She's not a true Tory obviously. Having been leader of the party proves that. Remove the whip from her.
She's not a Tory, a Johnsonite. She's a Conservative, doing what a Conservative would be expected to do.
Yep - it’s funny how, when push comes to shove, those who spoke so passionately about sovereignty, democracy and the rule of law turn out not to believe in them. Whoever would have thought it?
I believe in sovereignty which is part of the reason I opposed May (not the main reason, I'd already quit the party before Chequers). It is also why I support the IM Bill.
May voting against UK Sovereignty is par for the course. She is a usual suspect as far as that is concerned and thank goodness she isn't PM anymore.
Very telling that SouthamObserver wrote "sovereignty, democracy and the rule of law" and a Brexit fundamentalist says only that they believe in "sovereignty".
That’s because they have no understanding of what “sovereignty” means. They seem to think that it means “l can do what I want and everyone else has to agree”.
The concepts of separation of powers, and check & balances, seem to have gone out of fashion. Or been forgotten completely.
I actually think that the government getting its way without having to go to parliament is what is driving this type of decision making. At the start of all this Labour should have raised a huge ruckus about parliamentary oversight, that it's been left to Brady and Tory MPs to do the job shows that Labour still aren't fit to govern, though better than Corbyn.
The party is surely going to boot Boris after all of this, it remains to be seen whether the next PM will be any better or will have the same Theoden like rule with the c*** actually holding all the power.
The Labour Party will indeed be seen not fit for government if they join with the Brady Bunch against the Government. Brady's beef with the Government is diametrically opposed to Labour's criticism of government. So the only purpose of voting against Johnson would be to humiliate him.
I like to see Johnson humbled as much as the next swivel-eyed Marxist, but I hope they don't try it this time!
Nice to see Mr Cole dropping any pretence at being unbiased.
We really do live in an oligarchy, not a functioning democracy.
She is a Minister of State. Last time I looked Ministers don't have a specific geographic area of responsibility apart from, you know, the whole country. They are her government's rules, she should know them.
They don't have a specific geographic area as a minister but they do as an MP. As a minister they do have a specific area of responsibility.
She is s a Minister for Apprenticeship and Skills. Her responsibilities include ... Apprenticeships and Skills.
Was the question an Apprenticeship and Skills question?
She is a member of the Government, and as such represents the Government (of the United Kingdom).
She's not a true Tory obviously. Having been leader of the party proves that. Remove the whip from her.
She's not a Tory, a Johnsonite. She's a Conservative, doing what a Conservative would be expected to do.
Yep - it’s funny how, when push comes to shove, those who spoke so passionately about sovereignty, democracy and the rule of law turn out not to believe in them. Whoever would have thought it?
I believe in sovereignty which is part of the reason I opposed May (not the main reason, I'd already quit the party before Chequers). It is also why I support the IM Bill.
May voting against UK Sovereignty is par for the course. She is a usual suspect as far as that is concerned and thank goodness she isn't PM anymore.
There is no sovereignty or democracy when ministers are above the rule of law. And that is where the Internal Market Bill will put them once it is enacted. That you are OK with this is entirely unsurprising.
Ministers are answerable to Parliament which is answerable to the electorate at elections.
The Courts can also get involved in the way the law decrees.
No. Ministers are answerable to the law. Not just Parliament. No-one is or should be above the law. The fact that you refuse to understand this shows that you are not, at heart, a democrat. Without law - without it being applied to all equally - there is no democracy.
They will and should be answerable to the laws as passed by Parliament. Since this law will have been passed by Parliament then the Courts will need to take this law into account. If they break this law the Courts can act.
Oh how we all crowed from our moral high horses when the Taliban mandated face coverings in public, banned singing and the like. It blows my mind what the supposed libertarian Boris Johnson has presided over, railroaded through without any oversight from the legislature either.
Him and his team need to go now, not "when this is all over". Send in your letters to Brady please Tory MPs...
So when do the beheadings begin?
I mean comparing Boris Johnson to the Taliban and Mullah Omar has to be the stupidest thing to have ever been posted on the internet, which is some achievement considering Donald Trump regularly tweets.
538 still has Biden +5.5 in PA vs +7 nationally, but if what we've been seeing in the recent PA polls carries on there will be no more EC deficit...
HYUFD won't take any notice, because it's not from Trafalgar or Rasmussen.
Cut him some slack. Nationally Monmouth has Trump within 5 and Emerson within 4 recently. That's close, and they are both A Grade pollsters.
It's not done yet.
Plus we have the first Trump v Biden debate tonight too
Looking back historically on who post debate polls judged won the first debate we have Hillary, Romney, Obama, Kerry, Gore, Bill Clinton, Perot, Dukakis, Mondale, Ford and Kennedy. So a mixed bag in terms of who actually went onto win the election and if Trump does win tonight he would be the first incumbent President to win the first debate since Bill Clinton so the odds should favour Biden https://news.gallup.com/poll/195923/clinton-debate-victory-larger-side-modern-debates.aspx
Honestly I dont think the debates will change much. Both sides are quite well entrenched, this election feels much more Us vs Them more than any other election I can remember even 2016. Trump supporters seemingly will not abandon him even with a string of bad news stories showing him in a negative light, on the other side Biden is the Not Trump candidate and so his supporters are not going to go anywhere else when a Biden gaffe or story comes along. With the percentage of undecided in the polls it would take something utterly amazing in the debates to shift the polling I feel.
The Monmouth and Emerson polls are the lower end of the polling we are seeing, other A Grade pollsters have had Biden up in the 9's and 10's which are the upper end, its basically a pick and choose which one you want to believe. the polling averages have barely changed for months.
It is an election where the only thing that matters is getting out the vote and making sure it's there to be counted on election day.
That is perhaps naive - what may count the most is after election day, whether the courts and especially the supreme court will support a coup. Trump is going to claim a win on the night, and he may well be marginally ahead on votes counted by then.
If the Supreme Court rules he has won (I know its not that simple) despite the votes, he'll have won. For that will BE THE LAW. Will everyone defending the law like an ABSOLUTE principle be happy with that.
The law is very important but it's not the be all and end all, it's written by people and people can be bias and fallible
This. Trump has very little hope of victory without the courts (and especially the Supreme Court) rigging the process in his favour.
It's almost as if democracy would be better served if the US just counted the votes and kept the lawyers as far away from the entire process as possible...
Don't get me wrong, the law is extremely important but it's not the be all and end all of civilisation
The concept of the rule of law and its importance goes all the way to the Ancient Greeks.
“Let no man live uncurbed by law or curbed by tyranny.” (Aeschylus’s The Oresteia). It
She's not a true Tory obviously. Having been leader of the party proves that. Remove the whip from her.
She's not a Tory, a Johnsonite. She's a Conservative, doing what a Conservative would be expected to do.
Yep - it’s funny how, when push comes to shove, those who spoke so passionately about sovereignty, democracy and the rule of law turn out not to believe in them. Whoever would have thought it?
I believe in sovereignty which is part of the reason I opposed May (not the main reason, I'd already quit the party before Chequers). It is also why I support the IM Bill.
May voting against UK Sovereignty is par for the course. She is a usual suspect as far as that is concerned and thank goodness she isn't PM anymore.
Very telling that SouthamObserver wrote "sovereignty, democracy and the rule of law" and a Brexit fundamentalist says only that they believe in "sovereignty".
That’s because they have no understanding of what “sovereignty” means. They seem to think that it means “l can do what I want and everyone else has to agree”.
The concepts of separation of powers, and check & balances, seem to have gone out of fashion. Or been forgotten completely.
I actually think that the government getting its way without having to go to parliament is what is driving this type of decision making. At the start of all this Labour should have raised a huge ruckus about parliamentary oversight, that it's been left to Brady and Tory MPs to do the job shows that Labour still aren't fit to govern, though better than Corbyn.
The party is surely going to boot Boris after all of this, it remains to be seen whether the next PM will be any better or will have the same Theoden like rule with the c*** actually holding all the power.
The Labour Party will indeed be seen not fit for government if they join with the Brady Bunch against the Government. Brady's beef with the Government is diametrically opposed to Labour's criticism of government. So the only purpose of voting against Johnson would be to humiliate him.
I like to see Johnson humbled as much as the next swivel-eyed Marxist, but I hope they don't try it this time!
The point of voting against Boris surely is to assert that he doesn't rule by decree which he currently seems to believe and that laws need to be put before parliament
Cinema? TBH I don't miss it that much. I may invest in a new TV and yet more surround speakers (to go 5.1.2 to 7.1.2) but as staying in is the new going out and so much is streamed these days, whats the need for Cineworld?
I don't doubt that Trump is involved in all manner of dodgy financial dealings. But the premise - that golf courses are a particularly good way to launder money (and look who owns golf courses, ho ho) - just isn't correct. There is very little there that isn't true of many different businesses, and it's not as if it's a particularly cash-based business.
The opaqueness of the pricing is obviously helpful. What makes a golf course worth $100k a year membership and another $1k a year? As is the long term store of asset value that land in premium locations provides.
The same pricing opaqueness might be true of high end fashion (Manafort spending $32000, $15000, $24000 amongst other transactions all carelessly ending in $,000 at one NY clothes store) or art (luxury rugs).
I agree golf courses arent exclusively the greatest way to launder money but luxury golf courses work well enough.
They might well operate very well for particular individuals, and for particular categories of money to be laundered.
As you say, there's opacity of pricing - but also membership (plenty of members might rarely appear, without question). And international memberships are not uncommon. And the ability to inflate or depreciate the asset value to suit the owner's purposes without undue scrutiny perhaps also exceeds that of other real estate assets.
And by forthright, I don't mean re-submitting the same Withdrawal Bill time and again without modification, in the hope it would eventually pass due to fatigue.
Mrs May seems to understand that you either support the rule of law as the foundation stone of democracy or you support the Internal Market Bill. There is no middle ground available here.
I suspect that part of the motivation is also the knowledge that her own Withdrawal Agreement and premiership was ultimately torpedoed because a chunk of her party refused to accept the potential legal consequences of the backstop provisions (“permanently stuck in the Customs Union” etc).
Even though these same people have no problem in saying that they are free to reject the legal consequences of their own Withdrawal agreement - and not just because of circumstances where the EU might be “acting in bad faith in trade negotiation”, but because they didn’t understand/accept the central implications of what they had signed up to.
It goes way beyond that, though. The bill legislates to put ministers beyond the rule of law full stop. Section 45 states explicitly that they will not be bound by any law, international or domestic, when enacting its provisions.
I seem to recall DavidL giving the view that you grossly extend the scope power of that provision.
Which is by the by really. Plenty may well think even though we can exercise sovereignty in this way and even if it is not the worst case scenario envisaged by some, and even if someone thinks its not just plain wrong, it still isn't a sensible move.
He did. On the basis that the Section 45 powers only related to Sections 42 and 43 (relating to GB/NI trade). But I think there were two flaws in his analysis: (1) that if the government purported to exercise the S.45 powers more widely, S.45 itself tries to stop a challenge to that. Whether the courts would agree is another matter; and (2) even if the powers are primarily exercised for a proper purpose they could still breach a domestic law and S.45 allows them to do that. So the likely effect and certainly the intention of this section is very wide indeed.
Subsequent laws can override previous laws. The Human Rights Act sets itself above other laws, why can't this one?
Because it overrides International Treaties which is slightly more of a problem - and the Human Rights Act did the exact opposite it moved items inside International Treaties into UK law.
She's not a true Tory obviously. Having been leader of the party proves that. Remove the whip from her.
She's not a Tory, a Johnsonite. She's a Conservative, doing what a Conservative would be expected to do.
Yep - it’s funny how, when push comes to shove, those who spoke so passionately about sovereignty, democracy and the rule of law turn out not to believe in them. Whoever would have thought it?
I believe in sovereignty which is part of the reason I opposed May (not the main reason, I'd already quit the party before Chequers). It is also why I support the IM Bill.
May voting against UK Sovereignty is par for the course. She is a usual suspect as far as that is concerned and thank goodness she isn't PM anymore.
There is no sovereignty or democracy when ministers are above the rule of law. And that is where the Internal Market Bill will put them once it is enacted. That you are OK with this is entirely unsurprising.
Ministers are answerable to Parliament which is answerable to the electorate at elections.
The Courts can also get involved in the way the law decrees.
No. Ministers are answerable to the law. Not just Parliament. No-one is or should be above the law. The fact that you refuse to understand this shows that you are not, at heart, a democrat. Without law - without it being applied to all equally - there is no democracy.
They will and should be answerable to the laws as passed by Parliament. Since this law will have been passed by Parliament then the Courts will need to take this law into account. If they break this law the Courts can act.
Shows how little you understand. This law if passed would try to stop the courts having a say, even if the government breaks its own law.
538 still has Biden +5.5 in PA vs +7 nationally, but if what we've been seeing in the recent PA polls carries on there will be no more EC deficit...
HYUFD won't take any notice, because it's not from Trafalgar or Rasmussen.
Cut him some slack. Nationally Monmouth has Trump within 5 and Emerson within 4 recently. That's close, and they are both A Grade pollsters.
It's not done yet.
Plus we have the first Trump v Biden debate tonight too
Looking back historically on who post debate polls judged won the first debate we have Hillary, Romney, Obama, Kerry, Gore, Bill Clinton, Perot, Dukakis, Mondale, Ford and Kennedy. So a mixed bag in terms of who actually went onto win the election and if Trump does win tonight he would be the first incumbent President to win the first debate since Bill Clinton so the odds should favour Biden https://news.gallup.com/poll/195923/clinton-debate-victory-larger-side-modern-debates.aspx
Honestly I dont think the debates will change much. Both sides are quite well entrenched, this election feels much more Us vs Them more than any other election I can remember even 2016. Trump supporters seemingly will not abandon him even with a string of bad news stories showing him in a negative light, on the other side Biden is the Not Trump candidate and so his supporters are not going to go anywhere else when a Biden gaffe or story comes along. With the percentage of undecided in the polls it would take something utterly amazing in the debates to shift the polling I feel.
The Monmouth and Emerson polls are the lower end of the polling we are seeing, other A Grade pollsters have had Biden up in the 9's and 10's which are the upper end, its basically a pick and choose which one you want to believe. the polling averages have barely changed for months.
It is an election where the only thing that matters is getting out the vote and making sure it's there to be counted on election day.
That is perhaps naive - what may count the most is after election day, whether the courts and especially the supreme court will support a coup. Trump is going to claim a win on the night, and he may well be marginally ahead on votes counted by then.
If the Supreme Court rules he has won (I know its not that simple) despite the votes, he'll have won. For that will BE THE LAW. Will everyone defending the law like an ABSOLUTE principle be happy with that.
The law is very important but it's not the be all and end all, it's written by people and people can be bias and fallible
This. Trump has very little hope of victory without the courts (and especially the Supreme Court) rigging the process in his favour.
It's almost as if democracy would be better served if the US just counted the votes and kept the lawyers as far away from the entire process as possible...
Don't get me wrong, the law is extremely important but it's not the be all and end all of civilisation
The concept of the rule of law and its importance goes all the way to the Ancient Greeks.
“Let no man live uncurbed by law or curbed by tyranny.” (Aeschylus’s The Oresteia). It
And Ministers will be curbed by law.
What the law is will be changed but that is what Parliament does. That is what Parliament has always done.
She's not a true Tory obviously. Having been leader of the party proves that. Remove the whip from her.
She's not a Tory, a Johnsonite. She's a Conservative, doing what a Conservative would be expected to do.
Yep - it’s funny how, when push comes to shove, those who spoke so passionately about sovereignty, democracy and the rule of law turn out not to believe in them. Whoever would have thought it?
I believe in sovereignty which is part of the reason I opposed May (not the main reason, I'd already quit the party before Chequers). It is also why I support the IM Bill.
May voting against UK Sovereignty is par for the course. She is a usual suspect as far as that is concerned and thank goodness she isn't PM anymore.
Very telling that SouthamObserver wrote "sovereignty, democracy and the rule of law" and a Brexit fundamentalist says only that they believe in "sovereignty".
That’s because they have no understanding of what “sovereignty” means. They seem to think that it means “l can do what I want and everyone else has to agree”.
The concepts of separation of powers, and check & balances, seem to have gone out of fashion. Or been forgotten completely.
I actually think that the government getting its way without having to go to parliament is what is driving this type of decision making. At the start of all this Labour should have raised a huge ruckus about parliamentary oversight, that it's been left to Brady and Tory MPs to do the job shows that Labour still aren't fit to govern, though better than Corbyn.
The party is surely going to boot Boris after all of this, it remains to be seen whether the next PM will be any better or will have the same Theoden like rule with the c*** actually holding all the power.
I am actually encouraged that a number of backbench MPs (with whom I agree on little else) are standing up for parliamentary powers. And I don't think that Doma Wormtongue would survive a change of PM, except perhaps in the unlikely circumstance of Gove taking over.
I think all of them can see that rule by decree has failed the nation (and party). No scrutiny has led to bad decisions being made. If the health secretary had to stand up in parliament and explain the idiotic closing time rules despite pubs and restaurants only accounting for 3% of new infections there's no way that option is on the table. Too many MPs represent rural constituents who depend on pubs as the major social outlet of their village.
All of the latest rules are just wrong, £4k fines for not telling management about a positive test result, where is the £20k fine for employers who threaten employees with the sack if the get it and have to be off for at least two weeks?
I've been over this many times and don't want to repeat myself, everything the government has done outside of vaccine procurement has been incompetent, callous and simply wrong.
538 still has Biden +5.5 in PA vs +7 nationally, but if what we've been seeing in the recent PA polls carries on there will be no more EC deficit...
HYUFD won't take any notice, because it's not from Trafalgar or Rasmussen.
Cut him some slack. Nationally Monmouth has Trump within 5 and Emerson within 4 recently. That's close, and they are both A Grade pollsters.
It's not done yet.
Plus we have the first Trump v Biden debate tonight too
Looking back historically on who post debate polls judged won the first debate we have Hillary, Romney, Obama, Kerry, Gore, Bill Clinton, Perot, Dukakis, Mondale, Ford and Kennedy. So a mixed bag in terms of who actually went onto win the election and if Trump does win tonight he would be the first incumbent President to win the first debate since Bill Clinton so the odds should favour Biden https://news.gallup.com/poll/195923/clinton-debate-victory-larger-side-modern-debates.aspx
Honestly I dont think the debates will change much. Both sides are quite well entrenched, this election feels much more Us vs Them more than any other election I can remember even 2016. Trump supporters seemingly will not abandon him even with a string of bad news stories showing him in a negative light, on the other side Biden is the Not Trump candidate and so his supporters are not going to go anywhere else when a Biden gaffe or story comes along. With the percentage of undecided in the polls it would take something utterly amazing in the debates to shift the polling I feel.
The Monmouth and Emerson polls are the lower end of the polling we are seeing, other A Grade pollsters have had Biden up in the 9's and 10's which are the upper end, its basically a pick and choose which one you want to believe. the polling averages have barely changed for months.
It is an election where the only thing that matters is getting out the vote and making sure it's there to be counted on election day.
That is perhaps naive - what may count the most is after election day, whether the courts and especially the supreme court will support a coup. Trump is going to claim a win on the night, and he may well be marginally ahead on votes counted by then.
If the Supreme Court rules he has won (I know its not that simple) despite the votes, he'll have won. For that will BE THE LAW. Will everyone defending the law like an ABSOLUTE principle be happy with that.
The law is very important but it's not the be all and end all, it's written by people and people can be bias and fallible
This. Trump has very little hope of victory without the courts (and especially the Supreme Court) rigging the process in his favour.
It's almost as if democracy would be better served if the US just counted the votes and kept the lawyers as far away from the entire process as possible...
Don't get me wrong, the law is extremely important but it's not the be all and end all of civilisation
The concept of the rule of law and its importance goes all the way to the Ancient Greeks.
“Let no man live uncurbed by law or curbed by tyranny.” (Aeschylus’s The Oresteia). It
And by forthright, I don't mean re-submitting the same Withdrawal Bill time and again without modification, in the hope it would eventually pass due to fatigue.
Mrs May seems to understand that you either support the rule of law as the foundation stone of democracy or you support the Internal Market Bill. There is no middle ground available here.
I suspect that part of the motivation is also the knowledge that her own Withdrawal Agreement and premiership was ultimately torpedoed because a chunk of her party refused to accept the potential legal consequences of the backstop provisions (“permanently stuck in the Customs Union” etc).
Even though these same people have no problem in saying that they are free to reject the legal consequences of their own Withdrawal agreement - and not just because of circumstances where the EU might be “acting in bad faith in trade negotiation”, but because they didn’t understand/accept the central implications of what they had signed up to.
It goes way beyond that, though. The bill legislates to put ministers beyond the rule of law full stop. Section 45 states explicitly that they will not be bound by any law, international or domestic, when enacting its provisions.
I seem to recall DavidL giving the view that you grossly extend the scope power of that provision.
Which is by the by really. Plenty may well think even though we can exercise sovereignty in this way and even if it is not the worst case scenario envisaged by some, and even if someone thinks its not just plain wrong, it still isn't a sensible move.
He did. On the basis that the Section 45 powers only related to Sections 42 and 43 (relating to GB/NI trade). But I think there were two flaws in his analysis: (1) that if the government purported to exercise the S.45 powers more widely, S.45 itself tries to stop a challenge to that. Whether the courts would agree is another matter; and (2) even if the powers are primarily exercised for a proper purpose they could still breach a domestic law and S.45 allows them to do that. So the likely effect and certainly the intention of this section is very wide indeed.
Subsequent laws can override previous laws. The Human Rights Act sets itself above other laws, why can't this one?
Because it overrides International Treaties which is slightly more of a problem - and the Human Rights Act did the exact opposite it moved items inside International Treaties into UK law.
I couldn't care less about overriding Treaties. The UK has done that before as has Germany and other countries all over the globe and the Courts have ruled it lawful before.
Shouldn't we listen to the Courts here? Funny that!
If restrictions need to be imposed, fine - but support the businesses and people affected until the restrictions are no longer necessary. What is unconscionable is doing the former - in an arbitrary and incomprehensible manner unsupported in many cases by the science - and then leaving those affected without effective help.
If there was an industry you know isn't going to come back - (perhaps cruise ships) - what's the benefit in propping it up?
We should probably let them go bust, and instead help the workers find other jobs/retrain?
If there is a vaccine found then I am sure cruise ships will come back, BigG certainly seems to enjoy them with his wife and they are certainly something I would explore when I get to retirement age.
However understandably for the moment the older demographic who are their biggest market are steering clear given they are most at risk from Covid
In the last month, I've been in New Mexico (moderate restrictions), Arizona (almost no restrictions) and Orange and Los Angeles counties, California (lots of restrictions).
Outside of Holbrook, AZ (a small town in the middle of nowhere), you couldn't tell the difference between the places with government mandated restrictions, and without.
Which tells you an important thing: behaviour is changed irrespective of government diktat.
Indeed, the hotels we stayed at in Arizona had more restrictions than the ones in California - so no room service, for example. (The reason being, apparently, that if the government mandates a behaviour, and you follow it, you're OK. But if they don't, and lots of people get sick, and you *could* have foreseen an issue, you will get sued. Especially by your staff.)
To go back to the first point though. Behaviour is changes by the virus, irrespective of what the government says. Shops insist on face coverings, irrespective of government policy. Restaraunt staff wear masks. There is no bar service. (Or, in Santa Fe, you have an orderly, distanced queue to get served at the bar, before heading off to the roof terrace to drink. Which worked, by the way, *really* well.)
This is, of course, why there is so little difference in outcomes between a Sweden and a France, or between an Arizona and a California.
But it also tells you that you might as well limit restrictions to the most dangerous of activities (karaoke, for example), plus requirements for mask wearing on public transport.
Because most people will still social distance and most stores and restaurants will impose restrictions.
By the same token those who believe that the economy would be back to normal if all the restrictions were lifted are wrong.
If all restriction ended tomorrow I would still not be going anywhere near a pub, travelling on a plane, rejoining my gym, renewing my PL season ticket, going to a concert/theatre/cinema etc etc. I doubt I am alone. Until there is a vaccine many people are not going to be doing what they were doing this time next year.
That is very sensible. If you are in a risk group, or need to interact with someone from one, then you absolutely should limit your activities and be careful about who you meet.
And that applies whether you are an old git like, say, @kinabalu, or a Newcastle fresher.
Well, I've no intention of going to the cinema, but I'm still going to the gym twice a week...... same people, pretty well each time I go, 'cos it's always at the same time, and I have a weekly trip to the pub, where I meet he same three or four people.
538 still has Biden +5.5 in PA vs +7 nationally, but if what we've been seeing in the recent PA polls carries on there will be no more EC deficit...
HYUFD won't take any notice, because it's not from Trafalgar or Rasmussen.
Cut him some slack. Nationally Monmouth has Trump within 5 and Emerson within 4 recently. That's close, and they are both A Grade pollsters.
It's not done yet.
Plus we have the first Trump v Biden debate tonight too
Looking back historically on who post debate polls judged won the first debate we have Hillary, Romney, Obama, Kerry, Gore, Bill Clinton, Perot, Dukakis, Mondale, Ford and Kennedy. So a mixed bag in terms of who actually went onto win the election and if Trump does win tonight he would be the first incumbent President to win the first debate since Bill Clinton so the odds should favour Biden https://news.gallup.com/poll/195923/clinton-debate-victory-larger-side-modern-debates.aspx
Honestly I dont think the debates will change much. Both sides are quite well entrenched, this election feels much more Us vs Them more than any other election I can remember even 2016. Trump supporters seemingly will not abandon him even with a string of bad news stories showing him in a negative light, on the other side Biden is the Not Trump candidate and so his supporters are not going to go anywhere else when a Biden gaffe or story comes along. With the percentage of undecided in the polls it would take something utterly amazing in the debates to shift the polling I feel.
The Monmouth and Emerson polls are the lower end of the polling we are seeing, other A Grade pollsters have had Biden up in the 9's and 10's which are the upper end, its basically a pick and choose which one you want to believe. the polling averages have barely changed for months.
It is an election where the only thing that matters is getting out the vote and making sure it's there to be counted on election day.
That is perhaps naive - what may count the most is after election day, whether the courts and especially the supreme court will support a coup. Trump is going to claim a win on the night, and he may well be marginally ahead on votes counted by then.
If the Supreme Court rules he has won (I know its not that simple) despite the votes, he'll have won. For that will BE THE LAW. Will everyone defending the law like an ABSOLUTE principle be happy with that.
The law is very important but it's not the be all and end all, it's written by people and people can be bias and fallible
This. Trump has very little hope of victory without the courts (and especially the Supreme Court) rigging the process in his favour.
It's almost as if democracy would be better served if the US just counted the votes and kept the lawyers as far away from the entire process as possible...
Don't get me wrong, the law is extremely important but it's not the be all and end all of civilisation
The concept of the rule of law and its importance goes all the way to the Ancient Greeks.
“Let no man live uncurbed by law or curbed by tyranny.” (Aeschylus’s The Oresteia). It
And Ministers will be curbed by law.
What the law is will be changed but that is what Parliament does. That is what Parliament has always done.
And so when Parliament legislates to say that there will be no further elections and the courts have no right to overturn that legilsation it will be fine.
Either you believe in the rule of law, Phil, or you don't. And you don't.
Oh how we all crowed from our moral high horses when the Taliban mandated face coverings in public, banned singing and the like. It blows my mind what the supposed libertarian Boris Johnson has presided over, railroaded through without any oversight from the legislature either.
Him and his team need to go now, not "when this is all over". Send in your letters to Brady please Tory MPs...
So when do the beheadings begin?
I mean comparing Boris Johnson to the Taliban and Mullah Omar has to be the stupidest thing to have ever been posted on the internet, which is some achievement considering Donald Trump regularly tweets.
Of course parliament can *change* the law. Thats its function. But surely the legislature cannot set out to openly break the legislation it recently passed.
She's not a true Tory obviously. Having been leader of the party proves that. Remove the whip from her.
She's not a Tory, a Johnsonite. She's a Conservative, doing what a Conservative would be expected to do.
Yep - it’s funny how, when push comes to shove, those who spoke so passionately about sovereignty, democracy and the rule of law turn out not to believe in them. Whoever would have thought it?
I believe in sovereignty which is part of the reason I opposed May (not the main reason, I'd already quit the party before Chequers). It is also why I support the IM Bill.
May voting against UK Sovereignty is par for the course. She is a usual suspect as far as that is concerned and thank goodness she isn't PM anymore.
There is no sovereignty or democracy when ministers are above the rule of law. And that is where the Internal Market Bill will put them once it is enacted. That you are OK with this is entirely unsurprising.
Ministers are answerable to Parliament which is answerable to the electorate at elections.
The Courts can also get involved in the way the law decrees.
No. Ministers are answerable to the law. Not just Parliament. No-one is or should be above the law. The fact that you refuse to understand this shows that you are not, at heart, a democrat. Without law - without it being applied to all equally - there is no democracy.
They will and should be answerable to the laws as passed by Parliament. Since this law will have been passed by Parliament then the Courts will need to take this law into account. If they break this law the Courts can act.
Shows how little you understand. This law if passed would try to stop the courts having a say, even if the government breaks its own law.
It is desigend to prevent any recourse to the law. It gives ministers a free hand to do as they wish within the confines of the legislation which, as you observe, is very broadly written. For example, ministers could quite lawfully make provision of state aid dependent on donations to the Conservative party, even though other extant UK laws would forbid that.
538 still has Biden +5.5 in PA vs +7 nationally, but if what we've been seeing in the recent PA polls carries on there will be no more EC deficit...
HYUFD won't take any notice, because it's not from Trafalgar or Rasmussen.
Cut him some slack. Nationally Monmouth has Trump within 5 and Emerson within 4 recently. That's close, and they are both A Grade pollsters.
It's not done yet.
Plus we have the first Trump v Biden debate tonight too
Looking back historically on who post debate polls judged won the first debate we have Hillary, Romney, Obama, Kerry, Gore, Bill Clinton, Perot, Dukakis, Mondale, Ford and Kennedy. So a mixed bag in terms of who actually went onto win the election and if Trump does win tonight he would be the first incumbent President to win the first debate since Bill Clinton so the odds should favour Biden https://news.gallup.com/poll/195923/clinton-debate-victory-larger-side-modern-debates.aspx
Honestly I dont think the debates will change much. Both sides are quite well entrenched, this election feels much more Us vs Them more than any other election I can remember even 2016. Trump supporters seemingly will not abandon him even with a string of bad news stories showing him in a negative light, on the other side Biden is the Not Trump candidate and so his supporters are not going to go anywhere else when a Biden gaffe or story comes along. With the percentage of undecided in the polls it would take something utterly amazing in the debates to shift the polling I feel.
The Monmouth and Emerson polls are the lower end of the polling we are seeing, other A Grade pollsters have had Biden up in the 9's and 10's which are the upper end, its basically a pick and choose which one you want to believe. the polling averages have barely changed for months.
It is an election where the only thing that matters is getting out the vote and making sure it's there to be counted on election day.
That is perhaps naive - what may count the most is after election day, whether the courts and especially the supreme court will support a coup. Trump is going to claim a win on the night, and he may well be marginally ahead on votes counted by then.
If the Supreme Court rules he has won (I know its not that simple) despite the votes, he'll have won. For that will BE THE LAW. Will everyone defending the law like an ABSOLUTE principle be happy with that.
The law is very important but it's not the be all and end all, it's written by people and people can be bias and fallible
This. Trump has very little hope of victory without the courts (and especially the Supreme Court) rigging the process in his favour.
It's almost as if democracy would be better served if the US just counted the votes and kept the lawyers as far away from the entire process as possible...
Don't get me wrong, the law is extremely important but it's not the be all and end all of civilisation
The concept of the rule of law and its importance goes all the way to the Ancient Greeks.
“Let no man live uncurbed by law or curbed by tyranny.” (Aeschylus’s The Oresteia). It
And Ministers will be curbed by law.
What the law is will be changed but that is what Parliament does. That is what Parliament has always done.
And so when Parliament legislates to say that there will be no further elections and the courts have no right to overturn that legilsation it will be fine.
Either you believe in the rule of law, Phil, or you don't. And you don't.
He seems to think that politicians are above the law if they have won an election. Pretty much what Trump says too. With people like Johnson as PM, the UK will need to have a proper written constitution.
Of course parliament can *change* the law. Thats its function. But surely the legislature cannot set out to openly break the legislation it recently passed.
It can do as it wishes. And the desire of the majority of Tory MPs in this Parliament is to put Tory ministers above the rule of law - ironically, at a time when many of them are just beginning to realise how dangerous it is to give ministers carte blanche to act as they wish.
538 still has Biden +5.5 in PA vs +7 nationally, but if what we've been seeing in the recent PA polls carries on there will be no more EC deficit...
HYUFD won't take any notice, because it's not from Trafalgar or Rasmussen.
Cut him some slack. Nationally Monmouth has Trump within 5 and Emerson within 4 recently. That's close, and they are both A Grade pollsters.
It's not done yet.
Plus we have the first Trump v Biden debate tonight too
Looking back historically on who post debate polls judged won the first debate we have Hillary, Romney, Obama, Kerry, Gore, Bill Clinton, Perot, Dukakis, Mondale, Ford and Kennedy. So a mixed bag in terms of who actually went onto win the election and if Trump does win tonight he would be the first incumbent President to win the first debate since Bill Clinton so the odds should favour Biden https://news.gallup.com/poll/195923/clinton-debate-victory-larger-side-modern-debates.aspx
Honestly I dont think the debates will change much. Both sides are quite well entrenched, this election feels much more Us vs Them more than any other election I can remember even 2016. Trump supporters seemingly will not abandon him even with a string of bad news stories showing him in a negative light, on the other side Biden is the Not Trump candidate and so his supporters are not going to go anywhere else when a Biden gaffe or story comes along. With the percentage of undecided in the polls it would take something utterly amazing in the debates to shift the polling I feel.
The Monmouth and Emerson polls are the lower end of the polling we are seeing, other A Grade pollsters have had Biden up in the 9's and 10's which are the upper end, its basically a pick and choose which one you want to believe. the polling averages have barely changed for months.
It is an election where the only thing that matters is getting out the vote and making sure it's there to be counted on election day.
That is perhaps naive - what may count the most is after election day, whether the courts and especially the supreme court will support a coup. Trump is going to claim a win on the night, and he may well be marginally ahead on votes counted by then.
If the Supreme Court rules he has won (I know its not that simple) despite the votes, he'll have won. For that will BE THE LAW. Will everyone defending the law like an ABSOLUTE principle be happy with that.
The law is very important but it's not the be all and end all, it's written by people and people can be bias and fallible
This. Trump has very little hope of victory without the courts (and especially the Supreme Court) rigging the process in his favour.
It's almost as if democracy would be better served if the US just counted the votes and kept the lawyers as far away from the entire process as possible...
Don't get me wrong, the law is extremely important but it's not the be all and end all of civilisation
The concept of the rule of law and its importance goes all the way to the Ancient Greeks.
“Let no man live uncurbed by law or curbed by tyranny.” (Aeschylus’s The Oresteia). It
And Ministers will be curbed by law.
What the law is will be changed but that is what Parliament does. That is what Parliament has always done.
And so when Parliament legislates to say that there will be no further elections and the courts have no right to overturn that legilsation it will be fine.
Either you believe in the rule of law, Phil, or you don't. And you don't.
If Parliament legislated to say that there will be no further elections then that would be the law.
In those circumstances 100% absolutely I would not support, believe or defend the law. I would support breaking the law to get the law changed in those circumstances absolutely. Wouldn't you?
And so when Parliament legislates to say that there will be no further elections and the courts have no right to overturn that legilsation it will be fine.
Either you believe in the rule of law, Phil, or you don't. And you don't.
It's more he believes what he is told, doesn't think and doesn't see the point of reading the smallprint because the salesman told him everything he needed to know.
So basically Philip_Thompson is a consumer who needs consumer protection to protect him from his own carelessness.
Of course parliament can *change* the law. Thats its function. But surely the legislature cannot set out to openly break the legislation it recently passed.
Oh how we all crowed from our moral high horses when the Taliban mandated face coverings in public, banned singing and the like. It blows my mind what the supposed libertarian Boris Johnson has presided over, railroaded through without any oversight from the legislature either.
Him and his team need to go now, not "when this is all over". Send in your letters to Brady please Tory MPs...
So when do the beheadings begin?
I mean comparing Boris Johnson to the Taliban and Mullah Omar has to be the stupidest thing to have ever been posted on the internet, which is some achievement considering Donald Trump regularly tweets.
Well, Johnson does have multiple wives...
Not concurrently though.
Never been attracted to the concept of multiple wives, that means lots of mothers-in-law for starters.
In the last month, I've been in New Mexico (moderate restrictions), Arizona (almost no restrictions) and Orange and Los Angeles counties, California (lots of restrictions).
Outside of Holbrook, AZ (a small town in the middle of nowhere), you couldn't tell the difference between the places with government mandated restrictions, and without.
Which tells you an important thing: behaviour is changed irrespective of government diktat.
Indeed, the hotels we stayed at in Arizona had more restrictions than the ones in California - so no room service, for example. (The reason being, apparently, that if the government mandates a behaviour, and you follow it, you're OK. But if they don't, and lots of people get sick, and you *could* have foreseen an issue, you will get sued. Especially by your staff.)
To go back to the first point though. Behaviour is changes by the virus, irrespective of what the government says. Shops insist on face coverings, irrespective of government policy. Restaraunt staff wear masks. There is no bar service. (Or, in Santa Fe, you have an orderly, distanced queue to get served at the bar, before heading off to the roof terrace to drink. Which worked, by the way, *really* well.)
This is, of course, why there is so little difference in outcomes between a Sweden and a France, or between an Arizona and a California.
But it also tells you that you might as well limit restrictions to the most dangerous of activities (karaoke, for example), plus requirements for mask wearing on public transport.
Because most people will still social distance and most stores and restaurants will impose restrictions.
By the same token those who believe that the economy would be back to normal if all the restrictions were lifted are wrong.
If all restriction ended tomorrow I would still not be going anywhere near a pub, travelling on a plane, rejoining my gym, renewing my PL season ticket, going to a concert/theatre/cinema etc etc. I doubt I am alone. Until there is a vaccine many people are not going to be doing what they were doing this time next year.
I'm seriously debating going to the cinema to see Tenet again tomorrow night as supposedly last night there was 1 person in a 300 seat screen
Don't get me wrong I am not simply hiding at home. We go out to lunch a few times week (well spaced restaurant with staff in masks), travelled to France (tunnel, own car, villa with us as sole occupants), meet friends and family etc etc.
I simply assess our own risk and avoid situations where it is impossible to avoid those ignoring the basic rules.. Mask wearing has been helpful because it helps highlight the numpties who are on public transport or in shops without one and makes it easy to give them a wide berth.
You final paragraph highlights the issue with masks. People think it is safe to go near people wearing masks.
538 still has Biden +5.5 in PA vs +7 nationally, but if what we've been seeing in the recent PA polls carries on there will be no more EC deficit...
HYUFD won't take any notice, because it's not from Trafalgar or Rasmussen.
Cut him some slack. Nationally Monmouth has Trump within 5 and Emerson within 4 recently. That's close, and they are both A Grade pollsters.
It's not done yet.
Plus we have the first Trump v Biden debate tonight too
Looking back historically on who post debate polls judged won the first debate we have Hillary, Romney, Obama, Kerry, Gore, Bill Clinton, Perot, Dukakis, Mondale, Ford and Kennedy. So a mixed bag in terms of who actually went onto win the election and if Trump does win tonight he would be the first incumbent President to win the first debate since Bill Clinton so the odds should favour Biden https://news.gallup.com/poll/195923/clinton-debate-victory-larger-side-modern-debates.aspx
Honestly I dont think the debates will change much. Both sides are quite well entrenched, this election feels much more Us vs Them more than any other election I can remember even 2016. Trump supporters seemingly will not abandon him even with a string of bad news stories showing him in a negative light, on the other side Biden is the Not Trump candidate and so his supporters are not going to go anywhere else when a Biden gaffe or story comes along. With the percentage of undecided in the polls it would take something utterly amazing in the debates to shift the polling I feel.
The Monmouth and Emerson polls are the lower end of the polling we are seeing, other A Grade pollsters have had Biden up in the 9's and 10's which are the upper end, its basically a pick and choose which one you want to believe. the polling averages have barely changed for months.
It is an election where the only thing that matters is getting out the vote and making sure it's there to be counted on election day.
That is perhaps naive - what may count the most is after election day, whether the courts and especially the supreme court will support a coup. Trump is going to claim a win on the night, and he may well be marginally ahead on votes counted by then.
If the Supreme Court rules he has won (I know its not that simple) despite the votes, he'll have won. For that will BE THE LAW. Will everyone defending the law like an ABSOLUTE principle be happy with that.
The law is very important but it's not the be all and end all, it's written by people and people can be bias and fallible
This. Trump has very little hope of victory without the courts (and especially the Supreme Court) rigging the process in his favour.
It's almost as if democracy would be better served if the US just counted the votes and kept the lawyers as far away from the entire process as possible...
Don't get me wrong, the law is extremely important but it's not the be all and end all of civilisation
The concept of the rule of law and its importance goes all the way to the Ancient Greeks.
“Let no man live uncurbed by law or curbed by tyranny.” (Aeschylus’s The Oresteia). It
And Ministers will be curbed by law.
What the law is will be changed but that is what Parliament does. That is what Parliament has always done.
And so when Parliament legislates to say that there will be no further elections and the courts have no right to overturn that legilsation it will be fine.
Either you believe in the rule of law, Phil, or you don't. And you don't.
If Parliament legislated to say that there will be no further elections then that would be the law.
In those circumstances 100% absolutely I would not support, believe or defend the law. I would support breaking the law to get the law changed in those circumstances absolutely. Wouldn't you?
Of course. But unlike you, I would prefer to be in a situation where it was possible for such legislation to be struck down by the courts.
538 still has Biden +5.5 in PA vs +7 nationally, but if what we've been seeing in the recent PA polls carries on there will be no more EC deficit...
HYUFD won't take any notice, because it's not from Trafalgar or Rasmussen.
Cut him some slack. Nationally Monmouth has Trump within 5 and Emerson within 4 recently. That's close, and they are both A Grade pollsters.
It's not done yet.
Plus we have the first Trump v Biden debate tonight too
Looking back historically on who post debate polls judged won the first debate we have Hillary, Romney, Obama, Kerry, Gore, Bill Clinton, Perot, Dukakis, Mondale, Ford and Kennedy. So a mixed bag in terms of who actually went onto win the election and if Trump does win tonight he would be the first incumbent President to win the first debate since Bill Clinton so the odds should favour Biden https://news.gallup.com/poll/195923/clinton-debate-victory-larger-side-modern-debates.aspx
Honestly I dont think the debates will change much. Both sides are quite well entrenched, this election feels much more Us vs Them more than any other election I can remember even 2016. Trump supporters seemingly will not abandon him even with a string of bad news stories showing him in a negative light, on the other side Biden is the Not Trump candidate and so his supporters are not going to go anywhere else when a Biden gaffe or story comes along. With the percentage of undecided in the polls it would take something utterly amazing in the debates to shift the polling I feel.
The Monmouth and Emerson polls are the lower end of the polling we are seeing, other A Grade pollsters have had Biden up in the 9's and 10's which are the upper end, its basically a pick and choose which one you want to believe. the polling averages have barely changed for months.
It is an election where the only thing that matters is getting out the vote and making sure it's there to be counted on election day.
That is perhaps naive - what may count the most is after election day, whether the courts and especially the supreme court will support a coup. Trump is going to claim a win on the night, and he may well be marginally ahead on votes counted by then.
If the Supreme Court rules he has won (I know its not that simple) despite the votes, he'll have won. For that will BE THE LAW. Will everyone defending the law like an ABSOLUTE principle be happy with that.
The law is very important but it's not the be all and end all, it's written by people and people can be bias and fallible
This. Trump has very little hope of victory without the courts (and especially the Supreme Court) rigging the process in his favour.
It's almost as if democracy would be better served if the US just counted the votes and kept the lawyers as far away from the entire process as possible...
Don't get me wrong, the law is extremely important but it's not the be all and end all of civilisation
The concept of the rule of law and its importance goes all the way to the Ancient Greeks.
“Let no man live uncurbed by law or curbed by tyranny.” (Aeschylus’s The Oresteia). It
And Ministers will be curbed by law.
What the law is will be changed but that is what Parliament does. That is what Parliament has always done.
And so when Parliament legislates to say that there will be no further elections and the courts have no right to overturn that legilsation it will be fine.
Either you believe in the rule of law, Phil, or you don't. And you don't.
If Parliament legislated to say that there will be no further elections then that would be the law.
In those circumstances 100% absolutely I would not support, believe or defend the law. I would support breaking the law to get the law changed in those circumstances absolutely. Wouldn't you?
You continuously misrepresent what “the rule of law” means. Legislating to remove elections would be a contravention of the rule of law. There is no contradiction.
538 still has Biden +5.5 in PA vs +7 nationally, but if what we've been seeing in the recent PA polls carries on there will be no more EC deficit...
HYUFD won't take any notice, because it's not from Trafalgar or Rasmussen.
Cut him some slack. Nationally Monmouth has Trump within 5 and Emerson within 4 recently. That's close, and they are both A Grade pollsters.
It's not done yet.
Plus we have the first Trump v Biden debate tonight too
Looking back historically on who post debate polls judged won the first debate we have Hillary, Romney, Obama, Kerry, Gore, Bill Clinton, Perot, Dukakis, Mondale, Ford and Kennedy. So a mixed bag in terms of who actually went onto win the election and if Trump does win tonight he would be the first incumbent President to win the first debate since Bill Clinton so the odds should favour Biden https://news.gallup.com/poll/195923/clinton-debate-victory-larger-side-modern-debates.aspx
Honestly I dont think the debates will change much. Both sides are quite well entrenched, this election feels much more Us vs Them more than any other election I can remember even 2016. Trump supporters seemingly will not abandon him even with a string of bad news stories showing him in a negative light, on the other side Biden is the Not Trump candidate and so his supporters are not going to go anywhere else when a Biden gaffe or story comes along. With the percentage of undecided in the polls it would take something utterly amazing in the debates to shift the polling I feel.
The Monmouth and Emerson polls are the lower end of the polling we are seeing, other A Grade pollsters have had Biden up in the 9's and 10's which are the upper end, its basically a pick and choose which one you want to believe. the polling averages have barely changed for months.
It is an election where the only thing that matters is getting out the vote and making sure it's there to be counted on election day.
That is perhaps naive - what may count the most is after election day, whether the courts and especially the supreme court will support a coup. Trump is going to claim a win on the night, and he may well be marginally ahead on votes counted by then.
If the Supreme Court rules he has won (I know its not that simple) despite the votes, he'll have won. For that will BE THE LAW. Will everyone defending the law like an ABSOLUTE principle be happy with that.
The law is very important but it's not the be all and end all, it's written by people and people can be bias and fallible
This. Trump has very little hope of victory without the courts (and especially the Supreme Court) rigging the process in his favour.
It's almost as if democracy would be better served if the US just counted the votes and kept the lawyers as far away from the entire process as possible...
Don't get me wrong, the law is extremely important but it's not the be all and end all of civilisation
The concept of the rule of law and its importance goes all the way to the Ancient Greeks.
“Let no man live uncurbed by law or curbed by tyranny.” (Aeschylus’s The Oresteia). It
And Ministers will be curbed by law.
What the law is will be changed but that is what Parliament does. That is what Parliament has always done.
And so when Parliament legislates to say that there will be no further elections and the courts have no right to overturn that legilsation it will be fine.
Either you believe in the rule of law, Phil, or you don't. And you don't.
He seems to think that politicians are above the law if they have won an election. Pretty much what Trump says too. With people like Johnson as PM, the UK will need to have a proper written constitution.
Yep - and for an elected head of state. As the Internal Market Bill and last year's attempt to shut down parliament show, the monarch has no agency in the face of an executive determined to ride roughshod over the constitution. An elected head of state would have his/her own mandate, and so more freedom to act against a rogue government.
The government line when asked if you can do x, its unclear from the rules, they should repeat the mantra that rules can't cover every eventuality and that the principal that everybody should live by is to minimize extended close contact with people not from their own household, especially in an indoor setting, wear a mask whenever one can and practice good hygiene.
That’s fine when the rules are merely “guidance”. It doesn’t cut it when the rules are laws, enforceable by potentially enormous fines. And if the response is that mostly the enforcement provisions won’t be used, then what’s the point?
And by forthright, I don't mean re-submitting the same Withdrawal Bill time and again without modification, in the hope it would eventually pass due to fatigue.
Mrs May seems to understand that you either support the rule of law as the foundation stone of democracy or you support the Internal Market Bill. There is no middle ground available here.
I suspect that part of the motivation is also the knowledge that her own Withdrawal Agreement and premiership was ultimately torpedoed because a chunk of her party refused to accept the potential legal consequences of the backstop provisions (“permanently stuck in the Customs Union” etc).
Even though these same people have no problem in saying that they are free to reject the legal consequences of their own Withdrawal agreement - and not just because of circumstances where the EU might be “acting in bad faith in trade negotiation”, but because they didn’t understand/accept the central implications of what they had signed up to.
It goes way beyond that, though. The bill legislates to put ministers beyond the rule of law full stop. Section 45 states explicitly that they will not be bound by any law, international or domestic, when enacting its provisions.
I seem to recall DavidL giving the view that you grossly extend the scope power of that provision.
Which is by the by really. Plenty may well think even though we can exercise sovereignty in this way and even if it is not the worst case scenario envisaged by some, and even if someone thinks its not just plain wrong, it still isn't a sensible move.
He did. On the basis that the Section 45 powers only related to Sections 42 and 43 (relating to GB/NI trade). But I think there were two flaws in his analysis: (1) that if the government purported to exercise the S.45 powers more widely, S.45 itself tries to stop a challenge to that. Whether the courts would agree is another matter; and (2) even if the powers are primarily exercised for a proper purpose they could still breach a domestic law and S.45 allows them to do that. So the likely effect and certainly the intention of this section is very wide indeed.
Subsequent laws can override previous laws. The Human Rights Act sets itself above other laws, why can't this one?
Because it overrides International Treaties which is slightly more of a problem - and the Human Rights Act did the exact opposite it moved items inside International Treaties into UK law.
I couldn't care less about overriding Treaties. The UK has done that before as has Germany and other countries all over the globe and the Courts have ruled it lawful before.
Shouldn't we listen to the Courts here? Funny that!
We absolutely should listen to the courts. The Internal Market Bill seeks to ensure we can't. You support it because you do not believe in the rule of law.
In the last month, I've been in New Mexico (moderate restrictions), Arizona (almost no restrictions) and Orange and Los Angeles counties, California (lots of restrictions).
Outside of Holbrook, AZ (a small town in the middle of nowhere), you couldn't tell the difference between the places with government mandated restrictions, and without.
Which tells you an important thing: behaviour is changed irrespective of government diktat.
Indeed, the hotels we stayed at in Arizona had more restrictions than the ones in California - so no room service, for example. (The reason being, apparently, that if the government mandates a behaviour, and you follow it, you're OK. But if they don't, and lots of people get sick, and you *could* have foreseen an issue, you will get sued. Especially by your staff.)
To go back to the first point though. Behaviour is changes by the virus, irrespective of what the government says. Shops insist on face coverings, irrespective of government policy. Restaraunt staff wear masks. There is no bar service. (Or, in Santa Fe, you have an orderly, distanced queue to get served at the bar, before heading off to the roof terrace to drink. Which worked, by the way, *really* well.)
This is, of course, why there is so little difference in outcomes between a Sweden and a France, or between an Arizona and a California.
But it also tells you that you might as well limit restrictions to the most dangerous of activities (karaoke, for example), plus requirements for mask wearing on public transport.
Because most people will still social distance and most stores and restaurants will impose restrictions.
By the same token those who believe that the economy would be back to normal if all the restrictions were lifted are wrong.
If all restriction ended tomorrow I would still not be going anywhere near a pub, travelling on a plane, rejoining my gym, renewing my PL season ticket, going to a concert/theatre/cinema etc etc. I doubt I am alone. Until there is a vaccine many people are not going to be doing what they were doing this time next year.
I'm seriously debating going to the cinema to see Tenet again tomorrow night as supposedly last night there was 1 person in a 300 seat screen
Don't get me wrong I am not simply hiding at home. We go out to lunch a few times week (well spaced restaurant with staff in masks), travelled to France (tunnel, own car, villa with us as sole occupants), meet friends and family etc etc.
I simply assess our own risk and avoid situations where it is impossible to avoid those ignoring the basic rules.. Mask wearing has been helpful because it helps highlight the numpties who are on public transport or in shops without one and makes it easy to give them a wide berth.
You final paragraph highlights the issue with masks. People think it is safe to go near people wearing masks.
538 still has Biden +5.5 in PA vs +7 nationally, but if what we've been seeing in the recent PA polls carries on there will be no more EC deficit...
HYUFD won't take any notice, because it's not from Trafalgar or Rasmussen.
Cut him some slack. Nationally Monmouth has Trump within 5 and Emerson within 4 recently. That's close, and they are both A Grade pollsters.
It's not done yet.
Plus we have the first Trump v Biden debate tonight too
Looking back historically on who post debate polls judged won the first debate we have Hillary, Romney, Obama, Kerry, Gore, Bill Clinton, Perot, Dukakis, Mondale, Ford and Kennedy. So a mixed bag in terms of who actually went onto win the election and if Trump does win tonight he would be the first incumbent President to win the first debate since Bill Clinton so the odds should favour Biden https://news.gallup.com/poll/195923/clinton-debate-victory-larger-side-modern-debates.aspx
Honestly I dont think the debates will change much. Both sides are quite well entrenched, this election feels much more Us vs Them more than any other election I can remember even 2016. Trump supporters seemingly will not abandon him even with a string of bad news stories showing him in a negative light, on the other side Biden is the Not Trump candidate and so his supporters are not going to go anywhere else when a Biden gaffe or story comes along. With the percentage of undecided in the polls it would take something utterly amazing in the debates to shift the polling I feel.
The Monmouth and Emerson polls are the lower end of the polling we are seeing, other A Grade pollsters have had Biden up in the 9's and 10's which are the upper end, its basically a pick and choose which one you want to believe. the polling averages have barely changed for months.
It is an election where the only thing that matters is getting out the vote and making sure it's there to be counted on election day.
That is perhaps naive - what may count the most is after election day, whether the courts and especially the supreme court will support a coup. Trump is going to claim a win on the night, and he may well be marginally ahead on votes counted by then.
If the Supreme Court rules he has won (I know its not that simple) despite the votes, he'll have won. For that will BE THE LAW. Will everyone defending the law like an ABSOLUTE principle be happy with that.
The law is very important but it's not the be all and end all, it's written by people and people can be bias and fallible
This. Trump has very little hope of victory without the courts (and especially the Supreme Court) rigging the process in his favour.
It's almost as if democracy would be better served if the US just counted the votes and kept the lawyers as far away from the entire process as possible...
Don't get me wrong, the law is extremely important but it's not the be all and end all of civilisation
The concept of the rule of law and its importance goes all the way to the Ancient Greeks.
“Let no man live uncurbed by law or curbed by tyranny.” (Aeschylus’s The Oresteia). It
And Ministers will be curbed by law.
What the law is will be changed but that is what Parliament does. That is what Parliament has always done.
And so when Parliament legislates to say that there will be no further elections and the courts have no right to overturn that legilsation it will be fine.
Either you believe in the rule of law, Phil, or you don't. And you don't.
He seems to think that politicians are above the law if they have won an election. Pretty much what Trump says too. With people like Johnson as PM, the UK will need to have a proper written constitution.
Yep - and for an elected head of state. As the Internal Market Bill and last year's attempt to shut down parliament show, the monarch has no agency in the face of an executive determined to ride roughshod over the constitution. An elected head of state would have his/her own mandate, and so more freedom to act against a rogue government.
To be fair, the supreme court ruling that shutting down parliament was illegal showed the British constitution can still function. Unfortunately, Johnson then going on to win an election has just encouraged the wreckers.
538 still has Biden +5.5 in PA vs +7 nationally, but if what we've been seeing in the recent PA polls carries on there will be no more EC deficit...
HYUFD won't take any notice, because it's not from Trafalgar or Rasmussen.
Cut him some slack. Nationally Monmouth has Trump within 5 and Emerson within 4 recently. That's close, and they are both A Grade pollsters.
It's not done yet.
Plus we have the first Trump v Biden debate tonight too
Looking back historically on who post debate polls judged won the first debate we have Hillary, Romney, Obama, Kerry, Gore, Bill Clinton, Perot, Dukakis, Mondale, Ford and Kennedy. So a mixed bag in terms of who actually went onto win the election and if Trump does win tonight he would be the first incumbent President to win the first debate since Bill Clinton so the odds should favour Biden https://news.gallup.com/poll/195923/clinton-debate-victory-larger-side-modern-debates.aspx
Honestly I dont think the debates will change much. Both sides are quite well entrenched, this election feels much more Us vs Them more than any other election I can remember even 2016. Trump supporters seemingly will not abandon him even with a string of bad news stories showing him in a negative light, on the other side Biden is the Not Trump candidate and so his supporters are not going to go anywhere else when a Biden gaffe or story comes along. With the percentage of undecided in the polls it would take something utterly amazing in the debates to shift the polling I feel.
The Monmouth and Emerson polls are the lower end of the polling we are seeing, other A Grade pollsters have had Biden up in the 9's and 10's which are the upper end, its basically a pick and choose which one you want to believe. the polling averages have barely changed for months.
It is an election where the only thing that matters is getting out the vote and making sure it's there to be counted on election day.
That is perhaps naive - what may count the most is after election day, whether the courts and especially the supreme court will support a coup. Trump is going to claim a win on the night, and he may well be marginally ahead on votes counted by then.
If the Supreme Court rules he has won (I know its not that simple) despite the votes, he'll have won. For that will BE THE LAW. Will everyone defending the law like an ABSOLUTE principle be happy with that.
The law is very important but it's not the be all and end all, it's written by people and people can be bias and fallible
This. Trump has very little hope of victory without the courts (and especially the Supreme Court) rigging the process in his favour.
It's almost as if democracy would be better served if the US just counted the votes and kept the lawyers as far away from the entire process as possible...
Don't get me wrong, the law is extremely important but it's not the be all and end all of civilisation
The concept of the rule of law and its importance goes all the way to the Ancient Greeks.
“Let no man live uncurbed by law or curbed by tyranny.” (Aeschylus’s The Oresteia). It
And Ministers will be curbed by law.
What the law is will be changed but that is what Parliament does. That is what Parliament has always done.
And so when Parliament legislates to say that there will be no further elections and the courts have no right to overturn that legilsation it will be fine.
Either you believe in the rule of law, Phil, or you don't. And you don't.
If Parliament legislated to say that there will be no further elections then that would be the law.
In those circumstances 100% absolutely I would not support, believe or defend the law. I would support breaking the law to get the law changed in those circumstances absolutely. Wouldn't you?
You continuously misrepresent what “the rule of law” means. Legislating to remove elections would be a contravention of the rule of law. There is no contradiction.
If a Labour government were proposing what this government is proposing, Phil would be outraged. He is a hack, not a libertarian, a Conservative or a democrat.
538 still has Biden +5.5 in PA vs +7 nationally, but if what we've been seeing in the recent PA polls carries on there will be no more EC deficit...
HYUFD won't take any notice, because it's not from Trafalgar or Rasmussen.
Cut him some slack. Nationally Monmouth has Trump within 5 and Emerson within 4 recently. That's close, and they are both A Grade pollsters.
It's not done yet.
Plus we have the first Trump v Biden debate tonight too
Looking back historically on who post debate polls judged won the first debate we have Hillary, Romney, Obama, Kerry, Gore, Bill Clinton, Perot, Dukakis, Mondale, Ford and Kennedy. So a mixed bag in terms of who actually went onto win the election and if Trump does win tonight he would be the first incumbent President to win the first debate since Bill Clinton so the odds should favour Biden https://news.gallup.com/poll/195923/clinton-debate-victory-larger-side-modern-debates.aspx
Honestly I dont think the debates will change much. Both sides are quite well entrenched, this election feels much more Us vs Them more than any other election I can remember even 2016. Trump supporters seemingly will not abandon him even with a string of bad news stories showing him in a negative light, on the other side Biden is the Not Trump candidate and so his supporters are not going to go anywhere else when a Biden gaffe or story comes along. With the percentage of undecided in the polls it would take something utterly amazing in the debates to shift the polling I feel.
The Monmouth and Emerson polls are the lower end of the polling we are seeing, other A Grade pollsters have had Biden up in the 9's and 10's which are the upper end, its basically a pick and choose which one you want to believe. the polling averages have barely changed for months.
It is an election where the only thing that matters is getting out the vote and making sure it's there to be counted on election day.
That is perhaps naive - what may count the most is after election day, whether the courts and especially the supreme court will support a coup. Trump is going to claim a win on the night, and he may well be marginally ahead on votes counted by then.
If the Supreme Court rules he has won (I know its not that simple) despite the votes, he'll have won. For that will BE THE LAW. Will everyone defending the law like an ABSOLUTE principle be happy with that.
The law is very important but it's not the be all and end all, it's written by people and people can be bias and fallible
This. Trump has very little hope of victory without the courts (and especially the Supreme Court) rigging the process in his favour.
It's almost as if democracy would be better served if the US just counted the votes and kept the lawyers as far away from the entire process as possible...
Don't get me wrong, the law is extremely important but it's not the be all and end all of civilisation
The concept of the rule of law and its importance goes all the way to the Ancient Greeks.
“Let no man live uncurbed by law or curbed by tyranny.” (Aeschylus’s The Oresteia). It
And Ministers will be curbed by law.
What the law is will be changed but that is what Parliament does. That is what Parliament has always done.
And so when Parliament legislates to say that there will be no further elections and the courts have no right to overturn that legilsation it will be fine.
Either you believe in the rule of law, Phil, or you don't. And you don't.
If Parliament legislated to say that there will be no further elections then that would be the law.
In those circumstances 100% absolutely I would not support, believe or defend the law. I would support breaking the law to get the law changed in those circumstances absolutely. Wouldn't you?
Of course. But unlike you, I would prefer to be in a situation where it was possible for such legislation to be struck down by the courts.
That's lovely wishful thinking but we are not. In this country the courts are subordinate to the law and Parliament passes the laws. That is not a novel concept it has always been the case. Parliament has voted to cancel or delay elections in the past and could do so again in the future, it has that power.
I would rather be in a position where the public, not the courts, ensure that is something no Government can do.
In the USA the Constitution decrees that the Electoral College in a method the legislatures approve of. If Trump loses the election in GOP states and the GOP legislatures dispute that and pass emergency legislation decreeing that Trump not Biden electors are awarded . . . and the Courts and SCOTUS rule that legal . . . then that would be following your precious "rule of law" but I would oppose that. Would you oppose that?
''Unenforceable' rules to trigger hospitality sector collapse, lockdown city leaders warn 'The stark reality is that businesses are facing the prospect of a complete decimation in trade,' a letter to ministers says.''
It's your website and you make the rules but I feel like doxxing is bad
That's not doxxing, doxxing would be revealing personal details. SeanT used his name as his username.
We don't even know that is his real name.
Sadly we do as it was very possible to link SeanT's posts from abroad with those of a Saturday Times Holiday Journalist with a first name of Sean and a surname beginning with T
Whether the other posters are that same journalist is a slightly different question but the posting style would suggest that it is the same person posting.
And by forthright, I don't mean re-submitting the same Withdrawal Bill time and again without modification, in the hope it would eventually pass due to fatigue.
Mrs May seems to understand that you either support the rule of law as the foundation stone of democracy or you support the Internal Market Bill. There is no middle ground available here.
I suspect that part of the motivation is also the knowledge that her own Withdrawal Agreement and premiership was ultimately torpedoed because a chunk of her party refused to accept the potential legal consequences of the backstop provisions (“permanently stuck in the Customs Union” etc).
Even though these same people have no problem in saying that they are free to reject the legal consequences of their own Withdrawal agreement - and not just because of circumstances where the EU might be “acting in bad faith in trade negotiation”, but because they didn’t understand/accept the central implications of what they had signed up to.
It goes way beyond that, though. The bill legislates to put ministers beyond the rule of law full stop. Section 45 states explicitly that they will not be bound by any law, international or domestic, when enacting its provisions.
I seem to recall DavidL giving the view that you grossly extend the scope power of that provision.
Which is by the by really. Plenty may well think even though we can exercise sovereignty in this way and even if it is not the worst case scenario envisaged by some, and even if someone thinks its not just plain wrong, it still isn't a sensible move.
He did. On the basis that the Section 45 powers only related to Sections 42 and 43 (relating to GB/NI trade). But I think there were two flaws in his analysis: (1) that if the government purported to exercise the S.45 powers more widely, S.45 itself tries to stop a challenge to that. Whether the courts would agree is another matter; and (2) even if the powers are primarily exercised for a proper purpose they could still breach a domestic law and S.45 allows them to do that. So the likely effect and certainly the intention of this section is very wide indeed.
Subsequent laws can override previous laws. The Human Rights Act sets itself above other laws, why can't this one?
Because it overrides International Treaties which is slightly more of a problem - and the Human Rights Act did the exact opposite it moved items inside International Treaties into UK law.
I couldn't care less about overriding Treaties. The UK has done that before as has Germany and other countries all over the globe and the Courts have ruled it lawful before.
Shouldn't we listen to the Courts here? Funny that!
We absolutely should listen to the courts. The Internal Market Bill seeks to ensure we can't. You support it because you do not believe in the rule of law.
The courts will still be there even after the Internal Market Bill, they will just need to take the Internal Market Bill into account when they rule, just as they need to take any other Bill into account when they do so.
It's your website and you make the rules but I feel like doxxing is bad
That's not doxxing, doxxing would be revealing personal details. SeanT used his name as his username.
We don't even know that is his real name.
Sadly we do as it was very possible to link SeanT's posts from abroad with those of a Saturday Times Holiday Journalist with a first name of Sean and a surname beginning with T
Whether the other posters are that same journalist is a slightly different question but the posting style would suggest that it is the same person posting.
Well I wasn't aware of that but so that makes the case slightly more nuanced but I still wouldn't suggest it was doxxing. Sean chose to use the username SeanT, all Mike did was point that out.
538 still has Biden +5.5 in PA vs +7 nationally, but if what we've been seeing in the recent PA polls carries on there will be no more EC deficit...
HYUFD won't take any notice, because it's not from Trafalgar or Rasmussen.
Cut him some slack. Nationally Monmouth has Trump within 5 and Emerson within 4 recently. That's close, and they are both A Grade pollsters.
It's not done yet.
Plus we have the first Trump v Biden debate tonight too
Looking back historically on who post debate polls judged won the first debate we have Hillary, Romney, Obama, Kerry, Gore, Bill Clinton, Perot, Dukakis, Mondale, Ford and Kennedy. So a mixed bag in terms of who actually went onto win the election and if Trump does win tonight he would be the first incumbent President to win the first debate since Bill Clinton so the odds should favour Biden https://news.gallup.com/poll/195923/clinton-debate-victory-larger-side-modern-debates.aspx
Honestly I dont think the debates will change much. Both sides are quite well entrenched, this election feels much more Us vs Them more than any other election I can remember even 2016. Trump supporters seemingly will not abandon him even with a string of bad news stories showing him in a negative light, on the other side Biden is the Not Trump candidate and so his supporters are not going to go anywhere else when a Biden gaffe or story comes along. With the percentage of undecided in the polls it would take something utterly amazing in the debates to shift the polling I feel.
The Monmouth and Emerson polls are the lower end of the polling we are seeing, other A Grade pollsters have had Biden up in the 9's and 10's which are the upper end, its basically a pick and choose which one you want to believe. the polling averages have barely changed for months.
It is an election where the only thing that matters is getting out the vote and making sure it's there to be counted on election day.
That is perhaps naive - what may count the most is after election day, whether the courts and especially the supreme court will support a coup. Trump is going to claim a win on the night, and he may well be marginally ahead on votes counted by then.
If the Supreme Court rules he has won (I know its not that simple) despite the votes, he'll have won. For that will BE THE LAW. Will everyone defending the law like an ABSOLUTE principle be happy with that.
The law is very important but it's not the be all and end all, it's written by people and people can be bias and fallible
This. Trump has very little hope of victory without the courts (and especially the Supreme Court) rigging the process in his favour.
It's almost as if democracy would be better served if the US just counted the votes and kept the lawyers as far away from the entire process as possible...
Don't get me wrong, the law is extremely important but it's not the be all and end all of civilisation
The concept of the rule of law and its importance goes all the way to the Ancient Greeks.
“Let no man live uncurbed by law or curbed by tyranny.” (Aeschylus’s The Oresteia). It
And Ministers will be curbed by law.
What the law is will be changed but that is what Parliament does. That is what Parliament has always done.
And so when Parliament legislates to say that there will be no further elections and the courts have no right to overturn that legilsation it will be fine.
Either you believe in the rule of law, Phil, or you don't. And you don't.
If Parliament legislated to say that there will be no further elections then that would be the law.
In those circumstances 100% absolutely I would not support, believe or defend the law. I would support breaking the law to get the law changed in those circumstances absolutely. Wouldn't you?
You continuously misrepresent what “the rule of law” means. Legislating to remove elections would be a contravention of the rule of law. There is no contradiction.
If a Labour government were proposing what this government is proposing, Phil would be outraged. He is a hack, not a libertarian, a Conservative or a democrat.
Phil is worse than me (in my support for Keir) in his unfailing support for anything Boris Johnson does or says. You can be sure he will argue for Johnson, doesn't matter how illogical or ridiculous.
In the last month, I've been in New Mexico (moderate restrictions), Arizona (almost no restrictions) and Orange and Los Angeles counties, California (lots of restrictions).
Outside of Holbrook, AZ (a small town in the middle of nowhere), you couldn't tell the difference between the places with government mandated restrictions, and without.
Which tells you an important thing: behaviour is changed irrespective of government diktat.
Indeed, the hotels we stayed at in Arizona had more restrictions than the ones in California - so no room service, for example. (The reason being, apparently, that if the government mandates a behaviour, and you follow it, you're OK. But if they don't, and lots of people get sick, and you *could* have foreseen an issue, you will get sued. Especially by your staff.)
To go back to the first point though. Behaviour is changes by the virus, irrespective of what the government says. Shops insist on face coverings, irrespective of government policy. Restaraunt staff wear masks. There is no bar service. (Or, in Santa Fe, you have an orderly, distanced queue to get served at the bar, before heading off to the roof terrace to drink. Which worked, by the way, *really* well.)
This is, of course, why there is so little difference in outcomes between a Sweden and a France, or between an Arizona and a California.
But it also tells you that you might as well limit restrictions to the most dangerous of activities (karaoke, for example), plus requirements for mask wearing on public transport.
Because most people will still social distance and most stores and restaurants will impose restrictions.
By the same token those who believe that the economy would be back to normal if all the restrictions were lifted are wrong.
If all restriction ended tomorrow I would still not be going anywhere near a pub, travelling on a plane, rejoining my gym, renewing my PL season ticket, going to a concert/theatre/cinema etc etc. I doubt I am alone. Until there is a vaccine many people are not going to be doing what they were doing this time next year.
I'm seriously debating going to the cinema to see Tenet again tomorrow night as supposedly last night there was 1 person in a 300 seat screen
Don't get me wrong I am not simply hiding at home. We go out to lunch a few times week (well spaced restaurant with staff in masks), travelled to France (tunnel, own car, villa with us as sole occupants), meet friends and family etc etc.
I simply assess our own risk and avoid situations where it is impossible to avoid those ignoring the basic rules.. Mask wearing has been helpful because it helps highlight the numpties who are on public transport or in shops without one and makes it easy to give them a wide berth.
You final paragraph highlights the issue with masks. People think it is safe to go near people wearing masks.
Not you again
It must be annoying that all I predicted would happen in July has happened
That's a huge lead on that question, IMHO this is why given time Labour will lead by several points.
Not a given.
My boy Dave led this metric with even larger leads, yet Labour still led in the polls in 2010-2015.
I've had this argument before so forgive me but weren't the 2010-2015 polls on average wrong? After the election there was quite a lot of work done into their unreliability so I am not sure it is fair to match current polls with those.
Polls from then onwards, from at least one pollster have got the result more or less spot on.
No. Had my son gone to MMU this year as he had considered, I would already have gone to collect him. The Cummings edict allows me to use good old British common sense, and leaving an autistic young adult effectively imprisoned is a Bad Idea.
538 still has Biden +5.5 in PA vs +7 nationally, but if what we've been seeing in the recent PA polls carries on there will be no more EC deficit...
HYUFD won't take any notice, because it's not from Trafalgar or Rasmussen.
Cut him some slack. Nationally Monmouth has Trump within 5 and Emerson within 4 recently. That's close, and they are both A Grade pollsters.
It's not done yet.
Plus we have the first Trump v Biden debate tonight too
Looking back historically on who post debate polls judged won the first debate we have Hillary, Romney, Obama, Kerry, Gore, Bill Clinton, Perot, Dukakis, Mondale, Ford and Kennedy. So a mixed bag in terms of who actually went onto win the election and if Trump does win tonight he would be the first incumbent President to win the first debate since Bill Clinton so the odds should favour Biden https://news.gallup.com/poll/195923/clinton-debate-victory-larger-side-modern-debates.aspx
Honestly I dont think the debates will change much. Both sides are quite well entrenched, this election feels much more Us vs Them more than any other election I can remember even 2016. Trump supporters seemingly will not abandon him even with a string of bad news stories showing him in a negative light, on the other side Biden is the Not Trump candidate and so his supporters are not going to go anywhere else when a Biden gaffe or story comes along. With the percentage of undecided in the polls it would take something utterly amazing in the debates to shift the polling I feel.
The Monmouth and Emerson polls are the lower end of the polling we are seeing, other A Grade pollsters have had Biden up in the 9's and 10's which are the upper end, its basically a pick and choose which one you want to believe. the polling averages have barely changed for months.
It is an election where the only thing that matters is getting out the vote and making sure it's there to be counted on election day.
That is perhaps naive - what may count the most is after election day, whether the courts and especially the supreme court will support a coup. Trump is going to claim a win on the night, and he may well be marginally ahead on votes counted by then.
If the Supreme Court rules he has won (I know its not that simple) despite the votes, he'll have won. For that will BE THE LAW. Will everyone defending the law like an ABSOLUTE principle be happy with that.
The law is very important but it's not the be all and end all, it's written by people and people can be bias and fallible
This. Trump has very little hope of victory without the courts (and especially the Supreme Court) rigging the process in his favour.
It's almost as if democracy would be better served if the US just counted the votes and kept the lawyers as far away from the entire process as possible...
Don't get me wrong, the law is extremely important but it's not the be all and end all of civilisation
The concept of the rule of law and its importance goes all the way to the Ancient Greeks.
“Let no man live uncurbed by law or curbed by tyranny.” (Aeschylus’s The Oresteia). It
And Ministers will be curbed by law.
What the law is will be changed but that is what Parliament does. That is what Parliament has always done.
And so when Parliament legislates to say that there will be no further elections and the courts have no right to overturn that legilsation it will be fine.
Either you believe in the rule of law, Phil, or you don't. And you don't.
He seems to think that politicians are above the law if they have won an election. Pretty much what Trump says too. With people like Johnson as PM, the UK will need to have a proper written constitution.
Yep - and for an elected head of state. As the Internal Market Bill and last year's attempt to shut down parliament show, the monarch has no agency in the face of an executive determined to ride roughshod over the constitution. An elected head of state would have his/her own mandate, and so more freedom to act against a rogue government.
I think this is a really important point. Over many years defenders of the Monarchy have argued that the Monarch can protect us from a tyrant-to-be, the ultimate guarantor against a PM with a servile majority legislating away democracy.
But when it came to the suspension of Parliament so that the government could evade scrutiny, HMQEII showed that she was unwilling or unable to make that stand. She will do exactly as her Ministers tell her to do. We therefore do not have an independent head of state and could do with creating one.
I think the normal British way of doing this would be to retain the Monarchy for show, but have her theoretical powers vested in someone able to exercise them if required.
In the last month, I've been in New Mexico (moderate restrictions), Arizona (almost no restrictions) and Orange and Los Angeles counties, California (lots of restrictions).
Outside of Holbrook, AZ (a small town in the middle of nowhere), you couldn't tell the difference between the places with government mandated restrictions, and without.
Which tells you an important thing: behaviour is changed irrespective of government diktat.
Indeed, the hotels we stayed at in Arizona had more restrictions than the ones in California - so no room service, for example. (The reason being, apparently, that if the government mandates a behaviour, and you follow it, you're OK. But if they don't, and lots of people get sick, and you *could* have foreseen an issue, you will get sued. Especially by your staff.)
To go back to the first point though. Behaviour is changes by the virus, irrespective of what the government says. Shops insist on face coverings, irrespective of government policy. Restaraunt staff wear masks. There is no bar service. (Or, in Santa Fe, you have an orderly, distanced queue to get served at the bar, before heading off to the roof terrace to drink. Which worked, by the way, *really* well.)
This is, of course, why there is so little difference in outcomes between a Sweden and a France, or between an Arizona and a California.
But it also tells you that you might as well limit restrictions to the most dangerous of activities (karaoke, for example), plus requirements for mask wearing on public transport.
Because most people will still social distance and most stores and restaurants will impose restrictions.
By the same token those who believe that the economy would be back to normal if all the restrictions were lifted are wrong.
If all restriction ended tomorrow I would still not be going anywhere near a pub, travelling on a plane, rejoining my gym, renewing my PL season ticket, going to a concert/theatre/cinema etc etc. I doubt I am alone. Until there is a vaccine many people are not going to be doing what they were doing this time next year.
I'm seriously debating going to the cinema to see Tenet again tomorrow night as supposedly last night there was 1 person in a 300 seat screen
Don't get me wrong I am not simply hiding at home. We go out to lunch a few times week (well spaced restaurant with staff in masks), travelled to France (tunnel, own car, villa with us as sole occupants), meet friends and family etc etc.
I simply assess our own risk and avoid situations where it is impossible to avoid those ignoring the basic rules.. Mask wearing has been helpful because it helps highlight the numpties who are on public transport or in shops without one and makes it easy to give them a wide berth.
You final paragraph highlights the issue with masks. People think it is safe to go near people wearing masks.
Not you again
It must be annoying that all I predicted would happen in July has happened
Nothing you predicted has happened as a result of mask wearing you are just some fringe lunatic who has lost the plot.
538 still has Biden +5.5 in PA vs +7 nationally, but if what we've been seeing in the recent PA polls carries on there will be no more EC deficit...
HYUFD won't take any notice, because it's not from Trafalgar or Rasmussen.
Cut him some slack. Nationally Monmouth has Trump within 5 and Emerson within 4 recently. That's close, and they are both A Grade pollsters.
It's not done yet.
Plus we have the first Trump v Biden debate tonight too
Looking back historically on who post debate polls judged won the first debate we have Hillary, Romney, Obama, Kerry, Gore, Bill Clinton, Perot, Dukakis, Mondale, Ford and Kennedy. So a mixed bag in terms of who actually went onto win the election and if Trump does win tonight he would be the first incumbent President to win the first debate since Bill Clinton so the odds should favour Biden https://news.gallup.com/poll/195923/clinton-debate-victory-larger-side-modern-debates.aspx
Honestly I dont think the debates will change much. Both sides are quite well entrenched, this election feels much more Us vs Them more than any other election I can remember even 2016. Trump supporters seemingly will not abandon him even with a string of bad news stories showing him in a negative light, on the other side Biden is the Not Trump candidate and so his supporters are not going to go anywhere else when a Biden gaffe or story comes along. With the percentage of undecided in the polls it would take something utterly amazing in the debates to shift the polling I feel.
The Monmouth and Emerson polls are the lower end of the polling we are seeing, other A Grade pollsters have had Biden up in the 9's and 10's which are the upper end, its basically a pick and choose which one you want to believe. the polling averages have barely changed for months.
It is an election where the only thing that matters is getting out the vote and making sure it's there to be counted on election day.
That is perhaps naive - what may count the most is after election day, whether the courts and especially the supreme court will support a coup. Trump is going to claim a win on the night, and he may well be marginally ahead on votes counted by then.
If the Supreme Court rules he has won (I know its not that simple) despite the votes, he'll have won. For that will BE THE LAW. Will everyone defending the law like an ABSOLUTE principle be happy with that.
The law is very important but it's not the be all and end all, it's written by people and people can be bias and fallible
This. Trump has very little hope of victory without the courts (and especially the Supreme Court) rigging the process in his favour.
It's almost as if democracy would be better served if the US just counted the votes and kept the lawyers as far away from the entire process as possible...
Don't get me wrong, the law is extremely important but it's not the be all and end all of civilisation
The concept of the rule of law and its importance goes all the way to the Ancient Greeks.
“Let no man live uncurbed by law or curbed by tyranny.” (Aeschylus’s The Oresteia). It
And Ministers will be curbed by law.
What the law is will be changed but that is what Parliament does. That is what Parliament has always done.
And so when Parliament legislates to say that there will be no further elections and the courts have no right to overturn that legilsation it will be fine.
Either you believe in the rule of law, Phil, or you don't. And you don't.
If Parliament legislated to say that there will be no further elections then that would be the law.
In those circumstances 100% absolutely I would not support, believe or defend the law. I would support breaking the law to get the law changed in those circumstances absolutely. Wouldn't you?
Of course. But unlike you, I would prefer to be in a situation where it was possible for such legislation to be struck down by the courts.
That's lovely wishful thinking but we are not. In this country the courts are subordinate to the law and Parliament passes the laws. That is not a novel concept it has always been the case. Parliament has voted to cancel or delay elections in the past and could do so again in the future, it has that power.
I would rather be in a position where the public, not the courts, ensure that is something no Government can do.
In the USA the Constitution decrees that the Electoral College in a method the legislatures approve of. If Trump loses the election in GOP states and the GOP legislatures dispute that and pass emergency legislation decreeing that Trump not Biden electors are awarded . . . and the Courts and SCOTUS rule that legal . . . then that would be following your precious "rule of law" but I would oppose that. Would you oppose that?
Phil - let me introduce you to this thing we have called the common law, whereby courts interpret the canon of law passed by Parliament over centuries, as well as any number of previous cases decided by the courts, to reach their decisions. Parliament has voted to cancel or postpone elections, but it has never voted to deny the courts a say in whether doing so was legal or not. And herein lies the difference between the Internal Market Bill and previous legislation. The IMB cancels the common law. You are OK with that. I am not.
As for the US, yes I would oppose the actions of Trump in that scenario. However, I am not sure what that has got to do with your belief that UK ministers should not be subject to the rule of law in the UK.
Good morning. Theresa May is interesting. Not a sentence I thought I'd write. Gives cover to other rebels. A woman scorned indeed. Would have thought Boris had enough experience of those.
FE. Hallelujah. This sector has been ignored, cut and gutted in the focus on Unis and schools for decades. However, this is a long term project not a headline grabbing quick fix. Institutions have closed facilities. Staff on ZHC. Finding qualified people to teach and places locally to teach in won't happen overnight.
538 still has Biden +5.5 in PA vs +7 nationally, but if what we've been seeing in the recent PA polls carries on there will be no more EC deficit...
HYUFD won't take any notice, because it's not from Trafalgar or Rasmussen.
Cut him some slack. Nationally Monmouth has Trump within 5 and Emerson within 4 recently. That's close, and they are both A Grade pollsters.
It's not done yet.
Plus we have the first Trump v Biden debate tonight too
Looking back historically on who post debate polls judged won the first debate we have Hillary, Romney, Obama, Kerry, Gore, Bill Clinton, Perot, Dukakis, Mondale, Ford and Kennedy. So a mixed bag in terms of who actually went onto win the election and if Trump does win tonight he would be the first incumbent President to win the first debate since Bill Clinton so the odds should favour Biden https://news.gallup.com/poll/195923/clinton-debate-victory-larger-side-modern-debates.aspx
Honestly I dont think the debates will change much. Both sides are quite well entrenched, this election feels much more Us vs Them more than any other election I can remember even 2016. Trump supporters seemingly will not abandon him even with a string of bad news stories showing him in a negative light, on the other side Biden is the Not Trump candidate and so his supporters are not going to go anywhere else when a Biden gaffe or story comes along. With the percentage of undecided in the polls it would take something utterly amazing in the debates to shift the polling I feel.
The Monmouth and Emerson polls are the lower end of the polling we are seeing, other A Grade pollsters have had Biden up in the 9's and 10's which are the upper end, its basically a pick and choose which one you want to believe. the polling averages have barely changed for months.
It is an election where the only thing that matters is getting out the vote and making sure it's there to be counted on election day.
That is perhaps naive - what may count the most is after election day, whether the courts and especially the supreme court will support a coup. Trump is going to claim a win on the night, and he may well be marginally ahead on votes counted by then.
If the Supreme Court rules he has won (I know its not that simple) despite the votes, he'll have won. For that will BE THE LAW. Will everyone defending the law like an ABSOLUTE principle be happy with that.
The law is very important but it's not the be all and end all, it's written by people and people can be bias and fallible
This. Trump has very little hope of victory without the courts (and especially the Supreme Court) rigging the process in his favour.
It's almost as if democracy would be better served if the US just counted the votes and kept the lawyers as far away from the entire process as possible...
Don't get me wrong, the law is extremely important but it's not the be all and end all of civilisation
The concept of the rule of law and its importance goes all the way to the Ancient Greeks.
“Let no man live uncurbed by law or curbed by tyranny.” (Aeschylus’s The Oresteia). It
And Ministers will be curbed by law.
What the law is will be changed but that is what Parliament does. That is what Parliament has always done.
And so when Parliament legislates to say that there will be no further elections and the courts have no right to overturn that legilsation it will be fine.
Either you believe in the rule of law, Phil, or you don't. And you don't.
If Parliament legislated to say that there will be no further elections then that would be the law.
In those circumstances 100% absolutely I would not support, believe or defend the law. I would support breaking the law to get the law changed in those circumstances absolutely. Wouldn't you?
You continuously misrepresent what “the rule of law” means. Legislating to remove elections would be a contravention of the rule of law. There is no contradiction.
If a Labour government were proposing what this government is proposing, Phil would be outraged. He is a hack, not a libertarian, a Conservative or a democrat.
Phil is worse than me (in my support for Keir) in his unfailing support for anything Boris Johnson does or says. You can be sure he will argue for Johnson, doesn't matter how illogical or ridiculous.
That's not true, I could name half a dozen times I've opposed Johnson.
Just because I don't agree with the herd here always, doesn't mean I always support Johnson.
538 still has Biden +5.5 in PA vs +7 nationally, but if what we've been seeing in the recent PA polls carries on there will be no more EC deficit...
HYUFD won't take any notice, because it's not from Trafalgar or Rasmussen.
Cut him some slack. Nationally Monmouth has Trump within 5 and Emerson within 4 recently. That's close, and they are both A Grade pollsters.
It's not done yet.
Plus we have the first Trump v Biden debate tonight too
Looking back historically on who post debate polls judged won the first debate we have Hillary, Romney, Obama, Kerry, Gore, Bill Clinton, Perot, Dukakis, Mondale, Ford and Kennedy. So a mixed bag in terms of who actually went onto win the election and if Trump does win tonight he would be the first incumbent President to win the first debate since Bill Clinton so the odds should favour Biden https://news.gallup.com/poll/195923/clinton-debate-victory-larger-side-modern-debates.aspx
Honestly I dont think the debates will change much. Both sides are quite well entrenched, this election feels much more Us vs Them more than any other election I can remember even 2016. Trump supporters seemingly will not abandon him even with a string of bad news stories showing him in a negative light, on the other side Biden is the Not Trump candidate and so his supporters are not going to go anywhere else when a Biden gaffe or story comes along. With the percentage of undecided in the polls it would take something utterly amazing in the debates to shift the polling I feel.
The Monmouth and Emerson polls are the lower end of the polling we are seeing, other A Grade pollsters have had Biden up in the 9's and 10's which are the upper end, its basically a pick and choose which one you want to believe. the polling averages have barely changed for months.
It is an election where the only thing that matters is getting out the vote and making sure it's there to be counted on election day.
That is perhaps naive - what may count the most is after election day, whether the courts and especially the supreme court will support a coup. Trump is going to claim a win on the night, and he may well be marginally ahead on votes counted by then.
If the Supreme Court rules he has won (I know its not that simple) despite the votes, he'll have won. For that will BE THE LAW. Will everyone defending the law like an ABSOLUTE principle be happy with that.
The law is very important but it's not the be all and end all, it's written by people and people can be bias and fallible
This. Trump has very little hope of victory without the courts (and especially the Supreme Court) rigging the process in his favour.
It's almost as if democracy would be better served if the US just counted the votes and kept the lawyers as far away from the entire process as possible...
Don't get me wrong, the law is extremely important but it's not the be all and end all of civilisation
The concept of the rule of law and its importance goes all the way to the Ancient Greeks.
“Let no man live uncurbed by law or curbed by tyranny.” (Aeschylus’s The Oresteia). It
And Ministers will be curbed by law.
What the law is will be changed but that is what Parliament does. That is what Parliament has always done.
And so when Parliament legislates to say that there will be no further elections and the courts have no right to overturn that legilsation it will be fine.
Either you believe in the rule of law, Phil, or you don't. And you don't.
If Parliament legislated to say that there will be no further elections then that would be the law.
In those circumstances 100% absolutely I would not support, believe or defend the law. I would support breaking the law to get the law changed in those circumstances absolutely. Wouldn't you?
Of course. But unlike you, I would prefer to be in a situation where it was possible for such legislation to be struck down by the courts.
That's lovely wishful thinking but we are not. In this country the courts are subordinate to the law and Parliament passes the laws. That is not a novel concept it has always been the case. Parliament has voted to cancel or delay elections in the past and could do so again in the future, it has that power.
I would rather be in a position where the public, not the courts, ensure that is something no Government can do.
In the USA the Constitution decrees that the Electoral College in a method the legislatures approve of. If Trump loses the election in GOP states and the GOP legislatures dispute that and pass emergency legislation decreeing that Trump not Biden electors are awarded . . . and the Courts and SCOTUS rule that legal . . . then that would be following your precious "rule of law" but I would oppose that. Would you oppose that?
Phil - let me introduce you to this thing we have called the common law, whereby courts interpret the canon of law passed by Parliament over centuries, as well as any number of previous cases decided by the courts, to reach their decisions. Parliament has voted to cancel or postpone elections, but it has never voted to deny the courts a say in whether doing so was legal or not. And herein lies the difference between the Internal Market Bill and previous legislation. The IMB cancels the common law. You are OK with that. I am not.
As for the US, yes I would oppose the actions of Trump in that scenario. However, I am not sure what that has got to do with your belief that UK ministers should not be subject to the rule of law in the UK.
The IMB does not cancel the common law. The common law is still there.
Legislation can and has overridden common law in the past. Do you honestly think that has never happened before?
That's a huge lead on that question, IMHO this is why given time Labour will lead by several points.
Not a given.
My boy Dave led this metric with even larger leads, yet Labour still led in the polls in 2010-2015.
I've had this argument before so forgive me but weren't the 2010-2015 polls on average wrong? After the election there was quite a lot of work done into their unreliability so I am not sure it is fair to match current polls with those.
Polls from then onwards, from at least one pollster have got the result more or less spot on.
Not quite.
Dave led on so many other factors, best man for a crisis, man most trusted to run the NHS albeit because of heartbreaking circumstances, best man for the economy, etc.
I'm not seeing that yet for Sir Keir, yet.
I'm from the school of thought that believes oppositions don't win elections, governments lose them, so that should cheer you up.
What we really need is some Sunak v. Starmer head to head polling.
538 still has Biden +5.5 in PA vs +7 nationally, but if what we've been seeing in the recent PA polls carries on there will be no more EC deficit...
HYUFD won't take any notice, because it's not from Trafalgar or Rasmussen.
Cut him some slack. Nationally Monmouth has Trump within 5 and Emerson within 4 recently. That's close, and they are both A Grade pollsters.
It's not done yet.
Plus we have the first Trump v Biden debate tonight too
Looking back historically on who post debate polls judged won the first debate we have Hillary, Romney, Obama, Kerry, Gore, Bill Clinton, Perot, Dukakis, Mondale, Ford and Kennedy. So a mixed bag in terms of who actually went onto win the election and if Trump does win tonight he would be the first incumbent President to win the first debate since Bill Clinton so the odds should favour Biden https://news.gallup.com/poll/195923/clinton-debate-victory-larger-side-modern-debates.aspx
Honestly I dont think the debates will change much. Both sides are quite well entrenched, this election feels much more Us vs Them more than any other election I can remember even 2016. Trump supporters seemingly will not abandon him even with a string of bad news stories showing him in a negative light, on the other side Biden is the Not Trump candidate and so his supporters are not going to go anywhere else when a Biden gaffe or story comes along. With the percentage of undecided in the polls it would take something utterly amazing in the debates to shift the polling I feel.
The Monmouth and Emerson polls are the lower end of the polling we are seeing, other A Grade pollsters have had Biden up in the 9's and 10's which are the upper end, its basically a pick and choose which one you want to believe. the polling averages have barely changed for months.
It is an election where the only thing that matters is getting out the vote and making sure it's there to be counted on election day.
That is perhaps naive - what may count the most is after election day, whether the courts and especially the supreme court will support a coup. Trump is going to claim a win on the night, and he may well be marginally ahead on votes counted by then.
If the Supreme Court rules he has won (I know its not that simple) despite the votes, he'll have won. For that will BE THE LAW. Will everyone defending the law like an ABSOLUTE principle be happy with that.
The law is very important but it's not the be all and end all, it's written by people and people can be bias and fallible
This. Trump has very little hope of victory without the courts (and especially the Supreme Court) rigging the process in his favour.
It's almost as if democracy would be better served if the US just counted the votes and kept the lawyers as far away from the entire process as possible...
Don't get me wrong, the law is extremely important but it's not the be all and end all of civilisation
The concept of the rule of law and its importance goes all the way to the Ancient Greeks.
“Let no man live uncurbed by law or curbed by tyranny.” (Aeschylus’s The Oresteia). It
And Ministers will be curbed by law.
What the law is will be changed but that is what Parliament does. That is what Parliament has always done.
And so when Parliament legislates to say that there will be no further elections and the courts have no right to overturn that legilsation it will be fine.
Either you believe in the rule of law, Phil, or you don't. And you don't.
If Parliament legislated to say that there will be no further elections then that would be the law.
In those circumstances 100% absolutely I would not support, believe or defend the law. I would support breaking the law to get the law changed in those circumstances absolutely. Wouldn't you?
You continuously misrepresent what “the rule of law” means. Legislating to remove elections would be a contravention of the rule of law. There is no contradiction.
If a Labour government were proposing what this government is proposing, Phil would be outraged. He is a hack, not a libertarian, a Conservative or a democrat.
Phil is worse than me (in my support for Keir) in his unfailing support for anything Boris Johnson does or says. You can be sure he will argue for Johnson, doesn't matter how illogical or ridiculous.
That's not true, I could name half a dozen times I've opposed Johnson.
Just because I don't agree with the herd here always, doesn't mean I always support Johnson.
You always support him in some way.
There's always nuance with your "opposition" for his positions; you always support him.
If restrictions need to be imposed, fine - but support the businesses and people affected until the restrictions are no longer necessary. What is unconscionable is doing the former - in an arbitrary and incomprehensible manner unsupported in many cases by the science - and then leaving those affected without effective help.
If there was an industry you know isn't going to come back - (perhaps cruise ships) - what's the benefit in propping it up?
We should probably let them go bust, and instead help the workers find other jobs/retrain?
If there is a vaccine found then I am sure cruise ships will come back, BigG certainly seems to enjoy them with his wife and they are certainly something I would explore when I get to retirement age.
However understandably for the moment the older demographic who are their biggest market are steering clear given they are most at risk from Covid
We have sailed our last cruise and have no regrets having sailed from the Artic to the Antarctic and many places in between
It was exactly one year ago we sailed out of Manhattan on our 24 day transatlantic cruise from Southampton
Before covid we decided no more cruising but I seriously regret that the opportunities my wife and I had over many years may well be quite some way time away before cruising becomes safe again and in particular the large 24 hour buffets so used in the industry
538 still has Biden +5.5 in PA vs +7 nationally, but if what we've been seeing in the recent PA polls carries on there will be no more EC deficit...
HYUFD won't take any notice, because it's not from Trafalgar or Rasmussen.
Cut him some slack. Nationally Monmouth has Trump within 5 and Emerson within 4 recently. That's close, and they are both A Grade pollsters.
It's not done yet.
Plus we have the first Trump v Biden debate tonight too
Looking back historically on who post debate polls judged won the first debate we have Hillary, Romney, Obama, Kerry, Gore, Bill Clinton, Perot, Dukakis, Mondale, Ford and Kennedy. So a mixed bag in terms of who actually went onto win the election and if Trump does win tonight he would be the first incumbent President to win the first debate since Bill Clinton so the odds should favour Biden https://news.gallup.com/poll/195923/clinton-debate-victory-larger-side-modern-debates.aspx
Honestly I dont think the debates will change much. Both sides are quite well entrenched, this election feels much more Us vs Them more than any other election I can remember even 2016. Trump supporters seemingly will not abandon him even with a string of bad news stories showing him in a negative light, on the other side Biden is the Not Trump candidate and so his supporters are not going to go anywhere else when a Biden gaffe or story comes along. With the percentage of undecided in the polls it would take something utterly amazing in the debates to shift the polling I feel.
The Monmouth and Emerson polls are the lower end of the polling we are seeing, other A Grade pollsters have had Biden up in the 9's and 10's which are the upper end, its basically a pick and choose which one you want to believe. the polling averages have barely changed for months.
It is an election where the only thing that matters is getting out the vote and making sure it's there to be counted on election day.
That is perhaps naive - what may count the most is after election day, whether the courts and especially the supreme court will support a coup. Trump is going to claim a win on the night, and he may well be marginally ahead on votes counted by then.
If the Supreme Court rules he has won (I know its not that simple) despite the votes, he'll have won. For that will BE THE LAW. Will everyone defending the law like an ABSOLUTE principle be happy with that.
The law is very important but it's not the be all and end all, it's written by people and people can be bias and fallible
This. Trump has very little hope of victory without the courts (and especially the Supreme Court) rigging the process in his favour.
It's almost as if democracy would be better served if the US just counted the votes and kept the lawyers as far away from the entire process as possible...
Don't get me wrong, the law is extremely important but it's not the be all and end all of civilisation
The concept of the rule of law and its importance goes all the way to the Ancient Greeks.
“Let no man live uncurbed by law or curbed by tyranny.” (Aeschylus’s The Oresteia). It
And Ministers will be curbed by law.
What the law is will be changed but that is what Parliament does. That is what Parliament has always done.
And so when Parliament legislates to say that there will be no further elections and the courts have no right to overturn that legilsation it will be fine.
Either you believe in the rule of law, Phil, or you don't. And you don't.
If Parliament legislated to say that there will be no further elections then that would be the law.
In those circumstances 100% absolutely I would not support, believe or defend the law. I would support breaking the law to get the law changed in those circumstances absolutely. Wouldn't you?
You continuously misrepresent what “the rule of law” means. Legislating to remove elections would be a contravention of the rule of law. There is no contradiction.
If a Labour government were proposing what this government is proposing, Phil would be outraged. He is a hack, not a libertarian, a Conservative or a democrat.
Phil is worse than me (in my support for Keir) in his unfailing support for anything Boris Johnson does or says. You can be sure he will argue for Johnson, doesn't matter how illogical or ridiculous.
That's not true, I could name half a dozen times I've opposed Johnson.
Just because I don't agree with the herd here always, doesn't mean I always support Johnson.
Go on then link three posts where you have opposed Johnson. I suspect you can't because I certainly can't remember you ever being anything other than a fawning lickspittle fanboy
I'm afraid Philip you showed your lack of honesty in your objectivity when you had spent several months attacking Labour's economic policies from 2001 onwards as overspending and then did a complete U-turn as soon as Johnson started doing the same thing
And by forthright, I don't mean re-submitting the same Withdrawal Bill time and again without modification, in the hope it would eventually pass due to fatigue.
Mrs May seems to understand that you either support the rule of law as the foundation stone of democracy or you support the Internal Market Bill. There is no middle ground available here.
I suspect that part of the motivation is also the knowledge that her own Withdrawal Agreement and premiership was ultimately torpedoed because a chunk of her party refused to accept the potential legal consequences of the backstop provisions (“permanently stuck in the Customs Union” etc).
Even though these same people have no problem in saying that they are free to reject the legal consequences of their own Withdrawal agreement - and not just because of circumstances where the EU might be “acting in bad faith in trade negotiation”, but because they didn’t understand/accept the central implications of what they had signed up to.
It goes way beyond that, though. The bill legislates to put ministers beyond the rule of law full stop. Section 45 states explicitly that they will not be bound by any law, international or domestic, when enacting its provisions.
I seem to recall DavidL giving the view that you grossly extend the scope power of that provision.
Which is by the by really. Plenty may well think even though we can exercise sovereignty in this way and even if it is not the worst case scenario envisaged by some, and even if someone thinks its not just plain wrong, it still isn't a sensible move.
He did. On the basis that the Section 45 powers only related to Sections 42 and 43 (relating to GB/NI trade). But I think there were two flaws in his analysis: (1) that if the government purported to exercise the S.45 powers more widely, S.45 itself tries to stop a challenge to that. Whether the courts would agree is another matter; and (2) even if the powers are primarily exercised for a proper purpose they could still breach a domestic law and S.45 allows them to do that. So the likely effect and certainly the intention of this section is very wide indeed.
Subsequent laws can override previous laws. The Human Rights Act sets itself above other laws, why can't this one?
Because it overrides International Treaties which is slightly more of a problem - and the Human Rights Act did the exact opposite it moved items inside International Treaties into UK law.
I couldn't care less about overriding Treaties. The UK has done that before as has Germany and other countries all over the globe and the Courts have ruled it lawful before.
Shouldn't we listen to the Courts here? Funny that!
We absolutely should listen to the courts. The Internal Market Bill seeks to ensure we can't. You support it because you do not believe in the rule of law.
The courts will still be there even after the Internal Market Bill, they will just need to take the Internal Market Bill into account when they rule, just as they need to take any other Bill into account when they do so.
Yes - I understand that. The courts will be forced to rule they have no right to hear cases that might fall under that legislation. And so the rule of law dies.
538 still has Biden +5.5 in PA vs +7 nationally, but if what we've been seeing in the recent PA polls carries on there will be no more EC deficit...
HYUFD won't take any notice, because it's not from Trafalgar or Rasmussen.
Cut him some slack. Nationally Monmouth has Trump within 5 and Emerson within 4 recently. That's close, and they are both A Grade pollsters.
It's not done yet.
Plus we have the first Trump v Biden debate tonight too
Looking back historically on who post debate polls judged won the first debate we have Hillary, Romney, Obama, Kerry, Gore, Bill Clinton, Perot, Dukakis, Mondale, Ford and Kennedy. So a mixed bag in terms of who actually went onto win the election and if Trump does win tonight he would be the first incumbent President to win the first debate since Bill Clinton so the odds should favour Biden https://news.gallup.com/poll/195923/clinton-debate-victory-larger-side-modern-debates.aspx
Honestly I dont think the debates will change much. Both sides are quite well entrenched, this election feels much more Us vs Them more than any other election I can remember even 2016. Trump supporters seemingly will not abandon him even with a string of bad news stories showing him in a negative light, on the other side Biden is the Not Trump candidate and so his supporters are not going to go anywhere else when a Biden gaffe or story comes along. With the percentage of undecided in the polls it would take something utterly amazing in the debates to shift the polling I feel.
The Monmouth and Emerson polls are the lower end of the polling we are seeing, other A Grade pollsters have had Biden up in the 9's and 10's which are the upper end, its basically a pick and choose which one you want to believe. the polling averages have barely changed for months.
It is an election where the only thing that matters is getting out the vote and making sure it's there to be counted on election day.
That is perhaps naive - what may count the most is after election day, whether the courts and especially the supreme court will support a coup. Trump is going to claim a win on the night, and he may well be marginally ahead on votes counted by then.
If the Supreme Court rules he has won (I know its not that simple) despite the votes, he'll have won. For that will BE THE LAW. Will everyone defending the law like an ABSOLUTE principle be happy with that.
The law is very important but it's not the be all and end all, it's written by people and people can be bias and fallible
This. Trump has very little hope of victory without the courts (and especially the Supreme Court) rigging the process in his favour.
It's almost as if democracy would be better served if the US just counted the votes and kept the lawyers as far away from the entire process as possible...
Don't get me wrong, the law is extremely important but it's not the be all and end all of civilisation
The concept of the rule of law and its importance goes all the way to the Ancient Greeks.
“Let no man live uncurbed by law or curbed by tyranny.” (Aeschylus’s The Oresteia). It
And Ministers will be curbed by law.
What the law is will be changed but that is what Parliament does. That is what Parliament has always done.
And so when Parliament legislates to say that there will be no further elections and the courts have no right to overturn that legilsation it will be fine.
Either you believe in the rule of law, Phil, or you don't. And you don't.
If Parliament legislated to say that there will be no further elections then that would be the law.
In those circumstances 100% absolutely I would not support, believe or defend the law. I would support breaking the law to get the law changed in those circumstances absolutely. Wouldn't you?
You continuously misrepresent what “the rule of law” means. Legislating to remove elections would be a contravention of the rule of law. There is no contradiction.
If a Labour government were proposing what this government is proposing, Phil would be outraged. He is a hack, not a libertarian, a Conservative or a democrat.
Phil is worse than me (in my support for Keir) in his unfailing support for anything Boris Johnson does or says. You can be sure he will argue for Johnson, doesn't matter how illogical or ridiculous.
That's not true, I could name half a dozen times I've opposed Johnson.
Just because I don't agree with the herd here always, doesn't mean I always support Johnson.
Go on then link three posts where you have opposed Johnson. I suspect you can't because I certainly can't remember you ever being anything other than a fawning lickspittle fanboy
Well I don't share your choice of phrase but I do agree with the basic point.
That's a huge lead on that question, IMHO this is why given time Labour will lead by several points.
Not a given.
My boy Dave led this metric with even larger leads, yet Labour still led in the polls in 2010-2015.
I've had this argument before so forgive me but weren't the 2010-2015 polls on average wrong? After the election there was quite a lot of work done into their unreliability so I am not sure it is fair to match current polls with those.
Polls from then onwards, from at least one pollster have got the result more or less spot on.
Not quite.
Dave led on so many other factors, best man for a crisis, man most trusted to run the NHS albeit because of heartbreaking circumstances, best man for the economy, etc.
I'm not seeing that yet for Sir Keir, yet.
I'm from the school of thought that believes oppositions don't win elections, governments lose them, so that should cheer you up.
What we really need is some Sunak v. Starmer head to head polling.
Sunak will clearly lead but he will likely have a lot of don't knows similar to what Keir did/does have. He simply doesn't have the profile of Boris Johnson.
Right now he's where Johnson was at his high point, I think that will fall in time.
It's your website and you make the rules but I feel like doxxing is bad
That's not doxxing, doxxing would be revealing personal details. SeanT used his name as his username.
We don't even know that is his real name.
Sadly we do as it was very possible to link SeanT's posts from abroad with those of a Saturday Times Holiday Journalist with a first name of Sean and a surname beginning with T
Whether the other posters are that same journalist is a slightly different question but the posting style would suggest that it is the same person posting.
Well I wasn't aware of that but so that makes the case slightly more nuanced but I still wouldn't suggest it was doxxing. Sean chose to use the username SeanT, all Mike did was point that out.
I've been pointing it out for weeks!
I think that if an individual now wants to post pseudanonymously, in a way that I do, it would be hypocritical and rude of me to prevent them from doing so.
Sure, those of us who've been here for ages may recognise an old poster under a new name, but that's the sort of thing that should be understood but not said.
538 still has Biden +5.5 in PA vs +7 nationally, but if what we've been seeing in the recent PA polls carries on there will be no more EC deficit...
HYUFD won't take any notice, because it's not from Trafalgar or Rasmussen.
Cut him some slack. Nationally Monmouth has Trump within 5 and Emerson within 4 recently. That's close, and they are both A Grade pollsters.
It's not done yet.
Plus we have the first Trump v Biden debate tonight too
Looking back historically on who post debate polls judged won the first debate we have Hillary, Romney, Obama, Kerry, Gore, Bill Clinton, Perot, Dukakis, Mondale, Ford and Kennedy. So a mixed bag in terms of who actually went onto win the election and if Trump does win tonight he would be the first incumbent President to win the first debate since Bill Clinton so the odds should favour Biden https://news.gallup.com/poll/195923/clinton-debate-victory-larger-side-modern-debates.aspx
Honestly I dont think the debates will change much. Both sides are quite well entrenched, this election feels much more Us vs Them more than any other election I can remember even 2016. Trump supporters seemingly will not abandon him even with a string of bad news stories showing him in a negative light, on the other side Biden is the Not Trump candidate and so his supporters are not going to go anywhere else when a Biden gaffe or story comes along. With the percentage of undecided in the polls it would take something utterly amazing in the debates to shift the polling I feel.
The Monmouth and Emerson polls are the lower end of the polling we are seeing, other A Grade pollsters have had Biden up in the 9's and 10's which are the upper end, its basically a pick and choose which one you want to believe. the polling averages have barely changed for months.
It is an election where the only thing that matters is getting out the vote and making sure it's there to be counted on election day.
That is perhaps naive - what may count the most is after election day, whether the courts and especially the supreme court will support a coup. Trump is going to claim a win on the night, and he may well be marginally ahead on votes counted by then.
If the Supreme Court rules he has won (I know its not that simple) despite the votes, he'll have won. For that will BE THE LAW. Will everyone defending the law like an ABSOLUTE principle be happy with that.
The law is very important but it's not the be all and end all, it's written by people and people can be bias and fallible
This. Trump has very little hope of victory without the courts (and especially the Supreme Court) rigging the process in his favour.
It's almost as if democracy would be better served if the US just counted the votes and kept the lawyers as far away from the entire process as possible...
Don't get me wrong, the law is extremely important but it's not the be all and end all of civilisation
The concept of the rule of law and its importance goes all the way to the Ancient Greeks.
“Let no man live uncurbed by law or curbed by tyranny.” (Aeschylus’s The Oresteia). It
And Ministers will be curbed by law.
What the law is will be changed but that is what Parliament does. That is what Parliament has always done.
And so when Parliament legislates to say that there will be no further elections and the courts have no right to overturn that legilsation it will be fine.
Either you believe in the rule of law, Phil, or you don't. And you don't.
If Parliament legislated to say that there will be no further elections then that would be the law.
In those circumstances 100% absolutely I would not support, believe or defend the law. I would support breaking the law to get the law changed in those circumstances absolutely. Wouldn't you?
Of course. But unlike you, I would prefer to be in a situation where it was possible for such legislation to be struck down by the courts.
That's lovely wishful thinking but we are not. In this country the courts are subordinate to the law and Parliament passes the laws. That is not a novel concept it has always been the case. Parliament has voted to cancel or delay elections in the past and could do so again in the future, it has that power.
I would rather be in a position where the public, not the courts, ensure that is something no Government can do.
In the USA the Constitution decrees that the Electoral College in a method the legislatures approve of. If Trump loses the election in GOP states and the GOP legislatures dispute that and pass emergency legislation decreeing that Trump not Biden electors are awarded . . . and the Courts and SCOTUS rule that legal . . . then that would be following your precious "rule of law" but I would oppose that. Would you oppose that?
Phil - let me introduce you to this thing we have called the common law, whereby courts interpret the canon of law passed by Parliament over centuries, as well as any number of previous cases decided by the courts, to reach their decisions. Parliament has voted to cancel or postpone elections, but it has never voted to deny the courts a say in whether doing so was legal or not. And herein lies the difference between the Internal Market Bill and previous legislation. The IMB cancels the common law. You are OK with that. I am not.
As for the US, yes I would oppose the actions of Trump in that scenario. However, I am not sure what that has got to do with your belief that UK ministers should not be subject to the rule of law in the UK.
The IMB does not cancel the common law. The common law is still there.
Legislation can and has overridden common law in the past. Do you honestly think that has never happened before?
Section 45 of the Internal Market Bill is unprecedented. You should read it.
If restrictions need to be imposed, fine - but support the businesses and people affected until the restrictions are no longer necessary. What is unconscionable is doing the former - in an arbitrary and incomprehensible manner unsupported in many cases by the science - and then leaving those affected without effective help.
If there was an industry you know isn't going to come back - (perhaps cruise ships) - what's the benefit in propping it up?
We should probably let them go bust, and instead help the workers find other jobs/retrain?
If there is a vaccine found then I am sure cruise ships will come back, BigG certainly seems to enjoy them with his wife and they are certainly something I would explore when I get to retirement age.
However understandably for the moment the older demographic who are their biggest market are steering clear given they are most at risk from Covid
We have sailed our last cruise and have no regrets having sailed from the Artic to the Antarctic and many places in between
It was exactly one year ago we sailed out of Manhattan on our 24 day transatlantic cruise from Southampton
Before covid we decided no more cruising but I seriously regret that the opportunities my wife and I had over many years may well be quite some way time away before cruising becomes safe again and in particular the large 24 hour buffets so used in the industry
Cruising needs to address its environmental impact if its to survive.
It's your website and you make the rules but I feel like doxxing is bad
That's not doxxing, doxxing would be revealing personal details. SeanT used his name as his username.
We don't even know that is his real name.
Sadly we do as it was very possible to link SeanT's posts from abroad with those of a Saturday Times Holiday Journalist with a first name of Sean and a surname beginning with T
Whether the other posters are that same journalist is a slightly different question but the posting style would suggest that it is the same person posting.
Well I wasn't aware of that but so that makes the case slightly more nuanced but I still wouldn't suggest it was doxxing. Sean chose to use the username SeanT, all Mike did was point that out.
I've been pointing it out for weeks!
I think that if an individual now wants to post pseudanonymously, in a way that I do, it would be hypocritical and rude of me to prevent them from doing so.
Sure, those of us who've been here for ages may recognise an old poster under a new name, but that's the sort of thing that should be understood but not said.
In any online communities I've ever been a part of, it's been a bit of a "thing" to point out when users continuously re-join under different usernames.
It's all in good fun, I didn't do it to cause any harm to the user involved - like I said I wasn't aware of Sean's identity until it was just pointed out. I still don't know who he is.
I think if you use your name to post online you're asking for trouble anyway, tbh. I don't reveal personal details for that reason.
It's your website and you make the rules but I feel like doxxing is bad
That's not doxxing, doxxing would be revealing personal details. SeanT used his name as his username.
We don't even know that is his real name.
Sadly we do as it was very possible to link SeanT's posts from abroad with those of a Saturday Times Holiday Journalist with a first name of Sean and a surname beginning with T
Whether the other posters are that same journalist is a slightly different question but the posting style would suggest that it is the same person posting.
Well I wasn't aware of that but so that makes the case slightly more nuanced but I still wouldn't suggest it was doxxing. Sean chose to use the username SeanT, all Mike did was point that out.
I've been pointing it out for weeks!
It does raise an interesting question, and I’m not sure what is the correct etiquette. I’m in favour of respecting pseudonymity, but in the circumstances of a poster apparently adopting serial pseudonyms while retaining a characteristic and deeply idiosyncratic posting style, it does feel ridiculous to have to pretend not to notice.
I try to give them a pass, but sometimes the effort just becomes too much.
It's your website and you make the rules but I feel like doxxing is bad
That's not doxxing, doxxing would be revealing personal details. SeanT used his name as his username.
We don't even know that is his real name.
Sadly we do as it was very possible to link SeanT's posts from abroad with those of a Saturday Times Holiday Journalist with a first name of Sean and a surname beginning with T
Whether the other posters are that same journalist is a slightly different question but the posting style would suggest that it is the same person posting.
Well I wasn't aware of that but so that makes the case slightly more nuanced but I still wouldn't suggest it was doxxing. Sean chose to use the username SeanT, all Mike did was point that out.
I've been pointing it out for weeks!
I think that if an individual now wants to post pseudanonymously, in a way that I do, it would be hypocritical and rude of me to prevent them from doing so.
Sure, those of us who've been here for ages may recognise an old poster under a new name, but that's the sort of thing that should be understood but not said.
I think that`s about right. I must admit that when I visualise LadyG in my head, I`m thinking: brassy blonde, high heels, bit tits. That sort of thing.
I trust that I won`t be disappointed in that regard.
It's your website and you make the rules but I feel like doxxing is bad
That's not doxxing, doxxing would be revealing personal details. SeanT used his name as his username.
We don't even know that is his real name.
If somebody has a pseudonym already connected to a meatspace identity, and you connect another pseudonym to the first pseudonym, that's doxxing.
Don't do it. If someone wants to be pseudonymous, and they don't have multiple pseudonyms active simultaneously which I think is against Mike's rules, let them be pseudonymous.
FFS....head, desk, thud, thud...it is repeating exactly the same mistake as emptying hospitals out.
Bloody 3rd rate management of a 3rd rate poly.
That's what I thought.
We should close down all the former polys, I mean would anyone really miss them?
University should be solely for the academically gifted.
I sympathise, but there are over 2 million at university at any given time. Maybe the academically gifted are half a million of those. What are you going to do with the remaining 1.5 million I wonder? Not enough jobs to go round, especially at the moment.
It's your website and you make the rules but I feel like doxxing is bad
That's not doxxing, doxxing would be revealing personal details. SeanT used his name as his username.
We don't even know that is his real name.
Sadly we do as it was very possible to link SeanT's posts from abroad with those of a Saturday Times Holiday Journalist with a first name of Sean and a surname beginning with T
Whether the other posters are that same journalist is a slightly different question but the posting style would suggest that it is the same person posting.
Well I wasn't aware of that but so that makes the case slightly more nuanced but I still wouldn't suggest it was doxxing. Sean chose to use the username SeanT, all Mike did was point that out.
I've been pointing it out for weeks!
It does raise an interesting question, and I’m not sure what is the correct etiquette. I’m in favour of respecting pseudonymity, but in the circumstances of a poster apparently adopting serial pseudonyms while retaining a characteristic and deeply idiosyncratic posting style, it does feel ridiculous to have to pretend not to notice.
I try to give them a pass, but sometimes the effort just becomes too much.
I think there is a distinction between users noticing and asserting where there is still an element of doubt and someone in a position to know for sure asserting.
It's your website and you make the rules but I feel like doxxing is bad
That's not doxxing, doxxing would be revealing personal details. SeanT used his name as his username.
We don't even know that is his real name.
If somebody has a pseudonym already connected to a meatspace identity, and you connect another pseudonym to the first pseudonym, that's doxxing.
Don't do it. If someone wants to be pseudonymous, and they don't have multiple pseudonyms active simultaneously which I think is against Mike's rules, let them be pseudonymous.
I'm firmly in this camp. I'm not sure why people on here constantly go on about it, it's very tedious to scroll through posts on the subject (yes, I see the irony).
In terms of people joining and rejoining, it's not my site, I don't set the rules. Other sites have tough rules on it, others don't.
I just think that if you're going to come on here and be continuously objectionable to people and annoy people just for the sake of it on a daily/weekly basis, people will get tired of it and quickly see who it is.
I've only been here a year and I could spot Sean a mile away. For our long time users it might be very boring.
We've all got into bother on here, including and especially me but I have tried to make amends where it's possible. I've never seen any kind of understanding from Sean or his latest iteration.
538 still has Biden +5.5 in PA vs +7 nationally, but if what we've been seeing in the recent PA polls carries on there will be no more EC deficit...
HYUFD won't take any notice, because it's not from Trafalgar or Rasmussen.
Cut him some slack. Nationally Monmouth has Trump within 5 and Emerson within 4 recently. That's close, and they are both A Grade pollsters.
It's not done yet.
Plus we have the first Trump v Biden debate tonight too
Looking back historically on who post debate polls judged won the first debate we have Hillary, Romney, Obama, Kerry, Gore, Bill Clinton, Perot, Dukakis, Mondale, Ford and Kennedy. So a mixed bag in terms of who actually went onto win the election and if Trump does win tonight he would be the first incumbent President to win the first debate since Bill Clinton so the odds should favour Biden https://news.gallup.com/poll/195923/clinton-debate-victory-larger-side-modern-debates.aspx
Honestly I dont think the debates will change much. Both sides are quite well entrenched, this election feels much more Us vs Them more than any other election I can remember even 2016. Trump supporters seemingly will not abandon him even with a string of bad news stories showing him in a negative light, on the other side Biden is the Not Trump candidate and so his supporters are not going to go anywhere else when a Biden gaffe or story comes along. With the percentage of undecided in the polls it would take something utterly amazing in the debates to shift the polling I feel.
The Monmouth and Emerson polls are the lower end of the polling we are seeing, other A Grade pollsters have had Biden up in the 9's and 10's which are the upper end, its basically a pick and choose which one you want to believe. the polling averages have barely changed for months.
It is an election where the only thing that matters is getting out the vote and making sure it's there to be counted on election day.
That is perhaps naive - what may count the most is after election day, whether the courts and especially the supreme court will support a coup. Trump is going to claim a win on the night, and he may well be marginally ahead on votes counted by then.
If the Supreme Court rules he has won (I know its not that simple) despite the votes, he'll have won. For that will BE THE LAW. Will everyone defending the law like an ABSOLUTE principle be happy with that.
The law is very important but it's not the be all and end all, it's written by people and people can be bias and fallible
This. Trump has very little hope of victory without the courts (and especially the Supreme Court) rigging the process in his favour.
It's almost as if democracy would be better served if the US just counted the votes and kept the lawyers as far away from the entire process as possible...
Don't get me wrong, the law is extremely important but it's not the be all and end all of civilisation
The concept of the rule of law and its importance goes all the way to the Ancient Greeks.
“Let no man live uncurbed by law or curbed by tyranny.” (Aeschylus’s The Oresteia). It
And Ministers will be curbed by law.
What the law is will be changed but that is what Parliament does. That is what Parliament has always done.
And so when Parliament legislates to say that there will be no further elections and the courts have no right to overturn that legilsation it will be fine.
Either you believe in the rule of law, Phil, or you don't. And you don't.
If Parliament legislated to say that there will be no further elections then that would be the law.
In those circumstances 100% absolutely I would not support, believe or defend the law. I would support breaking the law to get the law changed in those circumstances absolutely. Wouldn't you?
You continuously misrepresent what “the rule of law” means. Legislating to remove elections would be a contravention of the rule of law. There is no contradiction.
If a Labour government were proposing what this government is proposing, Phil would be outraged. He is a hack, not a libertarian, a Conservative or a democrat.
Phil is worse than me (in my support for Keir) in his unfailing support for anything Boris Johnson does or says. You can be sure he will argue for Johnson, doesn't matter how illogical or ridiculous.
That's not true, I could name half a dozen times I've opposed Johnson.
Just because I don't agree with the herd here always, doesn't mean I always support Johnson.
Go on then link three posts where you have opposed Johnson. I suspect you can't because I certainly can't remember you ever being anything other than a fawning lickspittle fanboy
Since Johnson has flip-flopped on so many issues, all Philip has to be is consistent in his views in order to have opposed Johnson at some point.
Anyone playing on Shadsy's Buzzword Bingo for the debate tonight? I can't see much value myself; Putin at Evens looks about the best of a thin bunch. Any other suggestions?
538 still has Biden +5.5 in PA vs +7 nationally, but if what we've been seeing in the recent PA polls carries on there will be no more EC deficit...
HYUFD won't take any notice, because it's not from Trafalgar or Rasmussen.
Cut him some slack. Nationally Monmouth has Trump within 5 and Emerson within 4 recently. That's close, and they are both A Grade pollsters.
It's not done yet.
Plus we have the first Trump v Biden debate tonight too
Looking back historically on who post debate polls judged won the first debate we have Hillary, Romney, Obama, Kerry, Gore, Bill Clinton, Perot, Dukakis, Mondale, Ford and Kennedy. So a mixed bag in terms of who actually went onto win the election and if Trump does win tonight he would be the first incumbent President to win the first debate since Bill Clinton so the odds should favour Biden https://news.gallup.com/poll/195923/clinton-debate-victory-larger-side-modern-debates.aspx
Honestly I dont think the debates will change much. Both sides are quite well entrenched, this election feels much more Us vs Them more than any other election I can remember even 2016. Trump supporters seemingly will not abandon him even with a string of bad news stories showing him in a negative light, on the other side Biden is the Not Trump candidate and so his supporters are not going to go anywhere else when a Biden gaffe or story comes along. With the percentage of undecided in the polls it would take something utterly amazing in the debates to shift the polling I feel.
The Monmouth and Emerson polls are the lower end of the polling we are seeing, other A Grade pollsters have had Biden up in the 9's and 10's which are the upper end, its basically a pick and choose which one you want to believe. the polling averages have barely changed for months.
It is an election where the only thing that matters is getting out the vote and making sure it's there to be counted on election day.
That is perhaps naive - what may count the most is after election day, whether the courts and especially the supreme court will support a coup. Trump is going to claim a win on the night, and he may well be marginally ahead on votes counted by then.
If the Supreme Court rules he has won (I know its not that simple) despite the votes, he'll have won. For that will BE THE LAW. Will everyone defending the law like an ABSOLUTE principle be happy with that.
The law is very important but it's not the be all and end all, it's written by people and people can be bias and fallible
This. Trump has very little hope of victory without the courts (and especially the Supreme Court) rigging the process in his favour.
It's almost as if democracy would be better served if the US just counted the votes and kept the lawyers as far away from the entire process as possible...
Don't get me wrong, the law is extremely important but it's not the be all and end all of civilisation
The concept of the rule of law and its importance goes all the way to the Ancient Greeks.
“Let no man live uncurbed by law or curbed by tyranny.” (Aeschylus’s The Oresteia). It
And Ministers will be curbed by law.
What the law is will be changed but that is what Parliament does. That is what Parliament has always done.
And so when Parliament legislates to say that there will be no further elections and the courts have no right to overturn that legilsation it will be fine.
Either you believe in the rule of law, Phil, or you don't. And you don't.
If Parliament legislated to say that there will be no further elections then that would be the law.
In those circumstances 100% absolutely I would not support, believe or defend the law. I would support breaking the law to get the law changed in those circumstances absolutely. Wouldn't you?
You continuously misrepresent what “the rule of law” means. Legislating to remove elections would be a contravention of the rule of law. There is no contradiction.
If a Labour government were proposing what this government is proposing, Phil would be outraged. He is a hack, not a libertarian, a Conservative or a democrat.
Phil is worse than me (in my support for Keir) in his unfailing support for anything Boris Johnson does or says. You can be sure he will argue for Johnson, doesn't matter how illogical or ridiculous.
That's not true, I could name half a dozen times I've opposed Johnson.
Just because I don't agree with the herd here always, doesn't mean I always support Johnson.
Go on then link three posts where you have opposed Johnson. I suspect you can't because I certainly can't remember you ever being anything other than a fawning lickspittle fanboy
I'm not going searching for posts unless you're going to call these examples lies. Just off the top of my head.
I have called for the Triple Lock to be scrapped and I oppose Johnson keeping it.
I opposed the formula for A-Level awards and called for that to be scrapped before it was popular to do so andbefore the u-turn.
I called for a u-turn on charging foreign NHS and care workers the NHS surcharge before it happened.
I support the Brady Amendment on ensuring Parliamentary oversight of COVID restrictions.
I supported the Amendment to the IM Bill on ensuring Parliamentary approval before Minsters exercising their powers.
I opposed Johnson voting for May's Withdrawal Agreement on MV3.
I could probably think up other examples but I said half a dozen and its more than you're requested three.
It's your website and you make the rules but I feel like doxxing is bad
That's not doxxing, doxxing would be revealing personal details. SeanT used his name as his username.
We don't even know that is his real name.
Sadly we do as it was very possible to link SeanT's posts from abroad with those of a Saturday Times Holiday Journalist with a first name of Sean and a surname beginning with T
Whether the other posters are that same journalist is a slightly different question but the posting style would suggest that it is the same person posting.
I have always found Sean's posts an invaluable insight into the mindset of the poshboy hacks like Johnson, Gove, Dacre and Moore who have taken it upon themselves to run the country.
It's your website and you make the rules but I feel like doxxing is bad
That's not doxxing, doxxing would be revealing personal details. SeanT used his name as his username.
We don't even know that is his real name.
Sadly we do as it was very possible to link SeanT's posts from abroad with those of a Saturday Times Holiday Journalist with a first name of Sean and a surname beginning with T
Whether the other posters are that same journalist is a slightly different question but the posting style would suggest that it is the same person posting.
Well I wasn't aware of that but so that makes the case slightly more nuanced but I still wouldn't suggest it was doxxing. Sean chose to use the username SeanT, all Mike did was point that out.
I've been pointing it out for weeks!
It does raise an interesting question, and I’m not sure what is the correct etiquette. I’m in favour of respecting pseudonymity, but in the circumstances of a poster apparently adopting serial pseudonyms while retaining a characteristic and deeply idiosyncratic posting style, it does feel ridiculous to have to pretend not to notice.
I try to give them a pass, but sometimes the effort just becomes too much.
I think there is a distinction between users noticing and asserting where there is still an element of doubt and someone in a position to know for sure asserting.
538 still has Biden +5.5 in PA vs +7 nationally, but if what we've been seeing in the recent PA polls carries on there will be no more EC deficit...
HYUFD won't take any notice, because it's not from Trafalgar or Rasmussen.
Cut him some slack. Nationally Monmouth has Trump within 5 and Emerson within 4 recently. That's close, and they are both A Grade pollsters.
It's not done yet.
Plus we have the first Trump v Biden debate tonight too
Looking back historically on who post debate polls judged won the first debate we have Hillary, Romney, Obama, Kerry, Gore, Bill Clinton, Perot, Dukakis, Mondale, Ford and Kennedy. So a mixed bag in terms of who actually went onto win the election and if Trump does win tonight he would be the first incumbent President to win the first debate since Bill Clinton so the odds should favour Biden https://news.gallup.com/poll/195923/clinton-debate-victory-larger-side-modern-debates.aspx
Honestly I dont think the debates will change much. Both sides are quite well entrenched, this election feels much more Us vs Them more than any other election I can remember even 2016. Trump supporters seemingly will not abandon him even with a string of bad news stories showing him in a negative light, on the other side Biden is the Not Trump candidate and so his supporters are not going to go anywhere else when a Biden gaffe or story comes along. With the percentage of undecided in the polls it would take something utterly amazing in the debates to shift the polling I feel.
The Monmouth and Emerson polls are the lower end of the polling we are seeing, other A Grade pollsters have had Biden up in the 9's and 10's which are the upper end, its basically a pick and choose which one you want to believe. the polling averages have barely changed for months.
It is an election where the only thing that matters is getting out the vote and making sure it's there to be counted on election day.
That is perhaps naive - what may count the most is after election day, whether the courts and especially the supreme court will support a coup. Trump is going to claim a win on the night, and he may well be marginally ahead on votes counted by then.
If the Supreme Court rules he has won (I know its not that simple) despite the votes, he'll have won. For that will BE THE LAW. Will everyone defending the law like an ABSOLUTE principle be happy with that.
The law is very important but it's not the be all and end all, it's written by people and people can be bias and fallible
This. Trump has very little hope of victory without the courts (and especially the Supreme Court) rigging the process in his favour.
It's almost as if democracy would be better served if the US just counted the votes and kept the lawyers as far away from the entire process as possible...
Don't get me wrong, the law is extremely important but it's not the be all and end all of civilisation
The concept of the rule of law and its importance goes all the way to the Ancient Greeks.
“Let no man live uncurbed by law or curbed by tyranny.” (Aeschylus’s The Oresteia). It
And Ministers will be curbed by law.
What the law is will be changed but that is what Parliament does. That is what Parliament has always done.
And so when Parliament legislates to say that there will be no further elections and the courts have no right to overturn that legilsation it will be fine.
Either you believe in the rule of law, Phil, or you don't. And you don't.
If Parliament legislated to say that there will be no further elections then that would be the law.
In those circumstances 100% absolutely I would not support, believe or defend the law. I would support breaking the law to get the law changed in those circumstances absolutely. Wouldn't you?
You continuously misrepresent what “the rule of law” means. Legislating to remove elections would be a contravention of the rule of law. There is no contradiction.
If a Labour government were proposing what this government is proposing, Phil would be outraged. He is a hack, not a libertarian, a Conservative or a democrat.
Phil is worse than me (in my support for Keir) in his unfailing support for anything Boris Johnson does or says. You can be sure he will argue for Johnson, doesn't matter how illogical or ridiculous.
That's not true, I could name half a dozen times I've opposed Johnson.
Just because I don't agree with the herd here always, doesn't mean I always support Johnson.
Go on then link three posts where you have opposed Johnson. I suspect you can't because I certainly can't remember you ever being anything other than a fawning lickspittle fanboy
Since Johnson has flip-flopped on so many issues, all Philip has to be is consistent in his views in order to have opposed Johnson at some point.
Shouldn't be hard for him to find those posts then. However I am not convinced he has remained consistent but has instead flip flopped. He told us don't forget how wonderful the Boris deal was, then told us how correct Boris was to repudiate it with the im bill because it was a bad deal as one example.
FFS....head, desk, thud, thud...it is repeating exactly the same mistake as emptying hospitals out.
Bloody 3rd rate management of a 3rd rate poly.
That's what I thought.
We should close down all the former polys, I mean would anyone really miss them?
University should be solely for the academically gifted.
I sympathise, but there are over 2 million at university at any given time. Maybe the academically gifted are half a million of those. What are you going to do with the remaining 1.5 million I wonder? Not enough jobs to go round, especially at the moment.
I know - open up the former polys as new polys!
Give them apprenticeships, level 5 higher apprentices earn more over their lifetime than all graduates on average except those who attended Oxbridge and Russell Group universities
I'm afraid Philip you showed your lack of honesty in your objectivity when you had spent several months attacking Labour's economic policies from 2001 onwards as overspending and then did a complete U-turn as soon as Johnson started doing the same thing
Sorry that is bovine manure.
I opposed Brown increasing the deficit 2001 onwards before the recession. I have never attacked Brown for the deficit increasing during the recession. I attacked Brown for what he did 2001-2007, not for what he did 2007-08.
Unless you think there is no recession or economic crisis the response this year is not the same thing as 2001.
If restrictions need to be imposed, fine - but support the businesses and people affected until the restrictions are no longer necessary. What is unconscionable is doing the former - in an arbitrary and incomprehensible manner unsupported in many cases by the science - and then leaving those affected without effective help.
If there was an industry you know isn't going to come back - (perhaps cruise ships) - what's the benefit in propping it up?
We should probably let them go bust, and instead help the workers find other jobs/retrain?
If there is a vaccine found then I am sure cruise ships will come back, BigG certainly seems to enjoy them with his wife and they are certainly something I would explore when I get to retirement age.
However understandably for the moment the older demographic who are their biggest market are steering clear given they are most at risk from Covid
We have sailed our last cruise and have no regrets having sailed from the Artic to the Antarctic and many places in between
It was exactly one year ago we sailed out of Manhattan on our 24 day transatlantic cruise from Southampton
Before covid we decided no more cruising but I seriously regret that the opportunities my wife and I had over many years may well be quite some way time away before cruising becomes safe again and in particular the large 24 hour buffets so used in the industry
Yes I hope my partner and I will be able to enjoy them as you and your wife did BigG but for the moment unfortunately that is some time away
Comments
I like to see Johnson humbled as much as the next swivel-eyed Marxist, but I hope they don't try it this time!
I mean comparing Boris Johnson to the Taliban and Mullah Omar has to be the stupidest thing to have ever been posted on the internet, which is some achievement considering Donald Trump regularly tweets.
“Let no man live uncurbed by law or curbed by tyranny.” (Aeschylus’s The Oresteia). It
As you say, there's opacity of pricing - but also membership (plenty of members might rarely appear, without question). And international memberships are not uncommon.
And the ability to inflate or depreciate the asset value to suit the owner's purposes without undue scrutiny perhaps also exceeds that of other real estate assets.
What the law is will be changed but that is what Parliament does. That is what Parliament has always done.
All of the latest rules are just wrong, £4k fines for not telling management about a positive test result, where is the £20k fine for employers who threaten employees with the sack if the get it and have to be off for at least two weeks?
I've been over this many times and don't want to repeat myself, everything the government has done outside of vaccine procurement has been incompetent, callous and simply wrong.
Shouldn't we listen to the Courts here? Funny that!
However understandably for the moment the older demographic who are their biggest market are steering clear given they are most at risk from Covid
Either you believe in the rule of law, Phil, or you don't. And you don't.
With people like Johnson as PM, the UK will need to have a proper written constitution.
Wormtongue is pretty good.
In those circumstances 100% absolutely I would not support, believe or defend the law. I would support breaking the law to get the law changed in those circumstances absolutely. Wouldn't you?
So basically Philip_Thompson is a consumer who needs consumer protection to protect him from his own carelessness.
Never been attracted to the concept of multiple wives, that means lots of mothers-in-law for starters.
We don't even know that is his real name.
https://twitter.com/BBCRadioManc/status/1310847076520075264?s=20
I would rather be in a position where the public, not the courts, ensure that is something no Government can do.
In the USA the Constitution decrees that the Electoral College in a method the legislatures approve of. If Trump loses the election in GOP states and the GOP legislatures dispute that and pass emergency legislation decreeing that Trump not Biden electors are awarded . . . and the Courts and SCOTUS rule that legal . . . then that would be following your precious "rule of law" but I would oppose that. Would you oppose that?
My boy Dave led this metric with even larger leads, yet Labour still led in the polls in 2010-2015.
'The stark reality is that businesses are facing the prospect of a complete decimation in trade,' a letter to ministers says.''
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-unenforceable-rules-to-trigger-hospitality-sector-collapse-lockdown-city-leaders-warn-12084874
Whether the other posters are that same journalist is a slightly different question but the posting style would suggest that it is the same person posting.
https://yourwinningpriseshere.life
I have to come out and go back in often 3 or 4 times before eventually I get PB.
How the hell is that happening? How do I stop it?
Cheers kjh
Bloody 3rd rate management of a 3rd rate poly.
I've been pointing it out for weeks!
Polls from then onwards, from at least one pollster have got the result more or less spot on.
But when it came to the suspension of Parliament so that the government could evade scrutiny, HMQEII showed that she was unwilling or unable to make that stand. She will do exactly as her Ministers tell her to do. We therefore do not have an independent head of state and could do with creating one.
I think the normal British way of doing this would be to retain the Monarchy for show, but have her theoretical powers vested in someone able to exercise them if required.
As for the US, yes I would oppose the actions of Trump in that scenario. However, I am not sure what that has got to do with your belief that UK ministers should not be subject to the rule of law in the UK.
Theresa May is interesting. Not a sentence I thought I'd write. Gives cover to other rebels. A woman scorned indeed. Would have thought Boris had enough experience of those.
FE. Hallelujah. This sector has been ignored, cut and gutted in the focus on Unis and schools for decades.
However, this is a long term project not a headline grabbing quick fix.
Institutions have closed facilities. Staff on ZHC. Finding qualified people to teach and places locally to teach in won't happen overnight.
Just because I don't agree with the herd here always, doesn't mean I always support Johnson.
Legislation can and has overridden common law in the past. Do you honestly think that has never happened before?
Dave led on so many other factors, best man for a crisis, man most trusted to run the NHS albeit because of heartbreaking circumstances, best man for the economy, etc.
I'm not seeing that yet for Sir Keir, yet.
I'm from the school of thought that believes oppositions don't win elections, governments lose them, so that should cheer you up.
What we really need is some Sunak v. Starmer head to head polling.
There's always nuance with your "opposition" for his positions; you always support him.
I get it, I had a love-in with Corbyn.
It was exactly one year ago we sailed out of Manhattan on our 24 day transatlantic cruise from Southampton
Before covid we decided no more cruising but I seriously regret that the opportunities my wife and I had over many years may well be quite some way time away before cruising becomes safe again and in particular the large 24 hour buffets so used in the industry
We should close down all the former polys, I mean would anyone really miss them?
University should be solely for the academically gifted.
Wonder if this caused by the Brexit dynamic or the fact that Starmar is struggling to cut through?
Right now he's where Johnson was at his high point, I think that will fall in time.
Sure, those of us who've been here for ages may recognise an old poster under a new name, but that's the sort of thing that should be understood but not said.
It's all in good fun, I didn't do it to cause any harm to the user involved - like I said I wasn't aware of Sean's identity until it was just pointed out. I still don't know who he is.
I think if you use your name to post online you're asking for trouble anyway, tbh. I don't reveal personal details for that reason.
I’m in favour of respecting pseudonymity, but in the circumstances of a poster apparently adopting serial pseudonyms while retaining a characteristic and deeply idiosyncratic posting style, it does feel ridiculous to have to pretend not to notice.
I try to give them a pass, but sometimes the effort just becomes too much.
https://twitter.com/juliaioffe/status/1310531559657803776
I trust that I won`t be disappointed in that regard.
Don't do it. If someone wants to be pseudonymous, and they don't have multiple pseudonyms active simultaneously which I think is against Mike's rules, let them be pseudonymous.
I know - open up the former polys as new polys!
I just think that if you're going to come on here and be continuously objectionable to people and annoy people just for the sake of it on a daily/weekly basis, people will get tired of it and quickly see who it is.
I've only been here a year and I could spot Sean a mile away. For our long time users it might be very boring.
We've all got into bother on here, including and especially me but I have tried to make amends where it's possible. I've never seen any kind of understanding from Sean or his latest iteration.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/nixon-tells-editors-im-not-a-crook/2012/06/04/gJQA1RK6IV_story.html
... Orlando, Fla, Nov. 17 -- Declaring that “I am not a crook,” President Nixon vigorously defended his record in the Watergate case tonight and said he had never profited from his public service.
“I have earned every cent. And in all of my years of public life I have never obstructed justice,” Mr. Nixon said.
“People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook. I’ve earned everything I’ve got.”...
- I have called for the Triple Lock to be scrapped and I oppose Johnson keeping it.
- I opposed the formula for A-Level awards and called for that to be scrapped before it was popular to do so andbefore the u-turn.
- I called for a u-turn on charging foreign NHS and care workers the NHS surcharge before it happened.
- I support the Brady Amendment on ensuring Parliamentary oversight of COVID restrictions.
- I supported the Amendment to the IM Bill on ensuring Parliamentary approval before Minsters exercising their powers.
- I opposed Johnson voting for May's Withdrawal Agreement on MV3.
I could probably think up other examples but I said half a dozen and its more than you're requested three.https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/higher-apprenticeships-lead-greater-earnings-most-degrees
I opposed Brown increasing the deficit 2001 onwards before the recession. I have never attacked Brown for the deficit increasing during the recession. I attacked Brown for what he did 2001-2007, not for what he did 2007-08.
Unless you think there is no recession or economic crisis the response this year is not the same thing as 2001.