Anti-monarchists receive ‘intimidatory’ Home Office letter on new protest laws
Home Office claims timing of new powers, taking effect days before king’s coronation, is coincidental
Official warning letters have been sent to anti-monarchists planning peaceful protests at King Charles III’s coronation saying that new criminal offences to prevent disruption have been rushed into law.
Using tactics described by lawyers as “intimidatory”, the Home Office’s Police Powers Unit wrote to the campaign group Republic saying new powers had been brought forward to prevent “disruption at major sporting and cultural events”.
The new law, given royal assent by Charles on Tuesday, means that from Wednesday:
Protesters who block roads, airports and railways could face 12 months behind bars.
Anyone locking on to others, objects or buildings could go to prison for six months and face an unlimited fine.
Police will be able to head off disruption by stopping and searching protesters if they suspect they are setting out to cause chaos.
“I would be grateful if you could publicise and forward this letter to your members who are likely to be affected by these legislative changes,” says the Home Office letter, which lists the creation of a number of new criminal offences under the government’s much criticised public order bill.
The Home Office claims that the timing of the laws is coincidental. But lawyers have told Republic that the letter could be viewed as intimidatory, days before planned demonstrations in central London around the coronation.
Graham Smith, the campaign group’s chief executive, described the letter as “very odd” and said the group was seeking assurances from the police that nothing had changed in relation to its plans to protest on coronation day.
“We have been in direct contact with liaison officers and have met with senior commanders, who we have been very clear with about what we intend to do. Their response is that they are happy for us to proceed. But this letter has come out of the blue,” Smith said.
“Lawyers who we have been in touch with agree it sounds like intimidation and we are currently waiting for assurances from police nothing has changed.”
What monarchists need to explain is what would have happened if Prince Andrew was going to succeed Queen Elizabeth II.
If Prince Andrew had been first in line to the throne, he wouldn't have become the person he is.
Missing the point, say a terrorist attack took out, Charles, his boys and their families in 2019 we'd have King Andrew, the same person he is today.
And the situation would be dealt with at the time - places can become republics at the drop of a hat (or swing of the axe), it wouldn't take long if there was a surge of republican sentiment in such a situation.
I am still of the belief that there should be a "head of state" election every 10 years. If the monarchists are right and the British people love them they will vote for King Charles. If they don't they will vote for Tony Blair or Screaming Lord Sutch or whoever
I see that sort of thing proposed sometimes and I don't think it is as bruising a point as it's supposed to be. The lack of need to renew the system every 5/10/whatever years is part of the point of couse, so the 'aha, why don't you vote for the HoS to prove its popular' argument is a bit out there. In any case, there is a chance every 3-5 years at least to support parties which want to abolish the monarchy, or hold a referendum on it, or indeed propose a solution of decennial confirmatory plebiscites about the system, so there's no need to do a HoS election every 10 years - we can simply choose Heads of Government who support retention or reform accordingly, without needing to wait 10 years.
If we did have to vote for a HoS Charles wouldn't get a look in. Nor would William I bet - they might score highly in a theoretical scenario, but that would not materialise if it became an actual, political choice.
And, even republicans aren't that bothered agreeing the monarchy sort of works:
"And over a third (38 per cent) of republican respondents did agree that the Royal Family does a better job of connecting with ordinary people than elected politicians.
Some 22 per cent say it helps unite people and 16 per cent say it gives us more stability."
"More than three quarters of pro-republic voters agreed that 'in an ideal world we wouldn't have the monarchy, but there are more important things for the country to deal with'."
What monarchists need to explain is what would have happened if Prince Andrew was going to succeed Queen Elizabeth II.
If Prince Andrew had been first in line to the throne, he wouldn't have become the person he is.
Missing the point, say a terrorist attack took out, Charles, his boys and their families in 2019 we'd have King Andrew, the same person he is today.
You’d have to kill 8 people, including Harry and William, who are very rarely in the same place these days, and they and all their children are pretty much never in the same place. That seems unlikely.
Anti-monarchists receive ‘intimidatory’ Home Office letter on new protest laws
Home Office claims timing of new powers, taking effect days before king’s coronation, is coincidental
Official warning letters have been sent to anti-monarchists planning peaceful protests at King Charles III’s coronation saying that new criminal offences to prevent disruption have been rushed into law.
Using tactics described by lawyers as “intimidatory”, the Home Office’s Police Powers Unit wrote to the campaign group Republic saying new powers had been brought forward to prevent “disruption at major sporting and cultural events”.
The new law, given royal assent by Charles on Tuesday, means that from Wednesday:
Protesters who block roads, airports and railways could face 12 months behind bars.
Anyone locking on to others, objects or buildings could go to prison for six months and face an unlimited fine.
Police will be able to head off disruption by stopping and searching protesters if they suspect they are setting out to cause chaos.
“I would be grateful if you could publicise and forward this letter to your members who are likely to be affected by these legislative changes,” says the Home Office letter, which lists the creation of a number of new criminal offences under the government’s much criticised public order bill.
The Home Office claims that the timing of the laws is coincidental. But lawyers have told Republic that the letter could be viewed as intimidatory, days before planned demonstrations in central London around the coronation.
Graham Smith, the campaign group’s chief executive, described the letter as “very odd” and said the group was seeking assurances from the police that nothing had changed in relation to its plans to protest on coronation day.
“We have been in direct contact with liaison officers and have met with senior commanders, who we have been very clear with about what we intend to do. Their response is that they are happy for us to proceed. But this letter has come out of the blue,” Smith said.
“Lawyers who we have been in touch with agree it sounds like intimidation and we are currently waiting for assurances from police nothing has changed.”
Fuck the government making and implementing the laws.
I love the 'giving royal assent by Charles' line designed to make it look as though he had any choice.
It's like all that phony outrage about Elizabeth not refusing to agree to the prorogation request from the PM - the people making that point don't want the monarch to have the power to say no, and nor do most monarchists. Sure, make an argument that in that case there is no point to a monarch at all, that's intellectually consistent, but the 'they didn't use their power to stop that bad thing X' line was just bloody dishonest.
Could be political smart, to drag the whole thing out as long as possible?
Seeing as how it's a load of caterpillar poop anyway, and ultimate ruling likely to reflect that?
Its amazing. They want to block the SueGray appointment to spite Starmer, and in Case's sake spite Gray.
Except that if as they now suggest Gray is compromised and therefore the Johnson enquiry (which cleared him...) was a political smear job, then surely Johnson should still be PM?
And the thing that really upsets civil servants who aren't Simon Case - a one year moratorium on their next job would rather screw up the career prospects of senior civil servants.
So having got very excited and lined up their client Officially-Not-News channels to provide news entertainment reporting about it, they have to pack up their tents. As going through with it would be far worse than the quick knee-trembler in the lift they were all excited about.
When I was working with a civil service body, we couldn’t publish something with zero political or policy element because of purdah. Who on Earth thought they could publish something like this during purdah?
Could be political smart, to drag the whole thing out as long as possible?
Seeing as how it's a load of caterpillar poop anyway, and ultimate ruling likely to reflect that?
Its amazing. They want to block the SueGray appointment to spite Starmer, and in Case's sake spite Gray.
Except that if as they now suggest Gray is compromised and therefore the Johnson enquiry (which cleared him...) was a political smear job, then surely Johnson should still be PM?
And the thing that really upsets civil servants who aren't Simon Case - a one year moratorium on their next job would rather screw up the career prospects of senior civil servants.
So having got very excited and lined up their client Officially-Not-News channels to provide news entertainment reporting about it, they have to pack up their tents. As going through with it would be far worse than the quick knee-trembler in the lift they were all excited about.
When I was working with a civil service body, we couldn’t publish something with zero political or policy element because of purdah. Who on Earth thought they could publish something like this during purdah?
"And over a third (38 per cent) of republican respondents did agree that the Royal Family does a better job of connecting with ordinary people than elected politicians.
My cat does a better job of connecting with ordinary people than elected politicians do. Can he have £100m a year please?
The other day, an empty oil tanker, the Pablo, exploded off the Malaysian coast. Because it was empty, the risks of pollution are relatively minor (though the damage to the ship was very extensive).The Pablo is part of the dark fleet, and was probably involved with ship-to-ship transfers for oil deliveries to China.
Whether that oil came from Venezuela, Iran, or Russia, it highlights this trade, the sanctions-busting that is going on, and the generally lawlessness of much international shipping.
Garryowen would be a good anthem. “The best military tune in the world”, as Teddy Roosevelt put it.
Association with US 7th Cavalry and George Armstrong Custer makes it problematic as anthem, in these wokish times.
Of course, that's what the Rough Rider liked about it - musical accompaniment for empire and genocide. (TR had his good points, but this was NOT one of 'em).
However, a third of Britons now think the national anthem should be replaced. Its popularity has become divided along regional and generational lines, according a survey of modern listeners.
About 33 per cent of the 2,000 respondents said they wanted the song to be consigned to history, while 83 per cent admitted to not knowing the lyrics beyond the first verse.
The anthem’s “old-fashioned” and “militaristic” lyrics about the monarchy and its “religious tone” were cited as reasons for replacing it.
Those who want it gone have suggested adopting alternatives including Land of Hope and Glory or Rule Britannia, as well as modern classics such as Sweet Caroline and Wonderwall.
The age group most opposed to the anthem was Generation Z, with 42 per cent of respondents aged 18-24 calling for it to be replaced.
By comparison, just 27 per cent of their parents’ generation, aged 45-54, held the same view.
The largest regional group who wanted the anthem changed were the Welsh, with 40 per cent backing a new anthem, followed by 38 per cent in Scotland and London.
Residents in the East Midlands and North East of England have the lowest desire to scrap God Save the King, with 74 per cent voting for its retention.
The other day, an empty oil tanker, the Pablo, exploded off the Malaysian coast. Because it was empty, the risks of pollution are relatively minor (though the damage to the ship was very extensive).The Pablo is part of the dark fleet, and was probably involved with ship-to-ship transfers for oil deliveries to China.
Whether that oil came from Venezuela, Iran, or Russia, it highlights this trade, the sanctions-busting that is going on, and the generally lawlessness of much international shipping.
Possibly. But that would fall under the wider category of "these-ships-operate-outside-the-law".
Flags of convenience, and all the other stuff that occurs outside national laws, are a stain on international commerce, and all who rely on that commerce.
Anti-monarchists receive ‘intimidatory’ Home Office letter on new protest laws
Home Office claims timing of new powers, taking effect days before king’s coronation, is coincidental
Official warning letters have been sent to anti-monarchists planning peaceful protests at King Charles III’s coronation saying that new criminal offences to prevent disruption have been rushed into law.
Using tactics described by lawyers as “intimidatory”, the Home Office’s Police Powers Unit wrote to the campaign group Republic saying new powers had been brought forward to prevent “disruption at major sporting and cultural events”.
The new law, given royal assent by Charles on Tuesday, means that from Wednesday:
Protesters who block roads, airports and railways could face 12 months behind bars.
Anyone locking on to others, objects or buildings could go to prison for six months and face an unlimited fine.
Police will be able to head off disruption by stopping and searching protesters if they suspect they are setting out to cause chaos.
“I would be grateful if you could publicise and forward this letter to your members who are likely to be affected by these legislative changes,” says the Home Office letter, which lists the creation of a number of new criminal offences under the government’s much criticised public order bill.
The Home Office claims that the timing of the laws is coincidental. But lawyers have told Republic that the letter could be viewed as intimidatory, days before planned demonstrations in central London around the coronation.
Graham Smith, the campaign group’s chief executive, described the letter as “very odd” and said the group was seeking assurances from the police that nothing had changed in relation to its plans to protest on coronation day.
“We have been in direct contact with liaison officers and have met with senior commanders, who we have been very clear with about what we intend to do. Their response is that they are happy for us to proceed. But this letter has come out of the blue,” Smith said.
“Lawyers who we have been in touch with agree it sounds like intimidation and we are currently waiting for assurances from police nothing has changed.”
Some of those rules on blocking infrastructure, and stopping and searching any "disruptive" protestors, are now some of the most repressive in the western world, and there's more repressive legislation to come on trade unions, and more. Still, though, much of the British Conservative self-image remains stubbornly and stolidly bound up with "freedom", as it compares itself with the tyrannies of Europe.
I find myself (much to my surprise) in agreement with the Mail (apparently). Like it seems of their "poll", I'm broadly supportive of the Monarchy but with the caveat it needs to reflect some (not all) of the societal changes around it. There may be some who prefer a Monarchy frozen in time, in some mythological romanticised Britain of Vicars cycling through perfect villages, of cricket on the green and no one ever having the wobbles.
I much prefer a Monarchy aware of how we are changing and evolving, both individually and collectively. The Britain which will welcome Prince William, let alone Prince George, to the throne from the Britain that is and the Britain that was.
If that means a different form of Monarchy, more adaptable to today and tomorrow and less rooted in yesterday and in pomp and circumstance which looks at best irrelevant and at worst painfully anachronistic, so be it. The Monarchy's greatest success has been both to move with the times while keeping the best of what we were and speaking to the best of what we can be.
Could be political smart, to drag the whole thing out as long as possible?
Seeing as how it's a load of caterpillar poop anyway, and ultimate ruling likely to reflect that?
Its amazing. They want to block the SueGray appointment to spite Starmer, and in Case's sake spite Gray.
Except that if as they now suggest Gray is compromised and therefore the Johnson enquiry (which cleared him...) was a political smear job, then surely Johnson should still be PM?
And the thing that really upsets civil servants who aren't Simon Case - a one year moratorium on their next job would rather screw up the career prospects of senior civil servants.
So having got very excited and lined up their client Officially-Not-News channels to provide news entertainment reporting about it, they have to pack up their tents. As going through with it would be far worse than the quick knee-trembler in the lift they were all excited about.
When I was working with a civil service body, we couldn’t publish something with zero political or policy element because of purdah. Who on Earth thought they could publish something like this during purdah?
Could be political smart, to drag the whole thing out as long as possible?
Seeing as how it's a load of caterpillar poop anyway, and ultimate ruling likely to reflect that?
Its amazing. They want to block the SueGray appointment to spite Starmer, and in Case's sake spite Gray.
Except that if as they now suggest Gray is compromised and therefore the Johnson enquiry (which cleared him...) was a political smear job, then surely Johnson should still be PM?
And the thing that really upsets civil servants who aren't Simon Case - a one year moratorium on their next job would rather screw up the career prospects of senior civil servants.
So having got very excited and lined up their client Officially-Not-News channels to provide news entertainment reporting about it, they have to pack up their tents. As going through with it would be far worse than the quick knee-trembler in the lift they were all excited about.
When I was working with a civil service body, we couldn’t publish something with zero political or policy element because of purdah. Who on Earth thought they could publish something like this during purdah?
Yes, I've noticed this before. Ever since BJ took over, purdah rules seem to have become unimportant and have been largely ignored - e.g. reports of various kinds being published during purdah. The current lot don't have any time for unwritten conventions, of course.
Istanbul is an incredible city. Eis Tin Poli, as the Byzantines called it.
With those kind of vistas and names like Galata, no wonder the Greek nationalists end of the political spectrum can never get over the loss of the old imperial capital.
Weirdly disappointing climate tho. Much more Black Sea than Med. So much colder, wetter, danker, even snowier, than you expect
Just got home to hotel in the old city, bloody cold! It was 23ºC and sunny when we left the hotel at 11am, but the temperate dropped badly, and the wind got up, late in the day. Ended up with a blanket in that rooftop bar, and got a cab home as it was (figuratively) freezing in the wind. 30k steps today though, not quite up to the madness of @BlancheLivermore but the best I remember in a long time.
I find anti-monarchism slightly weird sometimes. There are lots of rather good reasons to get rid of monarchy - it's what most places do, equality and meritocracy, democratic consent, dropping support, it's just plain silly etc - so why do they sometimes go for bad reasons*?
"If 8 people died Andrew would be king and what would you do then?" (yes, this is a paraphrase) is hardly a killer line for a monarchist to face, compared to other possible lines, yet it's presented as some kind of conundrum or gotcha for the monarchically inclined.
*actually this is a trend that could be extended to many political arguments.
The big difference between Leavers and Remainers is that Leavers are stupid and Remainers are just as stupid - see @TOPPING et al - but Remainers are haughtily convinced they are much cleverer. This, in a weird way, makes Remainers even stupider - in practise - than Leavers, who are genuinely stupid
Once you understand that, the entire farcical madness of Brexit is explicable, right down to the daily debates on here, still ongoing
Leavers or remainers may or may not be stupid.
People who don't understand that it is perfectly democratic to ask the people about a decision that you previously asked them, nor that parliaments cannot bind successive parliaments, nor that parliament is sovereign are, however, very, very stupid indeed.
You can't step into the same river twice.
2016 was a one-off fork in the road. We can't go back and change our minds, and the previous status quo isn't on offer anyway.
Any new attempt to join the EU needs to start with a party winning an election with a commitment to negotiate accession and everything that comes with it. It doesn't start with rerunning the 2016 vote.
Another Referendum is all it takes.
"Should the United Kingdom remain in no man's land or leave to join every other European country in the European Union?
Tick one box only:
Leave Remain
The government will implement whatever the majority decide."
You sound like the people who were eagerly waiting for Nicola Sturgeon to give them another referendum on Scottish independence and thought that's all it would take.
I'm saying there's no need to overthink it. Party wins a GE promising an In/Out referendum. Same as last time. The only difference is it's the insurgent IN that triggers the EU negotiation process rather than the status quo of OUT. Instead of an exit deal the mandate is to agree an entry deal. This will happen in the medium term and IN will win comfortably as the country collectively screws its head back on.
Issue one in the campaign: is a vote to rejoin a mandate to join the Euro?
Rejoin would have to say "no" in order to avoid holing their campaign below the waterline, but what if the EU doesn't recreate our opt-outs?
It's Leave (no man's land) not Rejoin. That's number 1. Then to the substantive point. So, fine, just as in all campaigns there'll be issues, questions, truth and lies. It will be for Leave to make their case and Remain (in no man's land) to make theirs.
The bottom line is as before. If the 'change' proposition prevails it then falls on the government to negotiate the best deal with the EU that it can. An entry deal this time rather than an exit one.
Will the details of the deal have to be known before the vote? Nope. Of course not. Did the details of the deal last time have to be known before the vote? I should cocoa.
The lesson of Brexit - to be taken to heart for any other EU referendum or indeed for the Sindy one when it comes - is that for the change campaign to win they must AVOID SPECIFICS.
That would be the big problem for the Rejoin campaign. It would be open to their opponents to pin all manner of charges on the Rejoiners.
And, you'd have a very bemused EU leadership thinking "Why the hell do we want to go through this, all over again?" with perhaps a very fractious set of negotiations to follow a Rejoin vote in the referendum, with the possibility of a change of government in the intervening years.
If Rejoin ever happens it will be as the result of bottom up pressure and it will be many years from now. I may be wrong, but I don't think the under-45 demographic on PB is in any way typical of that demographic generally. Attachment to the pound, dislike of freedom of movement, concerns about sovereignty and so on just do not resonate in the way they do, for perfectly understandable reasons, to older generations. That does not guarantee anything, of course, but in 10 years time the voting public will look and feel very different to the one we have now. If growth is sluggish, if living standards are not improving, if public services are not functioning and so on, EU membership on whatever terms may start to look like a solution to deep-seated problems - just as it did in the 1970s. Obviously, if the UK actually starts to move in the right direction, that is far less likely to be the case. In the meantime, we are clearly going to move closer to the EU.
Again, the impending AI revolution renders all of this fairly meaningless, in an unusually profound way. Human life is about to change. A tsunami approaches which will upend EVERYTHING
It’s like a squabble between pre-Colombian Mexican tribes even as Hernan Cortes marches towards Tenochtitlan
AI will not stop the arguments on here. It will just make them a lot more confusing.
Similarly, it will never be a substitute for live experience. AI can't sit on the beach for you, or stand on that mountain top, or eat that steak, or drink that bottle of wine. AI will never stop Spurs from being Spursy or an England batting collapse. Real life will still matter.
Indeed. Actual reality beats virtual reality every time.
Who wants to live plugged into The Matrix?
You should tell that to the 7,800 people just sacked by IBM to be replaced by AI, I’m sure it will be a momentous consolation that “a a machine cannot drink that bottle of wine that they can no longer afford coz they’ve been sacked”
700 at Dropbox too.
This is going to be huge.
Doctors, teachers, lecturers, accountants, this will taken large swathes of middle class jobs.
Kids today. Get a trade. Become a plumber or a brickie or a sparkle.
It is truly scary
My older daughter - nearly 17 - is set on becoming an “urban planner”. She loves everything about it - architecture, design, topography - she’s very bright, and she’s lining up the universities where she might study Geography. (UCL, Manchester etc)
I’m really pleased she has this passion and this conduit for her intelligence. But inside I am thinking: Oh God darling that will all be done by machine, and done better than by humans, there probably is no career there
WTF do we tell our kids???
Hopefully she is sensible enough not to panic about everything like you and will be just fine.
Anyone who is a parent of a child under 18 who is not mildly panicked about their career options, in the face of AI, is not sentient, and deserves to be overtaken by AI
It is a genuinely fearful moment for humankind
Social care seems like solid advice to give to one's offspring. They'll thank you for it one day.
Istanbul is an incredible city. Eis Tin Poli, as the Byzantines called it.
With those kind of vistas and names like Galata, no wonder the Greek nationalists end of the political spectrum can never get over the loss of the old imperial capital.
Weirdly disappointing climate tho. Much more Black Sea than Med. So much colder, wetter, danker, even snowier, than you expect
Just got home to hotel in the old city, bloody cold! It was 23ºC and sunny when we left the hotel at 11am, but the temperate dropped badly, and the wind got up, late in the day. Ended up with a blanket in that rooftop bar, and got a cab home as it was (figuratively) freezing in the wind. 30k steps today though, not quite up to the madness of @BlancheLivermore but the best I remember in a long time.
Just checked and I got to 540k steps today in the ten days so far
Istanbul is an incredible city. Eis Tin Poli, as the Byzantines called it.
With those kind of vistas and names like Galata, no wonder the Greek nationalists end of the political spectrum can never get over the loss of the old imperial capital.
Weirdly disappointing climate tho. Much more Black Sea than Med. So much colder, wetter, danker, even snowier, than you expect
Just got home to hotel in the old city, bloody cold! It was 23ºC and sunny when we left the hotel at 11am, but the temperate dropped badly, and the wind got up, late in the day. Ended up with a blanket in that rooftop bar, and got a cab home as it was (figuratively) freezing in the wind. 30k steps today though, not quite up to the madness of @BlancheLivermore but the best I remember in a long time.
Just checked and I got to 540k steps today in the ten days so far
Istanbul is an incredible city. Eis Tin Poli, as the Byzantines called it.
With those kind of vistas and names like Galata, no wonder the Greek nationalists end of the political spectrum can never get over the loss of the old imperial capital.
Weirdly disappointing climate tho. Much more Black Sea than Med. So much colder, wetter, danker, even snowier, than you expect
Just got home to hotel in the old city, bloody cold! It was 23ºC and sunny when we left the hotel at 11am, but the temperate dropped badly, and the wind got up, late in the day. Ended up with a blanket in that rooftop bar, and got a cab home as it was (figuratively) freezing in the wind. 30k steps today though, not quite up to the madness of @BlancheLivermore but the best I remember in a long time.
Just checked and I got to 540k steps today in the ten days so far
Istanbul is an incredible city. Eis Tin Poli, as the Byzantines called it.
With those kind of vistas and names like Galata, no wonder the Greek nationalists end of the political spectrum can never get over the loss of the old imperial capital.
Weirdly disappointing climate tho. Much more Black Sea than Med. So much colder, wetter, danker, even snowier, than you expect
Just got home to hotel in the old city, bloody cold! It was 23ºC and sunny when we left the hotel at 11am, but the temperate dropped badly, and the wind got up, late in the day. Ended up with a blanket in that rooftop bar, and got a cab home as it was (figuratively) freezing in the wind. 30k steps today though, not quite up to the madness of @BlancheLivermore but the best I remember in a long time.
Just checked and I got to 540k steps today in the ten days so far
20+miles per day?
Depending on stride length, I'd guess 25+ miles.
The most I've done in a day (during the last seven years I've been logging on Garmin) is 57,503. Most in a week is 235,688. So he's really motoring. Good on him.
Anti-monarchists receive ‘intimidatory’ Home Office letter on new protest laws
Home Office claims timing of new powers, taking effect days before king’s coronation, is coincidental
Official warning letters have been sent to anti-monarchists planning peaceful protests at King Charles III’s coronation saying that new criminal offences to prevent disruption have been rushed into law.
Using tactics described by lawyers as “intimidatory”, the Home Office’s Police Powers Unit wrote to the campaign group Republic saying new powers had been brought forward to prevent “disruption at major sporting and cultural events”.
The new law, given royal assent by Charles on Tuesday, means that from Wednesday:
Protesters who block roads, airports and railways could face 12 months behind bars.
Anyone locking on to others, objects or buildings could go to prison for six months and face an unlimited fine.
Police will be able to head off disruption by stopping and searching protesters if they suspect they are setting out to cause chaos.
“I would be grateful if you could publicise and forward this letter to your members who are likely to be affected by these legislative changes,” says the Home Office letter, which lists the creation of a number of new criminal offences under the government’s much criticised public order bill.
The Home Office claims that the timing of the laws is coincidental. But lawyers have told Republic that the letter could be viewed as intimidatory, days before planned demonstrations in central London around the coronation.
Graham Smith, the campaign group’s chief executive, described the letter as “very odd” and said the group was seeking assurances from the police that nothing had changed in relation to its plans to protest on coronation day.
“We have been in direct contact with liaison officers and have met with senior commanders, who we have been very clear with about what we intend to do. Their response is that they are happy for us to proceed. But this letter has come out of the blue,” Smith said.
“Lawyers who we have been in touch with agree it sounds like intimidation and we are currently waiting for assurances from police nothing has changed.”
Some of those rules on blocking infrastructure, and stopping and searching any "disruptive" protestors, are now some of the most repressive in the western world, and there's more repressive legislation to come on trade unions, and more. Still, though, much of the British Conservative self-image remains stubbornly and stolidly bound up with "freedom", as it compares itself with the tyrannies of Europe.
In particular: Police will be able to head off disruption by stopping and searching protesters if they suspect they are setting out to cause chaos. is a bloody disgrace.
It gives far too much power to the police. If I turn up in London on Saturday wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with I'd rather we were a Republic, actually, I'm pretty confident that some enthusiastic copper would take it upon themselves to stop and search me, even though my 'protest' is entirely benign.
The swing in the R&W "Red Wall" polling from Conservative to Labour is 13.5% so pretty close to the England-wide 14% suggesting a uniformity across constituencies which we may or may not see played out on Thursday.
Looking at last night's numbers and taking out London, Wales and Scotland, I get Labour 46%, Conservatives 29%, Liberal Democrats 11%, Reform 8%, Green 5%.
That will include other areas with no votes such as Cornwall and is only indicative - nothing more.
We may be a lot wiser on Friday but somehow I doubt it.
Istanbul is an incredible city. Eis Tin Poli, as the Byzantines called it.
With those kind of vistas and names like Galata, no wonder the Greek nationalists end of the political spectrum can never get over the loss of the old imperial capital.
Weirdly disappointing climate tho. Much more Black Sea than Med. So much colder, wetter, danker, even snowier, than you expect
Just got home to hotel in the old city, bloody cold! It was 23ºC and sunny when we left the hotel at 11am, but the temperate dropped badly, and the wind got up, late in the day. Ended up with a blanket in that rooftop bar, and got a cab home as it was (figuratively) freezing in the wind. 30k steps today though, not quite up to the madness of @BlancheLivermore but the best I remember in a long time.
Just checked and I got to 540k steps today in the ten days so far
Would be great IF you could track your walk online and post.
Friend of mine did that re: bicycle ride from Seattle to Nebraska, actually had two trackers; together they showed the route on Google map (or similar) along with chart of elevation gained/lost, and pics that he took en route and inserted into the on-line mapping.
VERY cool. AND would also confirm your mileages . . . not that PBers harbor doubt on that score methinks!
What monarchists need to explain is what would have happened if Prince Andrew was going to succeed Queen Elizabeth II.
If Prince Andrew had been first in line to the throne, he wouldn't have become the person he is.
Missing the point, say a terrorist attack took out, Charles, his boys and their families in 2019 we'd have King Andrew, the same person he is today.
You’d have to kill 8 people, including Harry and William, who are very rarely in the same place these days, and they and all their children are pretty much never in the same place. That seems unlikely.
William got a massive bollocking from her late Majesty, for turning up with his whole immediate family to meet her at Sandringham, in a helicopter he’d flown himself from London. William and George now never travel together, because the Firm really, really, doesn’t want the constitutional crisis that would result from the spare becoming the heir.
Could be political smart, to drag the whole thing out as long as possible?
Seeing as how it's a load of caterpillar poop anyway, and ultimate ruling likely to reflect that?
Its amazing. They want to block the SueGray appointment to spite Starmer, and in Case's sake spite Gray.
Except that if as they now suggest Gray is compromised and therefore the Johnson enquiry (which cleared him...) was a political smear job, then surely Johnson should still be PM?
And the thing that really upsets civil servants who aren't Simon Case - a one year moratorium on their next job would rather screw up the career prospects of senior civil servants.
So having got very excited and lined up their client Officially-Not-News channels to provide news entertainment reporting about it, they have to pack up their tents. As going through with it would be far worse than the quick knee-trembler in the lift they were all excited about.
When I was working with a civil service body, we couldn’t publish something with zero political or policy element because of purdah. Who on Earth thought they could publish something like this during purdah?
Yes, I've noticed this before. Ever since BJ took over, purdah rules seem to have become unimportant and have been largely ignored - e.g. reports of various kinds being published during purdah. The current lot don't have any time for unwritten conventions, of course.
Purdah certainly still exists in local Government and is enforced. One of the problems in the two-tier system is the number of County Councillors who are "twin-hatters" being also District or Borough Councillors. One of the authorities won't be having elections but the other one will.
The big difference between Leavers and Remainers is that Leavers are stupid and Remainers are just as stupid - see @TOPPING et al - but Remainers are haughtily convinced they are much cleverer. This, in a weird way, makes Remainers even stupider - in practise - than Leavers, who are genuinely stupid
Once you understand that, the entire farcical madness of Brexit is explicable, right down to the daily debates on here, still ongoing
Leavers or remainers may or may not be stupid.
People who don't understand that it is perfectly democratic to ask the people about a decision that you previously asked them, nor that parliaments cannot bind successive parliaments, nor that parliament is sovereign are, however, very, very stupid indeed.
You can't step into the same river twice.
2016 was a one-off fork in the road. We can't go back and change our minds, and the previous status quo isn't on offer anyway.
Any new attempt to join the EU needs to start with a party winning an election with a commitment to negotiate accession and everything that comes with it. It doesn't start with rerunning the 2016 vote.
Another Referendum is all it takes.
"Should the United Kingdom remain in no man's land or leave to join every other European country in the European Union?
Tick one box only:
Leave Remain
The government will implement whatever the majority decide."
You sound like the people who were eagerly waiting for Nicola Sturgeon to give them another referendum on Scottish independence and thought that's all it would take.
I'm saying there's no need to overthink it. Party wins a GE promising an In/Out referendum. Same as last time. The only difference is it's the insurgent IN that triggers the EU negotiation process rather than the status quo of OUT. Instead of an exit deal the mandate is to agree an entry deal. This will happen in the medium term and IN will win comfortably as the country collectively screws its head back on.
Issue one in the campaign: is a vote to rejoin a mandate to join the Euro?
Rejoin would have to say "no" in order to avoid holing their campaign below the waterline, but what if the EU doesn't recreate our opt-outs?
It's Leave (no man's land) not Rejoin. That's number 1. Then to the substantive point. So, fine, just as in all campaigns there'll be issues, questions, truth and lies. It will be for Leave to make their case and Remain (in no man's land) to make theirs.
The bottom line is as before. If the 'change' proposition prevails it then falls on the government to negotiate the best deal with the EU that it can. An entry deal this time rather than an exit one.
Will the details of the deal have to be known before the vote? Nope. Of course not. Did the details of the deal last time have to be known before the vote? I should cocoa.
The lesson of Brexit - to be taken to heart for any other EU referendum or indeed for the Sindy one when it comes - is that for the change campaign to win they must AVOID SPECIFICS.
That would be the big problem for the Rejoin campaign. It would be open to their opponents to pin all manner of charges on the Rejoiners.
And, you'd have a very bemused EU leadership thinking "Why the hell do we want to go through this, all over again?" with perhaps a very fractious set of negotiations to follow a Rejoin vote in the referendum, with the possibility of a change of government in the intervening years.
If Rejoin ever happens it will be as the result of bottom up pressure and it will be many years from now. I may be wrong, but I don't think the under-45 demographic on PB is in any way typical of that demographic generally. Attachment to the pound, dislike of freedom of movement, concerns about sovereignty and so on just do not resonate in the way they do, for perfectly understandable reasons, to older generations. That does not guarantee anything, of course, but in 10 years time the voting public will look and feel very different to the one we have now. If growth is sluggish, if living standards are not improving, if public services are not functioning and so on, EU membership on whatever terms may start to look like a solution to deep-seated problems - just as it did in the 1970s. Obviously, if the UK actually starts to move in the right direction, that is far less likely to be the case. In the meantime, we are clearly going to move closer to the EU.
Again, the impending AI revolution renders all of this fairly meaningless, in an unusually profound way. Human life is about to change. A tsunami approaches which will upend EVERYTHING
It’s like a squabble between pre-Colombian Mexican tribes even as Hernan Cortes marches towards Tenochtitlan
AI will not stop the arguments on here. It will just make them a lot more confusing.
Similarly, it will never be a substitute for live experience. AI can't sit on the beach for you, or stand on that mountain top, or eat that steak, or drink that bottle of wine. AI will never stop Spurs from being Spursy or an England batting collapse. Real life will still matter.
Indeed. Actual reality beats virtual reality every time.
Who wants to live plugged into The Matrix?
You should tell that to the 7,800 people just sacked by IBM to be replaced by AI, I’m sure it will be a momentous consolation that “a a machine cannot drink that bottle of wine that they can no longer afford coz they’ve been sacked”
700 at Dropbox too.
This is going to be huge.
Doctors, teachers, lecturers, accountants, this will taken large swathes of middle class jobs.
Kids today. Get a trade. Become a plumber or a brickie or a sparkle.
It is truly scary
My older daughter - nearly 17 - is set on becoming an “urban planner”. She loves everything about it - architecture, design, topography - she’s very bright, and she’s lining up the universities where she might study Geography. (UCL, Manchester etc)
I’m really pleased she has this passion and this conduit for her intelligence. But inside I am thinking: Oh God darling that will all be done by machine, and done better than by humans, there probably is no career there
WTF do we tell our kids???
Hopefully she is sensible enough not to panic about everything like you and will be just fine.
Anyone who is a parent of a child under 18 who is not mildly panicked about their career options, in the face of AI, is not sentient, and deserves to be overtaken by AI
It is a genuinely fearful moment for humankind
Nope. Most of us are sane and don't panic about everything at the drop of a hat. We reserve our panic , you know, for real disasters. I mean how many things have you panicked here over in the last few years.
I have 2 children in their 20s doing just fine and one of them knows a hell of a lot more about AI than you ever will.
However, a third of Britons now think the national anthem should be replaced. Its popularity has become divided along regional and generational lines, according a survey of modern listeners.
About 33 per cent of the 2,000 respondents said they wanted the song to be consigned to history, while 83 per cent admitted to not knowing the lyrics beyond the first verse.
The anthem’s “old-fashioned” and “militaristic” lyrics about the monarchy and its “religious tone” were cited as reasons for replacing it.
Those who want it gone have suggested adopting alternatives including Land of Hope and Glory or Rule Britannia, as well as modern classics such as Sweet Caroline and Wonderwall.
The age group most opposed to the anthem was Generation Z, with 42 per cent of respondents aged 18-24 calling for it to be replaced.
By comparison, just 27 per cent of their parents’ generation, aged 45-54, held the same view.
The largest regional group who wanted the anthem changed were the Welsh, with 40 per cent backing a new anthem, followed by 38 per cent in Scotland and London.
Residents in the East Midlands and North East of England have the lowest desire to scrap God Save the King, with 74 per cent voting for its retention.
Istanbul is an incredible city. Eis Tin Poli, as the Byzantines called it.
With those kind of vistas and names like Galata, no wonder the Greek nationalists end of the political spectrum can never get over the loss of the old imperial capital.
Weirdly disappointing climate tho. Much more Black Sea than Med. So much colder, wetter, danker, even snowier, than you expect
Just got home to hotel in the old city, bloody cold! It was 23ºC and sunny when we left the hotel at 11am, but the temperate dropped badly, and the wind got up, late in the day. Ended up with a blanket in that rooftop bar, and got a cab home as it was (figuratively) freezing in the wind. 30k steps today though, not quite up to the madness of @BlancheLivermore but the best I remember in a long time.
Just checked and I got to 540k steps today in the ten days so far
Would be great IF you could track your walk online and post.
Friend of mine did that re: bicycle ride from Seattle to Nebraska, actually had two trackers; together they showed the route on Google map (or similar) along with chart of elevation gained/lost, and pics that he took en route and inserted into the on-line mapping.
VERY cool. AND would also confirm your mileages . . . not that PBers harbor doubt on that score methinks!
What's amazing is how much the tech has changed. When I did my walk 20 years ago, 3G was incredibly patchy, and I had to do my notes on a PC and send a CD via snailmail to a friend to update my website. Within just five years, people doing the walk were updating many times a day on FB. Going 20 years before my walk, and unless they got media attention, you had to wait for them to release a book.
Now, I can do a run and my wife can track me in real time. So she knows where to aim the car...
What monarchists need to explain is what would have happened if Prince Andrew was going to succeed Queen Elizabeth II.
If Prince Andrew had been first in line to the throne, he wouldn't have become the person he is.
Missing the point, say a terrorist attack took out, Charles, his boys and their families in 2019 we'd have King Andrew, the same person he is today.
You’d have to kill 8 people, including Harry and William, who are very rarely in the same place these days, and they and all their children are pretty much never in the same place. That seems unlikely.
I find anti-monarchism slightly weird sometimes. There are lots of rather good reasons to get rid of monarchy - it's what most places do, equality and meritocracy, democratic consent, dropping support, it's just plain silly etc - so why do they sometimes go for bad reasons*?
"If 8 people died Andrew would be king and what would you do then?" (yes, this is a paraphrase) is hardly a killer line for a monarchist to face, compared to other possible lines, yet it's presented as some kind of conundrum or gotcha for the monarchically inclined.
*actually this is a trend that could be extended to many political arguments.
A number of republicans have been telling each other that the moment Charles became king the monarchy would explode because he would try and take over the world. Or something.
Instead they are facing a King who has spent 50 years banging on about the environment, housing and minority community relations.
Istanbul is an incredible city. Eis Tin Poli, as the Byzantines called it.
With those kind of vistas and names like Galata, no wonder the Greek nationalists end of the political spectrum can never get over the loss of the old imperial capital.
Weirdly disappointing climate tho. Much more Black Sea than Med. So much colder, wetter, danker, even snowier, than you expect
Just got home to hotel in the old city, bloody cold! It was 23ºC and sunny when we left the hotel at 11am, but the temperate dropped badly, and the wind got up, late in the day. Ended up with a blanket in that rooftop bar, and got a cab home as it was (figuratively) freezing in the wind. 30k steps today though, not quite up to the madness of @BlancheLivermore but the best I remember in a long time.
Just checked and I got to 540k steps today in the ten days so far
That’s seriously impressive, props to you for that.
I managed to tag on a few days to a work trip in Istanbul, thought it might be worth exploring a new city I hadn’t been before. The answer is yes, it’s a wonderful place. Favourite place so far, the “cistern chapel”, a recent opening of an ancient underground water storage facility.
Rishi will be in trouble, Black Sheep brewery has gone into administration, in his patch too. You can here the wails of all ale drinking Yorkshiremen over here on the west coast.
That’s sad. One of my favourite pub moments after a walk in the lakes involved Black Sheep. During a largish order (six of us) the barman got hassled and inadvertently topped of a half of Coniston Bluebird with a Black Sheep. Didn’t mind, and tasted ok. Next round I asked for a Blue Sheep. Confusion from the barman, until I explained what he did last time…*
*Yes it’s a variation on the old airport gag - Customer - I’m flying to New York but I’d like my bags sent to LA. Check in clerk - I’m sorry sir but we can’t do that. Customer - That’s odd, it’s what you did last time…
I find anti-monarchism slightly weird sometimes. There are lots of rather good reasons to get rid of monarchy - it's what most places do, equality and meritocracy, democratic consent, dropping support, it's just plain silly etc - so why do they sometimes go for bad reasons*?
"If 8 people died Andrew would be king and what would you do then?" (yes, this is a paraphrase) is hardly a killer line for a monarchist to face, compared to other possible lines, yet it's presented as some kind of conundrum or gotcha for the monarchically inclined.
*actually this is a trend that could be extended to many political arguments.
A number of republicans have been telling each other that the moment Charles became king the monarchy would explode because he would try and take over the world. Or something.
Instead they are facing a King who has spent 50 years banging on about the environment, housing and minority community relations.
Istanbul is an incredible city. Eis Tin Poli, as the Byzantines called it.
With those kind of vistas and names like Galata, no wonder the Greek nationalists end of the political spectrum can never get over the loss of the old imperial capital.
Weirdly disappointing climate tho. Much more Black Sea than Med. So much colder, wetter, danker, even snowier, than you expect
Just got home to hotel in the old city, bloody cold! It was 23ºC and sunny when we left the hotel at 11am, but the temperate dropped badly, and the wind got up, late in the day. Ended up with a blanket in that rooftop bar, and got a cab home as it was (figuratively) freezing in the wind. 30k steps today though, not quite up to the madness of @BlancheLivermore but the best I remember in a long time.
Just checked and I got to 540k steps today in the ten days so far
Would be great IF you could track your walk online and post.
Friend of mine did that re: bicycle ride from Seattle to Nebraska, actually had two trackers; together they showed the route on Google map (or similar) along with chart of elevation gained/lost, and pics that he took en route and inserted into the on-line mapping.
VERY cool. AND would also confirm your mileages . . . not that PBers harbor doubt on that score methinks!
What's amazing is how much the tech has changed. When I did my walk 20 years ago, 3G was incredibly patchy, and I had to do my notes on a PC and send a CD via snailmail to a friend to update my website. Within just five years, people doing the walk were updating many times a day on FB. Going 20 years before my walk, and unless they got media attention, you had to wait for them to release a book.
Now, I can do a run and my wife can track me in real time. So she knows where to aim the car...
There are a few apps now that pin the photos you take with your phone to a map, giving geographical and time context to them. This really brings them to life.
What monarchists need to explain is what would have happened if Prince Andrew was going to succeed Queen Elizabeth II.
If Prince Andrew had been first in line to the throne, he wouldn't have become the person he is.
Missing the point, say a terrorist attack took out, Charles, his boys and their families in 2019 we'd have King Andrew, the same person he is today.
You’d have to kill 8 people, including Harry and William, who are very rarely in the same place these days, and they and all their children are pretty much never in the same place. That seems unlikely.
I find anti-monarchism slightly weird sometimes. There are lots of rather good reasons to get rid of monarchy - it's what most places do, equality and meritocracy, democratic consent, dropping support, it's just plain silly etc - so why do they sometimes go for bad reasons*?
"If 8 people died Andrew would be king and what would you do then?" (yes, this is a paraphrase) is hardly a killer line for a monarchist to face, compared to other possible lines, yet it's presented as some kind of conundrum or gotcha for the monarchically inclined.
*actually this is a trend that could be extended to many political arguments.
A number of republicans have been telling each other that the moment Charles became king the monarchy would explode because he would try and take over the world. Or something.
Instead they are facing a King who has spent 50 years banging on about the environment, housing and minority community relations.
He's still unelected, though.
That’s the hilarious bit.
The stupid guy with an employee who puts his toothpaste on the toothpaste every morning has a better idea of housing requirements in the U.K. than the politicians. Or quite a few of the self elected “experts”.
Istanbul is an incredible city. Eis Tin Poli, as the Byzantines called it.
With those kind of vistas and names like Galata, no wonder the Greek nationalists end of the political spectrum can never get over the loss of the old imperial capital.
Weirdly disappointing climate tho. Much more Black Sea than Med. So much colder, wetter, danker, even snowier, than you expect
Just got home to hotel in the old city, bloody cold! It was 23ºC and sunny when we left the hotel at 11am, but the temperate dropped badly, and the wind got up, late in the day. Ended up with a blanket in that rooftop bar, and got a cab home as it was (figuratively) freezing in the wind. 30k steps today though, not quite up to the madness of @BlancheLivermore but the best I remember in a long time.
Just checked and I got to 540k steps today in the ten days so far
Would be great IF you could track your walk online and post.
Friend of mine did that re: bicycle ride from Seattle to Nebraska, actually had two trackers; together they showed the route on Google map (or similar) along with chart of elevation gained/lost, and pics that he took en route and inserted into the on-line mapping.
VERY cool. AND would also confirm your mileages . . . not that PBers harbor doubt on that score methinks!
Not quite what you were after, but I am carrying two AirTags with me, one of mine and one of my mum’s (so she can tell if I stop moving!). My phone warns me about my mum’s one, and tracks where it’s ‘followed’ me and saves the last three days -
The BBC have been particularly exciteable. Poor old Evan Davis kept explaining the anticipation. It never happened, but they did the story anyway on PM at around 5.30. it was also second story on WATO. Blinkin' client jornalism
Istanbul is an incredible city. Eis Tin Poli, as the Byzantines called it.
With those kind of vistas and names like Galata, no wonder the Greek nationalists end of the political spectrum can never get over the loss of the old imperial capital.
Weirdly disappointing climate tho. Much more Black Sea than Med. So much colder, wetter, danker, even snowier, than you expect
Just got home to hotel in the old city, bloody cold! It was 23ºC and sunny when we left the hotel at 11am, but the temperate dropped badly, and the wind got up, late in the day. Ended up with a blanket in that rooftop bar, and got a cab home as it was (figuratively) freezing in the wind. 30k steps today though, not quite up to the madness of @BlancheLivermore but the best I remember in a long time.
Just checked and I got to 540k steps today in the ten days so far
Would be great IF you could track your walk online and post.
Friend of mine did that re: bicycle ride from Seattle to Nebraska, actually had two trackers; together they showed the route on Google map (or similar) along with chart of elevation gained/lost, and pics that he took en route and inserted into the on-line mapping.
VERY cool. AND would also confirm your mileages . . . not that PBers harbor doubt on that score methinks!
What's amazing is how much the tech has changed. When I did my walk 20 years ago, 3G was incredibly patchy, and I had to do my notes on a PC and send a CD via snailmail to a friend to update my website. Within just five years, people doing the walk were updating many times a day on FB. Going 20 years before my walk, and unless they got media attention, you had to wait for them to release a book.
Now, I can do a run and my wife can track me in real time. So she knows where to aim the car...
There are a few apps now that pin the photos you take with your phone to a map, giving geographical and time context to them. This really brings them to life.
Position is part of the EXIF file format, if your device has GPS enabled at the time the photo was taken. A while ago standalone cameras were advertising it as a 'feature'. ISTR some even recorded the angle the photo was taken at (the heading) - and I'm unsure how they did that. Perhaps an electronic compass?
I daresay some court cases have used EXIF data as evidence of where a photo was taken...
Istanbul is an incredible city. Eis Tin Poli, as the Byzantines called it.
With those kind of vistas and names like Galata, no wonder the Greek nationalists end of the political spectrum can never get over the loss of the old imperial capital.
Weirdly disappointing climate tho. Much more Black Sea than Med. So much colder, wetter, danker, even snowier, than you expect
Just got home to hotel in the old city, bloody cold! It was 23ºC and sunny when we left the hotel at 11am, but the temperate dropped badly, and the wind got up, late in the day. Ended up with a blanket in that rooftop bar, and got a cab home as it was (figuratively) freezing in the wind. 30k steps today though, not quite up to the madness of @BlancheLivermore but the best I remember in a long time.
Just checked and I got to 540k steps today in the ten days so far
Would be great IF you could track your walk online and post.
Friend of mine did that re: bicycle ride from Seattle to Nebraska, actually had two trackers; together they showed the route on Google map (or similar) along with chart of elevation gained/lost, and pics that he took en route and inserted into the on-line mapping.
VERY cool. AND would also confirm your mileages . . . not that PBers harbor doubt on that score methinks!
polarsteps.com is really nice for this. I say this (enviously) as someone who works in a vaguely related space... PolarSteps is one of those sites where I look and think "wow, wish I'd built that".
What monarchists need to explain is what would have happened if Prince Andrew was going to succeed Queen Elizabeth II.
If Prince Andrew had been first in line to the throne, he wouldn't have become the person he is.
Missing the point, say a terrorist attack took out, Charles, his boys and their families in 2019 we'd have King Andrew, the same person he is today.
You’d have to kill 8 people, including Harry and William, who are very rarely in the same place these days, and they and all their children are pretty much never in the same place. That seems unlikely.
Ok, a global pandemic then.
It's the Kind Hearts and Coronets scenario.
In Johnny English, the baddies got HMQ to abdicate (along with her ENTIRE family!) after they threatened to shoot her Corgis, paving the way for John Malkovich to take over as King Pascal.
And, even republicans aren't that bothered agreeing the monarchy sort of works:
"And over a third (38 per cent) of republican respondents did agree that the Royal Family does a better job of connecting with ordinary people than elected politicians.
Some 22 per cent say it helps unite people and 16 per cent say it gives us more stability."
"More than three quarters of pro-republic voters agreed that 'in an ideal world we wouldn't have the monarchy, but there are more important things for the country to deal with'."
What monarchists need to explain is what would have happened if Prince Andrew was going to succeed Queen Elizabeth II.
If Prince Andrew had been first in line to the throne, he wouldn't have become the person he is.
Yes, and the same goes for Princess Margaret, or Harry.
Of course the only "spare" to be needed in modern times was George VI, who started nervously but was well thought of overall as a monarch.
Depends what you mean by "modern"? Seeing as how George V was also a "spare" as was his deceased brother's intended who ended up as Queen Mary.
Anyway you slice it, with hereditary monarchy, your only a few missteps away from Lady Jane Grey.
OR (another) War of the British Succession.
EDIT - Just had a disturbing vision . . . of future war between the Wills-ites and the Harry-ites!
Featuring a new Harrying of the North?
Or the Will to power
"Due to continued heavy fighting in Epping and vicinity, between the Willsite Old Bullingdonian Dragoons and the Harryite New New Model Army, motorists are advised to avoid the area unless accompanied by a squadron of killer drones AND a semi-safe conduct from Generalissimo HYUFD."
"In other war news, Empress Meghan has lifted her long-standing siege of the West End, in order to attend the Sundance Film Festival, saying "I do not love London less, for loving Hollywood more.' According to ill-placed sources, this has caused considerable discontent in her hubby's camp, especially among the radical faction known as Levelling-Upers."
I find anti-monarchism slightly weird sometimes. There are lots of rather good reasons to get rid of monarchy - it's what most places do, equality and meritocracy, democratic consent, dropping support, it's just plain silly etc - so why do they sometimes go for bad reasons*?
"If 8 people died Andrew would be king and what would you do then?" (yes, this is a paraphrase) is hardly a killer line for a monarchist to face, compared to other possible lines, yet it's presented as some kind of conundrum or gotcha for the monarchically inclined.
*actually this is a trend that could be extended to many political arguments.
It's a rubbish question. But still a way more realistic question than the endlessly repeated bollocks by braindead opponents of getting rid of the monarchy "what about President Blair?". King Andrew, however unlikely, is still a zillion times more likely.
The big difference between Leavers and Remainers is that Leavers are stupid and Remainers are just as stupid - see @TOPPING et al - but Remainers are haughtily convinced they are much cleverer. This, in a weird way, makes Remainers even stupider - in practise - than Leavers, who are genuinely stupid
Once you understand that, the entire farcical madness of Brexit is explicable, right down to the daily debates on here, still ongoing
Leavers or remainers may or may not be stupid.
People who don't understand that it is perfectly democratic to ask the people about a decision that you previously asked them, nor that parliaments cannot bind successive parliaments, nor that parliament is sovereign are, however, very, very stupid indeed.
You can't step into the same river twice.
2016 was a one-off fork in the road. We can't go back and change our minds, and the previous status quo isn't on offer anyway.
Any new attempt to join the EU needs to start with a party winning an election with a commitment to negotiate accession and everything that comes with it. It doesn't start with rerunning the 2016 vote.
Another Referendum is all it takes.
"Should the United Kingdom remain in no man's land or leave to join every other European country in the European Union?
Tick one box only:
Leave Remain
The government will implement whatever the majority decide."
You sound like the people who were eagerly waiting for Nicola Sturgeon to give them another referendum on Scottish independence and thought that's all it would take.
I'm saying there's no need to overthink it. Party wins a GE promising an In/Out referendum. Same as last time. The only difference is it's the insurgent IN that triggers the EU negotiation process rather than the status quo of OUT. Instead of an exit deal the mandate is to agree an entry deal. This will happen in the medium term and IN will win comfortably as the country collectively screws its head back on.
Issue one in the campaign: is a vote to rejoin a mandate to join the Euro?
Rejoin would have to say "no" in order to avoid holing their campaign below the waterline, but what if the EU doesn't recreate our opt-outs?
It's Leave (no man's land) not Rejoin. That's number 1. Then to the substantive point. So, fine, just as in all campaigns there'll be issues, questions, truth and lies. It will be for Leave to make their case and Remain (in no man's land) to make theirs.
The bottom line is as before. If the 'change' proposition prevails it then falls on the government to negotiate the best deal with the EU that it can. An entry deal this time rather than an exit one.
Will the details of the deal have to be known before the vote? Nope. Of course not. Did the details of the deal last time have to be known before the vote? I should cocoa.
The lesson of Brexit - to be taken to heart for any other EU referendum or indeed for the Sindy one when it comes - is that for the change campaign to win they must AVOID SPECIFICS.
That would be the big problem for the Rejoin campaign. It would be open to their opponents to pin all manner of charges on the Rejoiners.
And, you'd have a very bemused EU leadership thinking "Why the hell do we want to go through this, all over again?" with perhaps a very fractious set of negotiations to follow a Rejoin vote in the referendum, with the possibility of a change of government in the intervening years.
If Rejoin ever happens it will be as the result of bottom up pressure and it will be many years from now. I may be wrong, but I don't think the under-45 demographic on PB is in any way typical of that demographic generally. Attachment to the pound, dislike of freedom of movement, concerns about sovereignty and so on just do not resonate in the way they do, for perfectly understandable reasons, to older generations. That does not guarantee anything, of course, but in 10 years time the voting public will look and feel very different to the one we have now. If growth is sluggish, if living standards are not improving, if public services are not functioning and so on, EU membership on whatever terms may start to look like a solution to deep-seated problems - just as it did in the 1970s. Obviously, if the UK actually starts to move in the right direction, that is far less likely to be the case. In the meantime, we are clearly going to move closer to the EU.
Again, the impending AI revolution renders all of this fairly meaningless, in an unusually profound way. Human life is about to change. A tsunami approaches which will upend EVERYTHING
It’s like a squabble between pre-Colombian Mexican tribes even as Hernan Cortes marches towards Tenochtitlan
AI will not stop the arguments on here. It will just make them a lot more confusing.
Similarly, it will never be a substitute for live experience. AI can't sit on the beach for you, or stand on that mountain top, or eat that steak, or drink that bottle of wine. AI will never stop Spurs from being Spursy or an England batting collapse. Real life will still matter.
Indeed. Actual reality beats virtual reality every time.
Who wants to live plugged into The Matrix?
You should tell that to the 7,800 people just sacked by IBM to be replaced by AI, I’m sure it will be a momentous consolation that “a a machine cannot drink that bottle of wine that they can no longer afford coz they’ve been sacked”
700 at Dropbox too.
This is going to be huge.
Doctors, teachers, lecturers, accountants, this will taken large swathes of middle class jobs.
Kids today. Get a trade. Become a plumber or a brickie or a sparkle.
It is truly scary
My older daughter - nearly 17 - is set on becoming an “urban planner”. She loves everything about it - architecture, design, topography - she’s very bright, and she’s lining up the universities where she might study Geography. (UCL, Manchester etc)
I’m really pleased she has this passion and this conduit for her intelligence. But inside I am thinking: Oh God darling that will all be done by machine, and done better than by humans, there probably is no career there
WTF do we tell our kids???
Given how shitty is the vast majority of urban planning, Inthink she’s probably safe for a couple of decades before AIs work out that the data sets they’ve trained on are just leading to more shit.
The big difference between Leavers and Remainers is that Leavers are stupid and Remainers are just as stupid - see @TOPPING et al - but Remainers are haughtily convinced they are much cleverer. This, in a weird way, makes Remainers even stupider - in practise - than Leavers, who are genuinely stupid
Once you understand that, the entire farcical madness of Brexit is explicable, right down to the daily debates on here, still ongoing
Leavers or remainers may or may not be stupid.
People who don't understand that it is perfectly democratic to ask the people about a decision that you previously asked them, nor that parliaments cannot bind successive parliaments, nor that parliament is sovereign are, however, very, very stupid indeed.
You can't step into the same river twice.
2016 was a one-off fork in the road. We can't go back and change our minds, and the previous status quo isn't on offer anyway.
Any new attempt to join the EU needs to start with a party winning an election with a commitment to negotiate accession and everything that comes with it. It doesn't start with rerunning the 2016 vote.
Another Referendum is all it takes.
"Should the United Kingdom remain in no man's land or leave to join every other European country in the European Union?
Tick one box only:
Leave Remain
The government will implement whatever the majority decide."
You sound like the people who were eagerly waiting for Nicola Sturgeon to give them another referendum on Scottish independence and thought that's all it would take.
I'm saying there's no need to overthink it. Party wins a GE promising an In/Out referendum. Same as last time. The only difference is it's the insurgent IN that triggers the EU negotiation process rather than the status quo of OUT. Instead of an exit deal the mandate is to agree an entry deal. This will happen in the medium term and IN will win comfortably as the country collectively screws its head back on.
Issue one in the campaign: is a vote to rejoin a mandate to join the Euro?
Rejoin would have to say "no" in order to avoid holing their campaign below the waterline, but what if the EU doesn't recreate our opt-outs?
It's Leave (no man's land) not Rejoin. That's number 1. Then to the substantive point. So, fine, just as in all campaigns there'll be issues, questions, truth and lies. It will be for Leave to make their case and Remain (in no man's land) to make theirs.
The bottom line is as before. If the 'change' proposition prevails it then falls on the government to negotiate the best deal with the EU that it can. An entry deal this time rather than an exit one.
Will the details of the deal have to be known before the vote? Nope. Of course not. Did the details of the deal last time have to be known before the vote? I should cocoa.
The lesson of Brexit - to be taken to heart for any other EU referendum or indeed for the Sindy one when it comes - is that for the change campaign to win they must AVOID SPECIFICS.
That would be the big problem for the Rejoin campaign. It would be open to their opponents to pin all manner of charges on the Rejoiners.
And, you'd have a very bemused EU leadership thinking "Why the hell do we want to go through this, all over again?" with perhaps a very fractious set of negotiations to follow a Rejoin vote in the referendum, with the possibility of a change of government in the intervening years.
If Rejoin ever happens it will be as the result of bottom up pressure and it will be many years from now. I may be wrong, but I don't think the under-45 demographic on PB is in any way typical of that demographic generally. Attachment to the pound, dislike of freedom of movement, concerns about sovereignty and so on just do not resonate in the way they do, for perfectly understandable reasons, to older generations. That does not guarantee anything, of course, but in 10 years time the voting public will look and feel very different to the one we have now. If growth is sluggish, if living standards are not improving, if public services are not functioning and so on, EU membership on whatever terms may start to look like a solution to deep-seated problems - just as it did in the 1970s. Obviously, if the UK actually starts to move in the right direction, that is far less likely to be the case. In the meantime, we are clearly going to move closer to the EU.
Again, the impending AI revolution renders all of this fairly meaningless, in an unusually profound way. Human life is about to change. A tsunami approaches which will upend EVERYTHING
It’s like a squabble between pre-Colombian Mexican tribes even as Hernan Cortes marches towards Tenochtitlan
AI will not stop the arguments on here. It will just make them a lot more confusing.
Similarly, it will never be a substitute for live experience. AI can't sit on the beach for you, or stand on that mountain top, or eat that steak, or drink that bottle of wine. AI will never stop Spurs from being Spursy or an England batting collapse. Real life will still matter.
Indeed. Actual reality beats virtual reality every time.
Who wants to live plugged into The Matrix?
You should tell that to the 7,800 people just sacked by IBM to be replaced by AI, I’m sure it will be a momentous consolation that “a a machine cannot drink that bottle of wine that they can no longer afford coz they’ve been sacked”
700 at Dropbox too.
This is going to be huge.
Doctors, teachers, lecturers, accountants, this will taken large swathes of middle class jobs.
Kids today. Get a trade. Become a plumber or a brickie or a sparkle.
It is truly scary
My older daughter - nearly 17 - is set on becoming an “urban planner”. She loves everything about it - architecture, design, topography - she’s very bright, and she’s lining up the universities where she might study Geography. (UCL, Manchester etc)
I’m really pleased she has this passion and this conduit for her intelligence. But inside I am thinking: Oh God darling that will all be done by machine, and done better than by humans, there probably is no career there
WTF do we tell our kids???
My son wants to be a paramedic, so he’ll be safe there for a while (if rather poorly paid).
Daughter just wants to be rich and famous.
I'm in a dwindling minority, I know, but AI really isn't the threat you think it is. In my view (again this is held by fewer and fewer) there is no chance at all that what is called AI now will get close to being sentient. Thus pretty much anything that something called AI does is going to need someone looking over its shoulder. Admittedly the need for sentience might be overplayed - I'd prefer intelligence rather than sentience where landing my plane is concerned for example. It's just a little sentience can add a lot.
Technological development is driven by bored people wanting new ways to waste their time. AI won't reach lift off until it too can experience boredom.
Could be political smart, to drag the whole thing out as long as possible?
Seeing as how it's a load of caterpillar poop anyway, and ultimate ruling likely to reflect that?
Its amazing. They want to block the SueGray appointment to spite Starmer, and in Case's sake spite Gray.
Except that if as they now suggest Gray is compromised and therefore the Johnson enquiry (which cleared him...) was a political smear job, then surely Johnson should still be PM?
And the thing that really upsets civil servants who aren't Simon Case - a one year moratorium on their next job would rather screw up the career prospects of senior civil servants.
So having got very excited and lined up their client Officially-Not-News channels to provide news entertainment reporting about it, they have to pack up their tents. As going through with it would be far worse than the quick knee-trembler in the lift they were all excited about.
When I was working with a civil service body, we couldn’t publish something with zero political or policy element because of purdah. Who on Earth thought they could publish something like this during purdah?
The swing in the R&W "Red Wall" polling from Conservative to Labour is 13.5% so pretty close to the England-wide 14% suggesting a uniformity across constituencies which we may or may not see played out on Thursday.
Looking at last night's numbers and taking out London, Wales and Scotland, I get Labour 46%, Conservatives 29%, Liberal Democrats 11%, Reform 8%, Green 5%.
That will include other areas with no votes such as Cornwall and is only indicative - nothing more.
We may be a lot wiser on Friday but somehow I doubt it.
No wiser, just better informed, as the old joke goes.
Presumably what we're heading for is:
Conservatives doing badly, but not terminally so, with some bright spots to point to. (Possibly driven by quirky electoral cycles.)
Labour doing quite well, but not having Sealed The Deal.
Lib Dems making progress where they want to.
A lot depends on how well the Independents first elected in 2019 do. Melt away or stick around?
And, even republicans aren't that bothered agreeing the monarchy sort of works:
"And over a third (38 per cent) of republican respondents did agree that the Royal Family does a better job of connecting with ordinary people than elected politicians.
Some 22 per cent say it helps unite people and 16 per cent say it gives us more stability."
"More than three quarters of pro-republic voters agreed that 'in an ideal world we wouldn't have the monarchy, but there are more important things for the country to deal with'."
More or less what I said a couple of days back. Might even work if they just got on with it quietly, rather than banging on about ‘innovative’ loyalty oaths and similar offensive nonsense.
The other day, an empty oil tanker, the Pablo, exploded off the Malaysian coast. Because it was empty, the risks of pollution are relatively minor (though the damage to the ship was very extensive).The Pablo is part of the dark fleet, and was probably involved with ship-to-ship transfers for oil deliveries to China.
Whether that oil came from Venezuela, Iran, or Russia, it highlights this trade, the sanctions-busting that is going on, and the generally lawlessness of much international shipping.
The big difference between Leavers and Remainers is that Leavers are stupid and Remainers are just as stupid - see @TOPPING et al - but Remainers are haughtily convinced they are much cleverer. This, in a weird way, makes Remainers even stupider - in practise - than Leavers, who are genuinely stupid
Once you understand that, the entire farcical madness of Brexit is explicable, right down to the daily debates on here, still ongoing
Leavers or remainers may or may not be stupid.
People who don't understand that it is perfectly democratic to ask the people about a decision that you previously asked them, nor that parliaments cannot bind successive parliaments, nor that parliament is sovereign are, however, very, very stupid indeed.
You can't step into the same river twice.
2016 was a one-off fork in the road. We can't go back and change our minds, and the previous status quo isn't on offer anyway.
Any new attempt to join the EU needs to start with a party winning an election with a commitment to negotiate accession and everything that comes with it. It doesn't start with rerunning the 2016 vote.
Another Referendum is all it takes.
"Should the United Kingdom remain in no man's land or leave to join every other European country in the European Union?
Tick one box only:
Leave Remain
The government will implement whatever the majority decide."
You sound like the people who were eagerly waiting for Nicola Sturgeon to give them another referendum on Scottish independence and thought that's all it would take.
I'm saying there's no need to overthink it. Party wins a GE promising an In/Out referendum. Same as last time. The only difference is it's the insurgent IN that triggers the EU negotiation process rather than the status quo of OUT. Instead of an exit deal the mandate is to agree an entry deal. This will happen in the medium term and IN will win comfortably as the country collectively screws its head back on.
Issue one in the campaign: is a vote to rejoin a mandate to join the Euro?
Rejoin would have to say "no" in order to avoid holing their campaign below the waterline, but what if the EU doesn't recreate our opt-outs?
It's Leave (no man's land) not Rejoin. That's number 1. Then to the substantive point. So, fine, just as in all campaigns there'll be issues, questions, truth and lies. It will be for Leave to make their case and Remain (in no man's land) to make theirs.
The bottom line is as before. If the 'change' proposition prevails it then falls on the government to negotiate the best deal with the EU that it can. An entry deal this time rather than an exit one.
Will the details of the deal have to be known before the vote? Nope. Of course not. Did the details of the deal last time have to be known before the vote? I should cocoa.
The lesson of Brexit - to be taken to heart for any other EU referendum or indeed for the Sindy one when it comes - is that for the change campaign to win they must AVOID SPECIFICS.
That would be the big problem for the Rejoin campaign. It would be open to their opponents to pin all manner of charges on the Rejoiners.
And, you'd have a very bemused EU leadership thinking "Why the hell do we want to go through this, all over again?" with perhaps a very fractious set of negotiations to follow a Rejoin vote in the referendum, with the possibility of a change of government in the intervening years.
If Rejoin ever happens it will be as the result of bottom up pressure and it will be many years from now. I may be wrong, but I don't think the under-45 demographic on PB is in any way typical of that demographic generally. Attachment to the pound, dislike of freedom of movement, concerns about sovereignty and so on just do not resonate in the way they do, for perfectly understandable reasons, to older generations. That does not guarantee anything, of course, but in 10 years time the voting public will look and feel very different to the one we have now. If growth is sluggish, if living standards are not improving, if public services are not functioning and so on, EU membership on whatever terms may start to look like a solution to deep-seated problems - just as it did in the 1970s. Obviously, if the UK actually starts to move in the right direction, that is far less likely to be the case. In the meantime, we are clearly going to move closer to the EU.
Again, the impending AI revolution renders all of this fairly meaningless, in an unusually profound way. Human life is about to change. A tsunami approaches which will upend EVERYTHING
It’s like a squabble between pre-Colombian Mexican tribes even as Hernan Cortes marches towards Tenochtitlan
AI will not stop the arguments on here. It will just make them a lot more confusing.
Similarly, it will never be a substitute for live experience. AI can't sit on the beach for you, or stand on that mountain top, or eat that steak, or drink that bottle of wine. AI will never stop Spurs from being Spursy or an England batting collapse. Real life will still matter.
Indeed. Actual reality beats virtual reality every time.
Who wants to live plugged into The Matrix?
You should tell that to the 7,800 people just sacked by IBM to be replaced by AI, I’m sure it will be a momentous consolation that “a a machine cannot drink that bottle of wine that they can no longer afford coz they’ve been sacked”
700 at Dropbox too.
This is going to be huge.
Doctors, teachers, lecturers, accountants, this will taken large swathes of middle class jobs.
Kids today. Get a trade. Become a plumber or a brickie or a sparkle.
It is truly scary
My older daughter - nearly 17 - is set on becoming an “urban planner”. She loves everything about it - architecture, design, topography - she’s very bright, and she’s lining up the universities where she might study Geography. (UCL, Manchester etc)
I’m really pleased she has this passion and this conduit for her intelligence. But inside I am thinking: Oh God darling that will all be done by machine, and done better than by humans, there probably is no career there
WTF do we tell our kids???
Given how shitty is the vast majority of urban planning, Inthink she’s probably safe for a couple of decades before AIs work out that the data sets they’ve trained on are just leading to more shit.
@Leon - alternatively, she might get a whole career out of it. And even if AI takes over it's good stuff to know about. I'd recommend she also consider a degree in town planning. Any experience I have is probably 15 years out of date now, but Manchester certainly used to offer a pretty good course.
Breaking news - Seattle Times - Oregon secretary of state resigns due to marijuana job
SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Oregon Secretary of State Shemia Fagan announced her resignation on Tuesday amid sharp criticism from both Republicans and Democrats for having moonlighted as a highly-paid consultant to a marijuana business.
Fagan, a Democrat, apologized on Monday for working for the marijuana company, which has a record of unpaid bills and taxes, but indicated she intended to serve the remaining two years of her term. Making matters worse: Fagan worked for two months as a paid consultant for an affiliate of the company, La Mota, while her office was wrapping up an audit of the state’s pot regulator, the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission.
The audit released Friday called for the OLCC to “reform” some rules for marijuana businesses, saying they are “burdens” when combined with federal restrictions on interstate commerce, banking and taxation. Fagan was absent during a Zoom news conference timed with the audit’s release. . . .
In a virtual press conference Monday, Fagan apologized for taking the outside job and attributed it to “poor judgment.” She told reporters that she quit the moonlighting job, and on Tuesday bowed to pressure to leave her elected office too.
“It is clear that my actions have become a distraction from the important and critical work of the Secretary of State’s office,” Fagan said.
Gov. Tina Kotek, also a Democrat, said she supported Fagan’s decision.
“It is essential that Oregonians have trust in their government. I believe this is a first step in restoring that trust,” Kotek said.
Democratic leaders in the Legislature, where Fagan had served before being elected in 2020 to the state’s second-highest office, issued a joint statement minutes after Fagan announced her resignation, saying she needed to go. . . .
ADDENDUM - from Ballotpedia
Article 5, Section 16 of the [Oregon] state Constitution outlines how vacancies in the office [of Secretary of State] are to be filled. The governor fills any vacancy by appointment that expires when a successor has been elected and qualified.
The Oregon Constitution requires the governor to appoint a successor from the same political party as the predecessor. An appointed secretary of state is also ineligible to ascend to the governor's office in case of gubernatorial vacancy.
SSI - believe appointment in this case will be effective until 2024 general election, with appointee being eligible to run.
The big difference between Leavers and Remainers is that Leavers are stupid and Remainers are just as stupid - see @TOPPING et al - but Remainers are haughtily convinced they are much cleverer. This, in a weird way, makes Remainers even stupider - in practise - than Leavers, who are genuinely stupid
Once you understand that, the entire farcical madness of Brexit is explicable, right down to the daily debates on here, still ongoing
Leavers or remainers may or may not be stupid.
People who don't understand that it is perfectly democratic to ask the people about a decision that you previously asked them, nor that parliaments cannot bind successive parliaments, nor that parliament is sovereign are, however, very, very stupid indeed.
You can't step into the same river twice.
2016 was a one-off fork in the road. We can't go back and change our minds, and the previous status quo isn't on offer anyway.
Any new attempt to join the EU needs to start with a party winning an election with a commitment to negotiate accession and everything that comes with it. It doesn't start with rerunning the 2016 vote.
Another Referendum is all it takes.
"Should the United Kingdom remain in no man's land or leave to join every other European country in the European Union?
Tick one box only:
Leave Remain
The government will implement whatever the majority decide."
You sound like the people who were eagerly waiting for Nicola Sturgeon to give them another referendum on Scottish independence and thought that's all it would take.
I'm saying there's no need to overthink it. Party wins a GE promising an In/Out referendum. Same as last time. The only difference is it's the insurgent IN that triggers the EU negotiation process rather than the status quo of OUT. Instead of an exit deal the mandate is to agree an entry deal. This will happen in the medium term and IN will win comfortably as the country collectively screws its head back on.
Issue one in the campaign: is a vote to rejoin a mandate to join the Euro?
Rejoin would have to say "no" in order to avoid holing their campaign below the waterline, but what if the EU doesn't recreate our opt-outs?
It's Leave (no man's land) not Rejoin. That's number 1. Then to the substantive point. So, fine, just as in all campaigns there'll be issues, questions, truth and lies. It will be for Leave to make their case and Remain (in no man's land) to make theirs.
The bottom line is as before. If the 'change' proposition prevails it then falls on the government to negotiate the best deal with the EU that it can. An entry deal this time rather than an exit one.
Will the details of the deal have to be known before the vote? Nope. Of course not. Did the details of the deal last time have to be known before the vote? I should cocoa.
The lesson of Brexit - to be taken to heart for any other EU referendum or indeed for the Sindy one when it comes - is that for the change campaign to win they must AVOID SPECIFICS.
That would be the big problem for the Rejoin campaign. It would be open to their opponents to pin all manner of charges on the Rejoiners.
And, you'd have a very bemused EU leadership thinking "Why the hell do we want to go through this, all over again?" with perhaps a very fractious set of negotiations to follow a Rejoin vote in the referendum, with the possibility of a change of government in the intervening years.
If Rejoin ever happens it will be as the result of bottom up pressure and it will be many years from now. I may be wrong, but I don't think the under-45 demographic on PB is in any way typical of that demographic generally. Attachment to the pound, dislike of freedom of movement, concerns about sovereignty and so on just do not resonate in the way they do, for perfectly understandable reasons, to older generations. That does not guarantee anything, of course, but in 10 years time the voting public will look and feel very different to the one we have now. If growth is sluggish, if living standards are not improving, if public services are not functioning and so on, EU membership on whatever terms may start to look like a solution to deep-seated problems - just as it did in the 1970s. Obviously, if the UK actually starts to move in the right direction, that is far less likely to be the case. In the meantime, we are clearly going to move closer to the EU.
Again, the impending AI revolution renders all of this fairly meaningless, in an unusually profound way. Human life is about to change. A tsunami approaches which will upend EVERYTHING
It’s like a squabble between pre-Colombian Mexican tribes even as Hernan Cortes marches towards Tenochtitlan
AI will not stop the arguments on here. It will just make them a lot more confusing.
Similarly, it will never be a substitute for live experience. AI can't sit on the beach for you, or stand on that mountain top, or eat that steak, or drink that bottle of wine. AI will never stop Spurs from being Spursy or an England batting collapse. Real life will still matter.
Indeed. Actual reality beats virtual reality every time.
Who wants to live plugged into The Matrix?
You should tell that to the 7,800 people just sacked by IBM to be replaced by AI, I’m sure it will be a momentous consolation that “a a machine cannot drink that bottle of wine that they can no longer afford coz they’ve been sacked”
700 at Dropbox too.
This is going to be huge.
Doctors, teachers, lecturers, accountants, this will taken large swathes of middle class jobs.
Kids today. Get a trade. Become a plumber or a brickie or a sparkle.
It is truly scary
My older daughter - nearly 17 - is set on becoming an “urban planner”. She loves everything about it - architecture, design, topography - she’s very bright, and she’s lining up the universities where she might study Geography. (UCL, Manchester etc)
I’m really pleased she has this passion and this conduit for her intelligence. But inside I am thinking: Oh God darling that will all be done by machine, and done better than by humans, there probably is no career there
WTF do we tell our kids???
Hopefully she is sensible enough not to panic about everything like you and will be just fine.
Anyone who is a parent of a child under 18 who is not mildly panicked about their career options, in the face of AI, is not sentient, and deserves to be overtaken by AI
It is a genuinely fearful moment for humankind
Nope. Most of us are sane and don't panic about everything at the drop of a hat. We reserve our panic , you know, for real disasters. I mean how many things have you panicked here over in the last few years.
I have 2 children in their 20s doing just fine and one of them knows a hell of a lot more about AI than you ever will.
I think, in the short-ish term, it's likely that a lot of people who should in all honesty have been doing (or planning to) something else are replaced by 'AI' tools. Flyers for 'Disco Night 20th of May!', very low-input PA stuff, 'thank you for your enquiry, please see out FAQ at ...'.
But as someone who watches this quite closely, it really is ramping up very quickly. Even allowing for 'LLM's are a dead end' kinda talk. I think some of us forget that 80% (or even 60%) is "good enough" for a lot of tasks. Hopefully that's taken by businesses as a productivity gain and not just an excuse to sack people for short term gains. But... certainly in terms of UK management my hopes aren't high.
Although CEObot could probably out-do them all - but sadly, for 'reasons we can't quite explain to laypeople', will never be put it the test.
I find anti-monarchism slightly weird sometimes. There are lots of rather good reasons to get rid of monarchy - it's what most places do, equality and meritocracy, democratic consent, dropping support, it's just plain silly etc - so why do they sometimes go for bad reasons*?
"If 8 people died Andrew would be king and what would you do then?" (yes, this is a paraphrase) is hardly a killer line for a monarchist to face, compared to other possible lines, yet it's presented as some kind of conundrum or gotcha for the monarchically inclined.
*actually this is a trend that could be extended to many political arguments.
It's a rubbish question. But still a way more realistic question than the endlessly repeated bollocks by braindead opponents of getting rid of the monarchy "what about President Blair?". King Andrew, however unlikely, is still a zillion times more likely.
It doesn’t matter. If King Andrew were likely, he’d get the Don Carlos treatment.
The Govt has being trying to sell us Mr Sunak as the quiet competent technocrat. By delivering he would prove that the Govt deserved another look. It did strike a chord with some wavering usual Con voters. Not nearly enough but it was undoubted progress. Then what happened?
'Mr Softy'. Acting like a twelve year old in the playground. A couple of months of hard work straight down the toilet. Was Starmer much better? No. But that doesn't matter. 15% polling leads are pretty rare this close to an election. Mr Sunak needs to get everything right and be consistent in his message and his profile. Nothing less will give the Cons even the smallest chance of retaining power. If one crass Lab attack ad did this then how exactly does anyone think Mr Sunak will stand up to an election campaign?
He is still the Cons only real possible asset. He needs to get a grip or they may lose even that.
It's just nature taking its course. Chelsea always were an up and down club before Abramovich's millions. The even better news is Citeh followed a similar pattern. Looking forward to nature following its course again.
I am sick of hearing.about Chelsea success. Let them spend billions and fail. The schadenfreude is and will be almost equal to that of seeing the SNP being brought to.book.
Garryowen would be a good anthem. “The best military tune in the world”, as Teddy Roosevelt put it.
Association with US 7th Cavalry and George Armstrong Custer makes it problematic as anthem, in these wokish times.
Of course, that's what the Rough Rider liked about it - musical accompaniment for empire and genocide. (TR had his good points, but this was NOT one of 'em).
That was sort of why I was recommending it.
The same way people want to replace God Save The King with Rule Britannia and Land of Hope and Glory.
Plenty of modern regiments have Garryowen, though.
As far as I understand it, areas like planning still have a large element of aesthetic, political-social, and human-subjective considerations ; or at least they do when especially done right, rather than via thee most stereotypically modernist, soulless grid foundations. Modern AI technology is nowhere near doing this sort of thing fully.
Could be political smart, to drag the whole thing out as long as possible?
Seeing as how it's a load of caterpillar poop anyway, and ultimate ruling likely to reflect that?
Its amazing. They want to block the SueGray appointment to spite Starmer, and in Case's sake spite Gray.
Except that if as they now suggest Gray is compromised and therefore the Johnson enquiry (which cleared him...) was a political smear job, then surely Johnson should still be PM?
And the thing that really upsets civil servants who aren't Simon Case - a one year moratorium on their next job would rather screw up the career prospects of senior civil servants.
So having got very excited and lined up their client Officially-Not-News channels to provide news entertainment reporting about it, they have to pack up their tents. As going through with it would be far worse than the quick knee-trembler in the lift they were all excited about.
When I was working with a civil service body, we couldn’t publish something with zero political or policy element because of purdah. Who on Earth thought they could publish something like this during purdah?
Hurrah, I’m a modern republican according to Lord Ashcroft.
PS - I think it is Prince Andrew who has damaged the Royals more than Harry.
Write off the monarchy at your peril. The devil you know and all that....
I have become a Brexiteer and I want to get rid of our unelected rulers.
My previous comment refers. Just look what a shithouse the USA has become with its presidency. The Monarchy has a lot going for it.
Still undemocratic and anti-meritocratic.
It's what works that matters. Imagine Tony Blair as President and weep.
Why would Tony Blair be president? Imagine Prince Andrew as King.
If presidential elections mirrored general elections since 2000 we would have had President Blair, President Cameron and President Johnson (who would likely still be President) and maybe briefly President May.
Andrew is now not even in the top 5 in line to the throne
Hurrah, I’m a modern republican according to Lord Ashcroft.
PS - I think it is Prince Andrew who has damaged the Royals more than Harry.
Write off the monarchy at your peril. The devil you know and all that....
I have become a Brexiteer and I want to get rid of our unelected rulers.
My previous comment refers. Just look what a shithouse the USA has become with its presidency. The Monarchy has a lot going for it.
Still undemocratic and anti-meritocratic.
It's what works that matters. Imagine Tony Blair as President and weep.
Why would Tony Blair be president? Imagine Prince Andrew as King.
If presidential elections mirrored general elections since 2000 we would have had President Blair, President Cameron and President Johnson (who would likely still be President) and maybe briefly President May.
Andrew is now not even in the top 5 in line to the throne
Comments
Anti-monarchists receive ‘intimidatory’ Home Office letter on new protest laws
Home Office claims timing of new powers, taking effect days before king’s coronation, is coincidental
Official warning letters have been sent to anti-monarchists planning peaceful protests at King Charles III’s coronation saying that new criminal offences to prevent disruption have been rushed into law.
Using tactics described by lawyers as “intimidatory”, the Home Office’s Police Powers Unit wrote to the campaign group Republic saying new powers had been brought forward to prevent “disruption at major sporting and cultural events”.
The new law, given royal assent by Charles on Tuesday, means that from Wednesday:
Protesters who block roads, airports and railways could face 12 months behind bars.
Anyone locking on to others, objects or buildings could go to prison for six months and face an unlimited fine.
Police will be able to head off disruption by stopping and searching protesters if they suspect they are setting out to cause chaos.
“I would be grateful if you could publicise and forward this letter to your members who are likely to be affected by these legislative changes,” says the Home Office letter, which lists the creation of a number of new criminal offences under the government’s much criticised public order bill.
The Home Office claims that the timing of the laws is coincidental. But lawyers have told Republic that the letter could be viewed as intimidatory, days before planned demonstrations in central London around the coronation.
Graham Smith, the campaign group’s chief executive, described the letter as “very odd” and said the group was seeking assurances from the police that nothing had changed in relation to its plans to protest on coronation day.
“We have been in direct contact with liaison officers and have met with senior commanders, who we have been very clear with about what we intend to do. Their response is that they are happy for us to proceed. But this letter has come out of the blue,” Smith said.
“Lawyers who we have been in touch with agree it sounds like intimidation and we are currently waiting for assurances from police nothing has changed.”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/may/02/anti-monarchists-receive-intimidatory-home-office-letter-on-new-protest-laws-coronation
If we did have to vote for a HoS Charles wouldn't get a look in. Nor would William I bet - they might score highly in a theoretical scenario, but that would not materialise if it became an actual, political choice.
"And over a third (38 per cent) of republican respondents did agree that the Royal Family does a better job of connecting with ordinary people than elected politicians.
Some 22 per cent say it helps unite people and 16 per cent say it gives us more stability."
"More than three quarters of pro-republic voters agreed that 'in an ideal world we wouldn't have the monarchy, but there are more important things for the country to deal with'."
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/royals/article-12034755/Majority-British-republicans-motivated-principle-new-poll-finds.html
In this country, if you get a stinker, you skip and press fast forward- you don't abolish.
That's not the sort of place we are.
I love the 'giving royal assent by Charles' line designed to make it look as though he had any choice.
It's like all that phony outrage about Elizabeth not refusing to agree to the prorogation request from the PM - the people making that point don't want the monarch to have the power to say no, and nor do most monarchists. Sure, make an argument that in that case there is no point to a monarch at all, that's intellectually consistent, but the 'they didn't use their power to stop that bad thing X' line was just bloody dishonest.
Rules are for little people in his eyes.
Of course, that's what the Rough Rider liked about it - musical accompaniment for empire and genocide. (TR had his good points, but this was NOT one of 'em).
He needs to own it and conduct himself with munificence, dignity and confidence on the world stage, because the world will be watching.
Seal the deal, Charlie.
The dog, I mean, Ian.
A fountain pen.
Flags of convenience, and all the other stuff that occurs outside national laws, are a stain on international commerce, and all who rely on that commerce.
I find myself (much to my surprise) in agreement with the Mail (apparently). Like it seems of their "poll", I'm broadly supportive of the Monarchy but with the caveat it needs to reflect some (not all) of the societal changes around it. There may be some who prefer a Monarchy frozen in time, in some mythological romanticised Britain of Vicars cycling through perfect villages, of cricket on the green and no one ever having the wobbles.
I much prefer a Monarchy aware of how we are changing and evolving, both individually and collectively. The Britain which will welcome Prince William, let alone Prince George, to the throne from the Britain that is and the Britain that was.
If that means a different form of Monarchy, more adaptable to today and tomorrow and less rooted in yesterday and in pomp and circumstance which looks at best irrelevant and at worst painfully anachronistic, so be it. The Monarchy's greatest success has been both to move with the times while keeping the best of what we were and speaking to the best of what we can be.
"If 8 people died Andrew would be king and what would you do then?" (yes, this is a paraphrase) is hardly a killer line for a monarchist to face, compared to other possible lines, yet it's presented as some kind of conundrum or gotcha for the monarchically inclined.
*actually this is a trend that could be extended to many political arguments.
But be wary of just following the cool kids because everyone is doing it.
Anyway you slice it, with hereditary monarchy, your only a few missteps away from Lady Jane Grey.
OR (another) War of the British Succession.
EDIT - Just had a disturbing vision . . . of future war between the Wills-ites and the Harry-ites!
Featuring a new Harrying of the North?
The most I've done in a day (during the last seven years I've been logging on Garmin) is 57,503. Most in a week is 235,688. So he's really motoring. Good on him.
Police will be able to head off disruption by stopping and searching protesters if they suspect they are setting out to cause chaos.
is a bloody disgrace.
It gives far too much power to the police. If I turn up in London on Saturday wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with I'd rather we were a Republic, actually, I'm pretty confident that some enthusiastic copper would take it upon themselves to stop and search me, even though my 'protest' is entirely benign.
Looking at last night's numbers and taking out London, Wales and Scotland, I get Labour 46%, Conservatives 29%, Liberal Democrats 11%, Reform 8%, Green 5%.
That will include other areas with no votes such as Cornwall and is only indicative - nothing more.
We may be a lot wiser on Friday but somehow I doubt it.
Friend of mine did that re: bicycle ride from Seattle to Nebraska, actually had two trackers; together they showed the route on Google map (or similar) along with chart of elevation gained/lost, and pics that he took en route and inserted into the on-line mapping.
VERY cool. AND would also confirm your mileages . . . not that PBers harbor doubt on that score methinks!
I have 2 children in their 20s doing just fine and one of them knows a hell of a lot more about AI than you ever will.
Now, I can do a run and my wife can track me in real time. So she knows where to aim the car...
Instead they are facing a King who has spent 50 years banging on about the environment, housing and minority community relations.
I managed to tag on a few days to a work trip in Istanbul, thought it might be worth exploring a new city I hadn’t been before. The answer is yes, it’s a wonderful place. Favourite place so far, the “cistern chapel”, a recent opening of an ancient underground water storage facility.
Next round I asked for a Blue Sheep. Confusion from the barman, until I explained what he did last time…*
*Yes it’s a variation on the old airport gag -
Customer - I’m flying to New York but I’d like my bags sent to LA.
Check in clerk - I’m sorry sir but we can’t do that.
Customer - That’s odd, it’s what you did last time…
The stupid guy with an employee who puts his toothpaste on the toothpaste every morning has a better idea of housing requirements in the U.K. than the politicians. Or quite a few of the self elected “experts”.
What are the monarchists are afraid of?
I daresay some court cases have used EXIF data as evidence of where a photo was taken...
"In other war news, Empress Meghan has lifted her long-standing siege of the West End, in order to attend the Sundance Film Festival, saying "I do not love London less, for loving Hollywood more.'
According to ill-placed sources, this has caused considerable discontent in her hubby's camp, especially among the radical faction known as Levelling-Upers."
600 million spend does not buy success
Chelsea are shocking tonight
They can’t even be corrupt effectively.
Presumably what we're heading for is:
Conservatives doing badly, but not terminally so, with some bright spots to point to. (Possibly driven by quirky electoral cycles.)
Labour doing quite well, but not having Sealed The Deal.
Lib Dems making progress where they want to.
A lot depends on how well the Independents first elected in 2019 do. Melt away or stick around?
And so we go on.
https://twitter.com/legsidelizzy/status/1653484598263775233?s=46
Might even work if they just got on with it quietly, rather than banging on about ‘innovative’ loyalty oaths and similar offensive nonsense.
I'd recommend she also consider a degree in town planning. Any experience I have is probably 15 years out of date now, but Manchester certainly used to offer a pretty good course.
Breaking news - Seattle Times - Oregon secretary of state resigns due to marijuana job
SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Oregon Secretary of State Shemia Fagan announced her resignation on Tuesday amid sharp criticism from both Republicans and Democrats for having moonlighted as a highly-paid consultant to a marijuana business.
Fagan, a Democrat, apologized on Monday for working for the marijuana company, which has a record of unpaid bills and taxes, but indicated she intended to serve the remaining two years of her term. Making matters worse: Fagan worked for two months as a paid consultant for an affiliate of the company, La Mota, while her office was wrapping up an audit of the state’s pot regulator, the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission.
The audit released Friday called for the OLCC to “reform” some rules for marijuana businesses, saying they are “burdens” when combined with federal restrictions on interstate commerce, banking and taxation. Fagan was absent during a Zoom news conference timed with the audit’s release. . . .
In a virtual press conference Monday, Fagan apologized for taking the outside job and attributed it to “poor judgment.” She told reporters that she quit the moonlighting job, and on Tuesday bowed to pressure to leave her elected office too.
“It is clear that my actions have become a distraction from the important and critical work of the Secretary of State’s office,” Fagan said.
Gov. Tina Kotek, also a Democrat, said she supported Fagan’s decision.
“It is essential that Oregonians have trust in their government. I believe this is a first step in restoring that trust,” Kotek said.
Democratic leaders in the Legislature, where Fagan had served before being elected in 2020 to the state’s second-highest office, issued a joint statement minutes after Fagan announced her resignation, saying she needed to go. . . .
ADDENDUM - from Ballotpedia
Article 5, Section 16 of the [Oregon] state Constitution outlines how vacancies in the office [of Secretary of State] are to be filled. The governor fills any vacancy by appointment that expires when a successor has been elected and qualified.
The Oregon Constitution requires the governor to appoint a successor from the same political party as the predecessor. An appointed secretary of state is also ineligible to ascend to the governor's office in case of gubernatorial vacancy.
SSI - believe appointment in this case will be effective until 2024 general election, with appointee being eligible to run.
But as someone who watches this quite closely, it really is ramping up very quickly. Even allowing for 'LLM's are a dead end' kinda talk. I think some of us forget that 80% (or even 60%) is "good enough" for a lot of tasks. Hopefully that's taken by businesses as a productivity gain and not just an excuse to sack people for short term gains. But... certainly in terms of UK management my hopes aren't high.
Although CEObot could probably out-do them all - but sadly, for 'reasons we can't quite explain to laypeople', will never be put it the test.
'Mr Softy'. Acting like a twelve year old in the playground. A couple of months of hard work straight down the toilet. Was Starmer much better? No. But that doesn't matter. 15% polling leads are pretty rare this close to an election. Mr Sunak needs to get everything right and be consistent in his message and his profile. Nothing less will give the Cons even the smallest chance of retaining power. If one crass Lab attack ad did this then how exactly does anyone think Mr Sunak will stand up to an election campaign?
He is still the Cons only real possible asset. He needs to get a grip or they may lose even that.
Controlled explosion and man arrested outside Buckingham Palace after throwing suspected shotgun cartridges into palace grounds, say police
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65464885
The same way people want to replace God Save The King with Rule Britannia and Land of Hope and Glory.
Plenty of modern regiments have Garryowen, though.
Andrew is now not even in the top 5 in line to the throne