores (or in their airports), but where they are processed is entirely at the discretion of the government.
In any case, this all misses the big problem with the UK system.
Thanks to large cuts to budget in the last seven or eight years (and, frankly, not helped by Brexit diverting attention and spending) we take more than five years on average to judge asylum cases. This means that (a) we spend a lot of money on people sitting around doing nothing, and (b) it's very easy for those asylum seekers who see they are likely to lose to disappear into the 'informal' economy.
It would seem that spending a bit more money on the assessment process would (a) speed this up, (b) reduce the number of people disappearing, and (c) discourage those with tenuous asylum claims. All of which would, in the medium term, probably save money.
I completely agree on all counts - but having the centres abroad would only help those aims. There would be far fewer to process, because whilst the claim was being processed, the claimants woudn't be living in (and on) the desired country. There would be nobody 'disappearing' because where would they be disappearing to?
Would it help speed up the process? Having the claimants physically separate from lawyers, judges and translators would seem to be a negative for efficiency.
I think both he and Red Ken published their taxes in a mayoral election. Johnson had made no real use of tax dodges, perhaps because he has never paid much attention to money, having always had loads, at least until recently.
An interesting way of turning a positive point in his favour into a negative.
It might be true and perhaps he's changed his approach, but it seems he couldn't win there. Dodge tax, or its because he's too wealthy to give a crap. Though that doesn't seem to stop most rich people.
To be fair on Johnson, I don't think he has ever been a materialistic person. The way he dresses, the state of his car, even his row about spilled red wine on the sofa signal someone who really doesn't care about objects. He cares only for instant gratification, with a goldfish like approach to both past and future.
Whilst its fascinating to see @HYUFD waxing lyrical about the joys of free trade and EFTA his wing of his party have delusionally told us that EFTA/EEA and EU are the same thing. So we can't possibly be EEA members as that makes us a "vassal state".
It will be entertaining to watch the about face as the realities of the giant shit sandwich they are now handing to leave supporters are understood. You see that EFTA - that one we demonised. Thats a really good outcome for us that it. And having to accept rules made by the EU that EFTA have no say in is absolutely not us being rule takers, and is definitely better than making those rules as we used to do.
I mean yes absolutely and I appreciate you have recanted but between you and @HYUFD, only one of you had the foresight at the time to realise what a shitshow this would be and one didn't.
You are correct in that if I recall Rochdale voted Leave while I voted Remain, now I am a democrat and accepted the result but on polling day 2016 it was me who voted Remain in the Referendum, it was Rochdale who voted Leave so I am not going to take lectures from him about being responsible for all the consequences of Brexit
*giggles*. I voted to leave the EU. As I keep pointing out the EEA is not the EU. As you keep pointing out "naah I don't care about anything that isn't my perceived interests of the Conservative Party and if that brings millions to ruin they voted for it".
Leaving the EU is not our problem. Leaving the EEA and CU are our problems. We could have delivered the referendum, rejoined EFTA and by now be a sizeable non-EU player in the EEA forcing them to open up trade. Instead, narrow minded partisan fools like your good self have literally cheered on this fiasco. "Its all about stopping migration". So stop migration then - as we always could. Under the existing EU/EEA rules. No job, no right to remain.
Of course had Blair imposed transition controls on free movement from the new accession countries for 7 years from 2007 as Germany did for instance much of the resentment over uncontrolled immigration would never have arrived in the first place
Or if Blair / Cameron heck even Boris had moved our welfare system to something that required contributions prior to payment...
Yes the current system where someone can appear penniless from another country with children, get free healthcare and benefits and go straight to the top of the housing list because they have the greatest need is complete madness.
That's also Daily Mail bollocks and completely untrue.
My missus who worked in the housing department in a small Northern town can confirm first hand it is actually true.
But of course anyone stating facts these days must have got it from the Daily Mail.
Well they aren't facts, so there's that.
EU citizens who come here without a job are not simply entitled to benefits automatically. That's not how it works.
On a separate note, are you suggesting that women with children should not be prioritised for housing? What is the alternative, throwing them out on the street?
Anyway we're out of the EU now. I'm sure the situation will improve. Spoiler: it won't.
The people being housed were not from the EU, some were asylum seekers and some were not.
"On a separate note, are you suggesting that women with children should not be prioritised for housing?"
Not foreign women with children no, it creates endless demand and the locals will get nothing. What's the point of paying into a pot for years and never be able to receive one of the most basic services?
There is no "pot" used to pay benefits. You pay tax which the government spends. NI is just a type of tax.
In some other countries benefits are paid for using an insurance system. That is not so in the UK.
I know that.
My point was that those that have paid tax for years should get priority over housing compared to those that turned up yesterday.
Do you want to live in a town that has mothers and children begging on the street?
Lol sure the only choice is to give them all the government housing rather than stopping them coming here in the first place and deporting those that manage to turn up.
Genuine asylum seekers can not and should not be deported until their cases have been heard. Are you suggested we take no asylum seekers?
Asylum processing centres shouldn't be in the UK - that way deportation would be automatic.
Out of interest, where would you put them @Luckyguy1983 ?
Probably one in India, one in Africa. I'd also put prisons for violent criminals in the same place. That way you can be taking prisoners from the UK, and returning successful asylum applicants back to the UK.
And what if the population of India doesn't want the criminally insane British in their country? I can see that being unpopular.
I can't see why they wouldn't - they have prisons for their own criminals. As for insane, those are put in mental institutions (or should be), not prisons. We are talking about modern prisons and asylum processing centres providing hundreds of good jobs in guarding, administration, catering etc.. If India didn't want those jobs, another country would. For example, Nepal, Pakistan - etc.
@Benpointer@OnlyLivingBoy - to answer your question - yes. Do you think the Governments of those own nations would prefer their populations to rifle through dustbins to eat rather than have good solid jobs?
Put yourself in their position... What happens to the UK asylum seekers who lose their case? Who is responsible for deporting them back to their country of origin?
I think @Cyclefree's idea of placing the asylum centres on the Falklands might have more mileage.
I think putting them in the Falklands would be rather cruel - how is a genuine asylum seeker to get to a remote Island in the South Atlantic without severe danger to life and limb? It is dinghies in the channel on speed. The idea is to put them in places where genuine asylum seekers can reach them easily.
Surely where asylum seekers are processed, and how they get to the UK are two separate issues.
It seems that countries are responsible for assessing asylum seekers that arrive on their shores (or in their airports), but where they are processed is entirely at the discretion of the government.
In any case, this all misses the big problem with the UK system.
Thanks to large cuts to budget in the last seven or eight years (and, frankly, not helped by Brexit diverting attention and spending) we take more than five years on average to judge asylum cases. This means that (a) we spend a lot of money on people sitting around doing nothing, and (b) it's very easy for those asylum seekers who see they are likely to lose to disappear into the 'informal' economy.
It would seem that spending a bit more money on the assessment process would (a) speed this up, (b) reduce the number of people disappearing, and (c) discourage those with tenuous asylum claims. All of which would, in the medium term, probably save money.
I completely agree on all counts - but having the centres abroad would only help those aims. There would be far fewer to process, because whilst the claim was being processed, the claimants woudn't be living in (and on) the desired country. There would be nobody 'disappearing' because where would they be disappearing to?
Would it help speed up the process? Having the claimants physically separate from lawyers, judges and translators would seem to be a negative for efficiency.
Or are you going to move everything abroad?
Most things, yes. Judges could judge remotely. Solicitors and interpreters could be based in the processing country.
I think both he and Red Ken published their taxes in a mayoral election. Johnson had made no real use of tax dodges, perhaps because he has never paid much attention to money, having always had loads, at least until recently.
An interesting way of turning a positive point in his favour into a negative.
It might be true and perhaps he's changed his approach, but it seems he couldn't win there. Dodge tax, or its because he's too wealthy to give a crap. Though that doesn't seem to stop most rich people.
To be fair on Johnson, I don't think he has ever been a materialistic person. The way he dresses, the state of his car, even his row about spilled red wine on the sofa signal someone who really doesn't care about objects. He cares only for instant gratification, with a goldfish like approach to both past and future.
I'm not so sure about instant. He's been a notable figure for a long time now and had to adapt a bit and play it quiet at times in pursuit of the long game. But certainly he wants recognition and praise more than other things (not that he's been uncomfortable). Contrast Trump who clearly also wants praise but is obsessed with wealth.
Oh well, she'll just have to wait until 2024 to get the Trump Party endorsement. GOP have lost it totally.
Whatever happens in November we might be looking at Ivanka vs Kamala next cycle.
Pence will likely be the GOP nominee in 2024, early polling has him on 34% to just 3% for Ivanka.
Last time an incumbent president lost after only one term of his party in the Oval Office, Carter in 1980, Carter's VP Mondale was the Democratic nominee against Reagan in 1984.
Plus if the President is re elected and the VP wants to run he normally gets it eg Gore 2000, Bush 41 1988, Humphrey 1968, Nixon 1960 etc
It’s a disgrace mainly due to the herd culture of its not cool to learn, its a waste of time we won’t get a job anyway, if you try to break away you are ridiculed.
It’s a disgrace mainly due to the herd culture of its not cool to learn, its a waste of time we won’t get a job anyway, if you try to break away you are ridiculed.
Living in a diverse inner London Borough, it is really striking how ambitious most of the kids at my kids' schools seem to be.
Oh well, she'll just have to wait until 2024 to get the Trump Party endorsement. GOP have lost it totally.
Whatever happens in November we might be looking at Ivanka vs Kamala next cycle.
Pence will likely be the GOP nominee in 2024, early polling has him on 34% to just 3% for Ivanka.
Last time an incumbent president lost after only one term of his party in the Oval Office, Carter in 1980, Carter's VP Mondale was the Democratic nominee against Reagan in 1984.
Plus if the President is re elected and the VP wants to run he normally gets it eg Gore 2000, Bush 41 1988, Humphrey 1968, Nixon 1960 etc
Not if he loses the Arkansas Senate race in November if it is a Democratic landslide
If it's a Democratic landslide, that results in the Republicans losing Arkansas, then I'm not convinced the Republican Party will be keen to elect anyone associated with the Trump regime.
Oh well, she'll just have to wait until 2024 to get the Trump Party endorsement. GOP have lost it totally.
Whatever happens in November we might be looking at Ivanka vs Kamala next cycle.
Pence will likely be the GOP nominee in 2024, early polling has him on 34% to just 3% for Ivanka.
Last time an incumbent president lost after only one term of his party in the Oval Office, Carter in 1980, Carter's VP Mondale was the Democratic nominee against Reagan in 1984.
Plus if the President is re elected and the VP wants to run he normally gets it eg Gore 2000, Bush 41 1988, Humphrey 1968, Nixon 1960 etc
Not if he loses the Arkansas Senate race in November if it is a Democratic landslide
If it's a Democratic landslide, that results in the Republicans losing Arkansas, then I'm not convinced the Republican Party will be keen to elect anyone associated with the Trump regime.
Carter-Mondale lost every state in 1980 to Reagan-Bush except Georgia, Hawaii, Minnesota, West Virginia, Maryland and DC.
In 1984 the Democrats still nominated Mondale anyway
Mr. B, sorry for the much delayed reply, been trying to catch up with things.
Hard to say what I would've bet on. Bottas does have a good record at Russia, and Hamilton a poor one, but the result turned on the random penalties, and Hamilton achieved the hard part of retaining pole.
What odds was Bottas for the win?
5.6, I believe. Still kicking myself for not having a punt.
Oh well, she'll just have to wait until 2024 to get the Trump Party endorsement. GOP have lost it totally.
Whatever happens in November we might be looking at Ivanka vs Kamala next cycle.
If Trump loses this election, I imagine the GOP will be dropping the Trump brand like a hot potato
The GOP didn't want the Trump brand in 2015/16 but they ended up with it anyway, thanks to Republican primary voters.
36% of registered Republicans believe in QAnon. That might collapse into a seething mass of self-recrimination, or a black woman as VP could energise it. If they think a younger Trumpster will carry on Donald's secret war then it's hard to see the GOP establishment stopping them.
Oh well, she'll just have to wait until 2024 to get the Trump Party endorsement. GOP have lost it totally.
Whatever happens in November we might be looking at Ivanka vs Kamala next cycle.
If Trump loses this election, I imagine the GOP will be dropping the Trump brand like a hot potato
The GOP didn't want the Trump brand in 2015/16 but they ended up with it anyway, thanks to Republican primary voters.
36% of registered Republicans believe in QAnon. That might collapse into a seething mass of self-recrimination, or a black woman as VP could energise it. If they think a younger Trumpster will carry on Donald's secret war then it's hard to see the GOP establishment stopping them.
If Trump loses narrowly he could even run again himself in 2024, President Grover Cleveland lost his first re election battle but won again 4 years later
I co-wrote that study. It is not our conclusion that "[w]e are pretty much ungovernable". We argue that we need better communications about what to do and better support for people to do what we want them to do.
Also, these are preliminary conclusions in a preprint. We're still going through a formal peer review process. We're still looking into the data.
Oh well, she'll just have to wait until 2024 to get the Trump Party endorsement. GOP have lost it totally.
Whatever happens in November we might be looking at Ivanka vs Kamala next cycle.
Pence will likely be the GOP nominee in 2024, early polling has him on 34% to just 3% for Ivanka.
Last time an incumbent president lost after only one term of his party in the Oval Office, Carter in 1980, Carter's VP Mondale was the Democratic nominee against Reagan in 1984.
Plus if the President is re elected and the VP wants to run he normally gets it eg Gore 2000, Bush 41 1988, Humphrey 1968, Nixon 1960 etc
Not if he loses the Arkansas Senate race in November if it is a Democratic landslide
If it's a Democratic landslide, that results in the Republicans losing Arkansas, then I'm not convinced the Republican Party will be keen to elect anyone associated with the Trump regime.
Carter-Mondale lost every state in 1980 to Reagan-Bush except Georgia, Hawaii, Minnesota, West Virginia, Maryland and DC.
In 1984 the Democrats still nominated Mondale anyway
Because they knew they would lose, and therefore those with ambition didn't stand. (See also 1996, for the reverse)
Look, it's possible that Pence stands. It's possible that Don Jr or Ivanka stand. It's possible that one of those three win.
But I think anyone interested in making money on this market would be laying all three while cackling and counting their profits.
Oh well, she'll just have to wait until 2024 to get the Trump Party endorsement. GOP have lost it totally.
Whatever happens in November we might be looking at Ivanka vs Kamala next cycle.
If Trump loses this election, I imagine the GOP will be dropping the Trump brand like a hot potato
The GOP didn't want the Trump brand in 2015/16 but they ended up with it anyway, thanks to Republican primary voters.
36% of registered Republicans believe in QAnon. That might collapse into a seething mass of self-recrimination, or a black woman as VP could energise it. If they think a younger Trumpster will carry on Donald's secret war then it's hard to see the GOP establishment stopping them.
People, especially Americans, like success and dislike failure. If Trump is perceived to be a major failure at the election then that will be it as far as many are concerned.
Remember how much of a hold Corbyn supposedly had on the Labour Party membership? How did his annointed successor do at the following leadership campaign after the 2019 defeat?
People don't like to lose or associate themselves with clear losers.
It’s a disgrace mainly due to the herd culture of its not cool to learn, its a waste of time we won’t get a job anyway, if you try to break away you are ridiculed.
There are anecdotal reports of vastly improved WWC boys performance under lockdown away from their peers.
Oh well, she'll just have to wait until 2024 to get the Trump Party endorsement. GOP have lost it totally.
Whatever happens in November we might be looking at Ivanka vs Kamala next cycle.
Pence will likely be the GOP nominee in 2024, early polling has him on 34% to just 3% for Ivanka.
Last time an incumbent president lost after only one term of his party in the Oval Office, Carter in 1980, Carter's VP Mondale was the Democratic nominee against Reagan in 1984.
Plus if the President is re elected and the VP wants to run he normally gets it eg Gore 2000, Bush 41 1988, Humphrey 1968, Nixon 1960 etc
It’s a disgrace mainly due to the herd culture of its not cool to learn, its a waste of time we won’t get a job anyway, if you try to break away you are ridiculed.
Living in a diverse inner London Borough, it is really striking how ambitious most of the kids at my kids' schools seem to be.
And that- getting a critical mass of ambitious supportive families through the door- is often the difference between brilliant schools and less brilliant ones.
I co-wrote that study. It is not our conclusion that "[w]e are pretty much ungovernable". We argue that we need better communications about what to do and better support for people to do what we want them to do.
Also, these are preliminary conclusions in a preprint. We're still going through a formal peer review process. We're still looking into the data.
It's also true that incentives (both positive and negative) to isolate have changed since mid August, is it not ?
Comments
Would make an interesting dinner party.
Edit. 5.
https://twitter.com/RMCunliffe/status/1310560041779556353
It seems that countries are responsible for assessing asylum seekers that arrive on their shores (or in their airports), but where they are processed is entirely at the discretion of the government.
In any case, this all misses the big problem with the UK system.
Thanks to large cuts to budget in the last seven or eight years (and, frankly, not helped by Brexit diverting attention and spending) we take more than five years on average to judge asylum cases. This means that (a) we spend a lot of money on people sitting around doing nothing, and (b) it's very easy for those asylum seekers who see they are likely to lose to disappear into the 'informal' economy.
It would seem that spending a bit more money on the assessment process would (a) speed this up, (b) reduce the number of people disappearing, and (c) discourage those with tenuous asylum claims. All of which would, in the medium term, probably save money.
I do wonder if the US will ever get back on an even keel. I bumped into an American I thought was a sensible bloke and he is voting Trump to " ... bring down the media and their conspiracies". Donald is a good guy (apparently). This is someone who has been out of the USA for a few years. Heaven only knows what it is like over there.
And I missed Goetz. So that's 2 of the 5.
3 to get..
Hard to say what I would've bet on. Bottas does have a good record at Russia, and Hamilton a poor one, but the result turned on the random penalties, and Hamilton achieved the hard part of retaining pole.
What odds was Bottas for the win?
https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1310554948577492994?s=20
Tasmania (Van Diemans Land) got the bulk, and few free settlers, so is particularly British ethnically. It is a particularly interesting place for genetic research as vast family trees can be drawn going back to the first arrivals.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54322935
Bob Dylan, Chubby Checker, Bardot, HM Queen and Bernie Goetz (The Subway Vigilante).
Imagine they would have some stories.
Incidentally everyone named on Madonna's Vogue is dead.
Hate speech, honestly. Yes, I hate small minded bigots who see the foreigners and the poor
as beneath them. But "hate speech"? "Send them home" is hate speech, not calling out the racist saying "send them home"
BB still an ardent supporter of the Le Pens I believe.
Edt: CC still with us I see! Got mixed up with Fats Domino.
I wasn't sure if Chubby Checker died recently, I recall a singer of that era dying recently but I couldn't recall if it was him or not.
EDIT: It was Little Richard I was thinking about who'd died recently.
He paid some. Just not enough, apparently.
Arguing it as a question of degree would be more useful a question but is rare
Last time an incumbent president lost after only one term of his party in the Oval Office, Carter in 1980, Carter's VP Mondale was the Democratic nominee against Reagan in 1984.
Plus if the President is re elected and the VP wants to run he normally gets it eg Gore 2000, Bush 41 1988, Humphrey 1968, Nixon 1960 etc
https://twitter.com/PpollingNumbers/status/1294045129834213382?s=20
The Tories are as useless at securing the borders as Labour.
Saying you should send home illegal immigrants or having a policy that prevents foreigners coming here who are a net drain on the taxpayer is not hate speech, but I suppose it beats having to think of a logical argument why it is a bad idea.
It might be true and perhaps he's changed his approach, but it seems he couldn't win there. Dodge tax, or its because he's too wealthy to give a crap. Though that doesn't seem to stop most rich people.
Or are you going to move everything abroad?
https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1310507724430544896?s=20
Surely we should await the outcome of the IRS audit before we decide that?
https://twitter.com/MrHarryCole/status/1310569258724798465
https://twitter.com/sturdyAlex/status/1310570179483652096
In 1984 the Democrats still nominated Mondale anyway
Still kicking myself for not having a punt.
36% of registered Republicans believe in QAnon. That might collapse into a seething mass of self-recrimination, or a black woman as VP could energise it. If they think a younger Trumpster will carry on Donald's secret war then it's hard to see the GOP establishment stopping them.
Also, these are preliminary conclusions in a preprint. We're still going through a formal peer review process. We're still looking into the data.
Look, it's possible that Pence stands. It's possible that Don Jr or Ivanka stand. It's possible that one of those three win.
But I think anyone interested in making money on this market would be laying all three while cackling and counting their profits.
Remember how much of a hold Corbyn supposedly had on the Labour Party membership? How did his annointed successor do at the following leadership campaign after the 2019 defeat?
People don't like to lose or associate themselves with clear losers.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_Senate_election_in_Arkansas