Nadine Dorries is unhinged. Not suitable for elevation to the House of Lords, and her hissy fit in being rejected has been entertaining.
But - Charlotte Owen. So Dorries has a point.
This whole tawdry process demonstrates quite clearly several things: That the issuance of rewards from disgraced ex-PMs should be banned* That the "honours" system is pitifully anachronistic That the House of Lords is an absurd spectacle**
*David TC Davies on Any Questions at the weekend foaming on and on about how many peers Gordon Brown had appointed and with Boris it was "only 7". It isn't the number, its that he appointed DJ Party and his [superinjunction] and wanted to appoint crazy people like Nadine
**They are being kept up well into the early hours o repeated days trying to plough through the illegal Illegal Migration bill to make it legal and moral. This will be hurled out by the corruption cult, but the HofL is doing an important job. Its just that some of the people doing said important job are bishops, flunkies, donors etc. And there are 800 of them. Time to replace it with something modern.
Sorry, but how on Earth does Dorries have a point because of Charlotte Owen?
From the reporting it seems that Dorries was told she would have to resign from the Commons to be made a Lord, to which she said she was not going to resign thinking she'd still get her Lordship anyway at a time that suited her better rather than the process. That's entirely her choice if so.
Did Charlotte Owen refuse to resign from the Commons?
The two situations are not remotely the same.
Dorries has a point because of Lord Lebedev and anyone else who shouldn't be in the Lords. The institution is already so disgraced that excluding any of the Boris picks is absurd when you look at the other people he has put in.
A large number of MPs are pretty unhinged, look at how many have been suspended. What should we do about the standard of candidate for MP?
Introduce a voting system that doesn't have safe seats?
We already have marginal seats. The fact is if you are a high flyer earning over £100k you are not very likely to want to take a pay cut for a job of long hours, lots of abuse on social media and little private life unless you are an egotist who likes publicity and think you can get a fast track to the Cabinet or even PM.
Plus of course safe seats or not, the party machines and party associations will still select the candidates, even more so under PR Party lists
IMHO piling in on HYUFD for his political opinions is fine, but piling in on him because of his religious faith demeans those that do it. Just sayin'
That is spot on. HYFUD's religious beliefs should be respected. I also suspect that those piling on would be slightly more reticent if HYFUD proclaimed himself Muslim (and, yes, that means you think because HYFUD is a Christian it is fair game to attack his faith whereas you would be concerned about being called Islamophobic etc if you attacked the faith of those with different religions).
Oh what sanctimonious rubbish.
I'm happy to take anyone on who tries to shove their stuff down other people's throats, and yes that includes Muslims too. If someone is preaching Islam then its not Islamophobic to reject or rebut it, any more than its antisemitic to do so for someone preaching Judaism.
Discriminating against someone because they're x, y or z is wrong, but debating ideas if someone is putting theirs forwards and you view things differently is never wrong. Its civilised and enlightened and can be a pleasant conversation for both parties. He likes it as much as we do.
^ this.
If someone turns up telling people that they should live in this or that way because some book says so, that person gets to be told they're wrong if the target of their proselytising disagrees.
It doesn't matter if that book is Mein Kampf, the Bible, the Communist Manifesto, the Qur'an, On Liberty, The Torah, or Harry fucking Potter and the Prisoner of fucking Azkaban,
If your book says you should forgo sex before marriage, seize the means of production, observe Saturday as the Sabbath, wipe out those tho observe Saturday as the Sabbath, or use time travel to save Buckbeak the fucking Hippogriff, it may well be deep and profound to you, and you're welcome to try your hand at persuading others. But if someone tells you no, you're wrong and frankly you're an idiot for thinking that, then there's no "boo hoo but religion" card to be played. It's just a belief system, and someone testing it through either reasoned argument or dismissive contempt is your problem, not the problem of the person who refuses to listen to your enthused babble.
I agree entirely, but you kinda miss the point that we now have a de facto blasphemy law. If you stand up and criticise or ridicule Islam - as should be your right, this is why we had The Enlightenment - you are likely to get into big trouble, if not get yourself beheaded. So people don’t do it. They stay silent. Think of that poor teacher in Batley. He is STILL in hiding with his family
We have allowed a grotesque medieval creed to destroy our precious Free Speech, thanks to misguided policies of migration and multiculturalism. Policies which, I suspect, you approve of
A couple of years ago we had someone come here who was proselytising Islam on this site.
I and others on here debated with him and were quite happy to reject his beliefs as much as anyone who espouses their views on this site can be rejected.
He tried calling those who disagreed with him Islamophobic and it was bullshit then, and its bullshit now from you, and didn't silence anyone. And last I checked, we all still have our heads.
Islam is a religion with some ridiculous beliefs just like Christianity is. Not remotely Islamophobic or fatal to say that.
OK go and draw a satirical cartoon of the Prophet and put it on social media in your name. Or burn a copy of the Koran in Basingstoke Aldi. Or rant about the evil of Islam on Youtube. You won’t do this, will you? Because you are scared of what would happen to you. For good reason. Yet you would do all these things vis a vis Christianity or Buddhism. So we have a de facto blasphemy law that protects Islam and pretty much only Islam
PB is an anonymous forum, it is entirely different
Not for all of us. And I am still happy to say that Islam is a belief in Middle Eastern Sky Fairies - just like Christianity.
It doesn't believe in the Trinity though, Islam sees Jesus as a prophet (albeit a less important one than Muhammad) but it doesn't see him as God and Holy Spirit too as Christians do
I believe anyone should be allowed to indulge themselves in their own faith, whatever that may be.
Where you and I differ is my view that such divinity is best served in solitude. Organized religion on the other hand is the root of much of the World's woes. It is not your Gods or your prophets who are to blame, it is avarice of men who build their churches, idols and finery with money they demand with menaces from the poor. From the Church of Rome to the Church of Scientology, Charlatans become wealthy and then politically connected to enhance that wealth.
So when you pray in solitude, ask your God if he is angered that the CoE owns so much real estate here in the UK, and why don't the C of E liquidate these assets to clothe, feed and educate the needy?
Substitute C of E for just about any faith based organised church throughout the World if you like.
As the C of E is not a socialist organisation but a Christian organisation focused on worship of the living Christ. Yes it also provides foodbanks, schools and homeless shelters too but its ultimate purpose is to provide places of worship for fellow Anglicans to partake of Holy Communion, read the Bible and worship
Jesus was a socialist.
He wasn't, read the parable of the talents. He was also a social conservative, albeit with compassion for the sinner provided they recognised their sin
Jesus was an orange book Lib Dem.
Depending upon the passage he was somewhere between a socialist and an orange book Lib Dem.
Sort of like the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The tragedy of Christianity is that "Christians" are far more interested in the teachings of Paul than of Christ.
As a Christian myself , I dont think Christianity is 'tragic' and the teaching of Paul and Jesus are not one or the other.
There's an overlap in their teachings, but also a large disconnect. Paul is the favourite of social reactionaries for good reason.
Precisely.
Jesus was far more concerned with saying things like "Judge not lest ye be judged" or "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" than he was with whether a man lay with another man, or a woman terminated a pregnancy.
Social conservative "Christians" who judge others for being sinners neither follow, nor care about, the teachings of Christ.
Yep, hence me using "Christians" as a descriptor. Because they have a Bible which consists of Genesis, Leviticus, the juiciest smitings in the old Testament, then Paul's letters written to smite the women in what appears to be the direct opposite of what Jesus actually said and did.
Which leads us to "Gog Hates Fags" etc...
I guess Paul nodded off during some of those long sermons out in the levant sunshine and missed a few bits.
On topic, I wonder if Sunak is thinking to himself 'I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.'
Resolve and Johnson don't really correlate in any way, do they?
Based on form, Johnson will announce that he intends to wreak terrible revenge, amid a blaze of publicity, and then never get round to doing anything about it whatsoever.
IMHO piling in on HYUFD for his political opinions is fine, but piling in on him because of his religious faith demeans those that do it. Just sayin'
That is spot on. HYFUD's religious beliefs should be respected. I also suspect that those piling on would be slightly more reticent if HYFUD proclaimed himself Muslim (and, yes, that means you think because HYFUD is a Christian it is fair game to attack his faith whereas you would be concerned about being called Islamophobic etc if you attacked the faith of those with different religions).
Oh what sanctimonious rubbish.
I'm happy to take anyone on who tries to shove their stuff down other people's throats, and yes that includes Muslims too. If someone is preaching Islam then its not Islamophobic to reject or rebut it, any more than its antisemitic to do so for someone preaching Judaism.
Discriminating against someone because they're x, y or z is wrong, but debating ideas if someone is putting theirs forwards and you view things differently is never wrong. Its civilised and enlightened and can be a pleasant conversation for both parties. He likes it as much as we do.
^ this.
If someone turns up telling people that they should live in this or that way because some book says so, that person gets to be told they're wrong if the target of their proselytising disagrees.
It doesn't matter if that book is Mein Kampf, the Bible, the Communist Manifesto, the Qur'an, On Liberty, The Torah, or Harry fucking Potter and the Prisoner of fucking Azkaban,
If your book says you should forgo sex before marriage, seize the means of production, observe Saturday as the Sabbath, wipe out those tho observe Saturday as the Sabbath, or use time travel to save Buckbeak the fucking Hippogriff, it may well be deep and profound to you, and you're welcome to try your hand at persuading others. But if someone tells you no, you're wrong and frankly you're an idiot for thinking that, then there's no "boo hoo but religion" card to be played. It's just a belief system, and someone testing it through either reasoned argument or dismissive contempt is your problem, not the problem of the person who refuses to listen to your enthused babble.
I agree entirely, but you kinda miss the point that we now have a de facto blasphemy law. If you stand up and criticise or ridicule Islam - as should be your right, this is why we had The Enlightenment - you are likely to get into big trouble, if not get yourself beheaded. So people don’t do it. They stay silent. Think of that poor teacher in Batley. He is STILL in hiding with his family
We have allowed a grotesque medieval creed to destroy our precious Free Speech, thanks to misguided policies of migration and multiculturalism. Policies which, I suspect, you approve of
A couple of years ago we had someone come here who was proselytising Islam on this site.
I and others on here debated with him and were quite happy to reject his beliefs as much as anyone who espouses their views on this site can be rejected.
He tried calling those who disagreed with him Islamophobic and it was bullshit then, and its bullshit now from you, and didn't silence anyone. And last I checked, we all still have our heads.
Islam is a religion with some ridiculous beliefs just like Christianity is. Not remotely Islamophobic or fatal to say that.
OK go and draw a satirical cartoon of the Prophet and put it on social media in your name. Or burn a copy of the Koran in Basingstoke Aldi. Or rant about the evil of Islam on Youtube. You won’t do this, will you? Because you are scared of what would happen to you. For good reason. Yet you would do all these things vis a vis Christianity or Buddhism. So we have a de facto blasphemy law that protects Islam and pretty much only Islam
PB is an anonymous forum, it is entirely different
Not for all of us. And I am still happy to say that Islam is a belief in Middle Eastern Sky Fairies - just like Christianity.
It doesn't believe in the Trinity though, Islam sees Jesus as a prophet (albeit a less important one than Muhammad) but it doesn't see him as God and Holy Spirit too as Christians do
I believe anyone should be allowed to indulge themselves in their own faith, whatever that may be.
Where you and I differ is my view that such divinity is best served in solitude. Organized religion on the other hand is the root of much of the World's woes. It is not your Gods or your prophets who are to blame, it is avarice of men who build their churches, idols and finery with money they demand with menaces from the poor. From the Church of Rome to the Church of Scientology, Charlatans become wealthy and then politically connected to enhance that wealth.
So when you pray in solitude, ask your God if he is angered that the CoE owns so much real estate here in the UK, and why don't the C of E liquidate these assets to clothe, feed and educate the needy?
Substitute C of E for just about any faith based organised church throughout the World if you like.
As the C of E is not a socialist organisation but a Christian organisation focused on worship of the living Christ. Yes it also provides foodbanks, schools and homeless shelters too but its ultimate purpose is to provide places of worship for fellow Anglicans to partake of Holy Communion, read the Bible and worship
Jesus was a socialist.
He wasn't, read the parable of the talents. He was also a social conservative, albeit with compassion for the sinner provided they recognised their sin
Jesus was an orange book Lib Dem.
Depending upon the passage he was somewhere between a socialist and an orange book Lib Dem.
Sort of like the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The tragedy of Christianity is that "Christians" are far more interested in the teachings of Paul than of Christ.
As a Christian myself , I dont think Christianity is 'tragic' and the teaching of Paul and Jesus are not one or the other.
There's an overlap in their teachings, but also a large disconnect. Paul is the favourite of social reactionaries for good reason.
Precisely.
Jesus was far more concerned with saying things like "Judge not lest ye be judged" or "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" than he was with whether a man lay with another man, or a woman terminated a pregnancy.
Social conservative "Christians" who judge others for being sinners neither follow, nor care about, the teachings of Christ.
Yep, hence me using "Christians" as a descriptor. Because they have a Bible which consists of Genesis, Leviticus, the juiciest smitings in the old Testament, then Paul's letters written to smite the women in what appears to be the direct opposite of what Jesus actually said and did.
Which leads us to "Gog Hates Fags" etc...
I guess Paul nodded off during some of those long sermons out in the levant sunshine and missed a few bits.
Saul (for at that point, it was he) would probably have been persecuting Jesus at that stage.
Nadine Dorries is unhinged. Not suitable for elevation to the House of Lords, and her hissy fit in being rejected has been entertaining.
But - Charlotte Owen. So Dorries has a point.
This whole tawdry process demonstrates quite clearly several things: That the issuance of rewards from disgraced ex-PMs should be banned* That the "honours" system is pitifully anachronistic That the House of Lords is an absurd spectacle**
*David TC Davies on Any Questions at the weekend foaming on and on about how many peers Gordon Brown had appointed and with Boris it was "only 7". It isn't the number, its that he appointed DJ Party and his [superinjunction] and wanted to appoint crazy people like Nadine
**They are being kept up well into the early hours o repeated days trying to plough through the illegal Illegal Migration bill to make it legal and moral. This will be hurled out by the corruption cult, but the HofL is doing an important job. Its just that some of the people doing said important job are bishops, flunkies, donors etc. And there are 800 of them. Time to replace it with something modern.
The other point Davies skipped over is that Brown's dissolution list included Tory nominations as well as other non-Labour ones, whereas the clown's list comprises Tories only, and dodgy ones at that.
Boris's peers are not dodgy in the sense of taking brown envelopes so much as just non-entities. But that is the way of resignation honours lists so I'm not too outraged by Mad Nad being ennobled or denied a peerage, and it is somehow fitting that Boris messed up the detail of how to appoint peers because he could not be bothered to understand the system.
Nadine Dorries is unhinged. Not suitable for elevation to the House of Lords, and her hissy fit in being rejected has been entertaining.
But - Charlotte Owen. So Dorries has a point.
This whole tawdry process demonstrates quite clearly several things: That the issuance of rewards from disgraced ex-PMs should be banned* That the "honours" system is pitifully anachronistic That the House of Lords is an absurd spectacle**
*David TC Davies on Any Questions at the weekend foaming on and on about how many peers Gordon Brown had appointed and with Boris it was "only 7". It isn't the number, its that he appointed DJ Party and his [superinjunction] and wanted to appoint crazy people like Nadine
**They are being kept up well into the early hours o repeated days trying to plough through the illegal Illegal Migration bill to make it legal and moral. This will be hurled out by the corruption cult, but the HofL is doing an important job. Its just that some of the people doing said important job are bishops, flunkies, donors etc. And there are 800 of them. Time to replace it with something modern.
Sorry, but how on Earth does Dorries have a point because of Charlotte Owen?
From the reporting it seems that Dorries was told she would have to resign from the Commons to be made a Lord, to which she said she was not going to resign thinking she'd still get her Lordship anyway at a time that suited her better rather than the process. That's entirely her choice if so.
Did Charlotte Owen refuse to resign from the Commons?
The two situations are not remotely the same.
Dorries has a point because of Lord Lebedev and anyone else who shouldn't be in the Lords. The institution is already so disgraced that excluding any of the Boris picks is absurd when you look at the other people he has put in.
A large number of MPs are pretty unhinged, look at how many have been suspended. What should we do about the standard of candidate for MP?
Introduce a voting system that doesn't have safe seats?
So definitely not PR then which makes anyone at the top of their list pretty safe in their seat even if there's a swing against them and their party drops down to second or lower then?
You seem remarkably unaware that there are different forms of PR
A top Russian general leading troops in southern Ukraine has been killed in a missile strike, pro-Russian military bloggers have said.
Major General Sergei Goryachev, the chief of staff of the 35th Combined Arms Army, was reportedly killed on June 12 amid heavy fighting around the so-called “Vremivka Ledge” region in southern Donetsk, where Ukraine has liberated four villages in their counter-offensive.
Goryachev, who is at least the fifth high-ranking Russian general to die in Ukraine, had previously served in Transnistria, the self-declared militarised region of Moldova, and Tajikistan.
Ukraine has launched a counter offensive in recent days aimed a recapturing territory from Russian forces.
The Russian losses of senior officers have been nothing short of astonishing.
They seem to have generals standing on the front line, or moving around in really obvious vehicles. We already know that their command and control centres are so obvious, we can pick them out FROM SPACE, and have done with dozens of them.
They must have real problems with compliance or accurate reporting if they have to send the generals to the front line.
A top Russian general leading troops in southern Ukraine has been killed in a missile strike, pro-Russian military bloggers have said.
Major General Sergei Goryachev, the chief of staff of the 35th Combined Arms Army, was reportedly killed on June 12 amid heavy fighting around the so-called “Vremivka Ledge” region in southern Donetsk, where Ukraine has liberated four villages in their counter-offensive.
Goryachev, who is at least the fifth high-ranking Russian general to die in Ukraine, had previously served in Transnistria, the self-declared militarised region of Moldova, and Tajikistan.
Ukraine has launched a counter offensive in recent days aimed a recapturing territory from Russian forces.
The Russian losses of senior officers have been nothing short of astonishing.
They seem to have generals standing on the front line, or moving around in really obvious vehicles. We already know that their command and control centres are so obvious, we can pick them out FROM SPACE, and have done with dozens of them.
The British did the same in the First World War, as viewers of Blackadder will know. Eventually, General Melchett and his chums were ordered to stop visiting the front lines in dress uniform where they could be picked off by German snipers.
IMHO piling in on HYUFD for his political opinions is fine, but piling in on him because of his religious faith demeans those that do it. Just sayin'
That is spot on. HYFUD's religious beliefs should be respected. I also suspect that those piling on would be slightly more reticent if HYFUD proclaimed himself Muslim (and, yes, that means you think because HYFUD is a Christian it is fair game to attack his faith whereas you would be concerned about being called Islamophobic etc if you attacked the faith of those with different religions).
Oh what sanctimonious rubbish.
I'm happy to take anyone on who tries to shove their stuff down other people's throats, and yes that includes Muslims too. If someone is preaching Islam then its not Islamophobic to reject or rebut it, any more than its antisemitic to do so for someone preaching Judaism.
Discriminating against someone because they're x, y or z is wrong, but debating ideas if someone is putting theirs forwards and you view things differently is never wrong. Its civilised and enlightened and can be a pleasant conversation for both parties. He likes it as much as we do.
^ this.
If someone turns up telling people that they should live in this or that way because some book says so, that person gets to be told they're wrong if the target of their proselytising disagrees.
It doesn't matter if that book is Mein Kampf, the Bible, the Communist Manifesto, the Qur'an, On Liberty, The Torah, or Harry fucking Potter and the Prisoner of fucking Azkaban,
If your book says you should forgo sex before marriage, seize the means of production, observe Saturday as the Sabbath, wipe out those tho observe Saturday as the Sabbath, or use time travel to save Buckbeak the fucking Hippogriff, it may well be deep and profound to you, and you're welcome to try your hand at persuading others. But if someone tells you no, you're wrong and frankly you're an idiot for thinking that, then there's no "boo hoo but religion" card to be played. It's just a belief system, and someone testing it through either reasoned argument or dismissive contempt is your problem, not the problem of the person who refuses to listen to your enthused babble.
I agree entirely, but you kinda miss the point that we now have a de facto blasphemy law. If you stand up and criticise or ridicule Islam - as should be your right, this is why we had The Enlightenment - you are likely to get into big trouble, if not get yourself beheaded. So people don’t do it. They stay silent. Think of that poor teacher in Batley. He is STILL in hiding with his family
We have allowed a grotesque medieval creed to destroy our precious Free Speech, thanks to misguided policies of migration and multiculturalism. Policies which, I suspect, you approve of
A couple of years ago we had someone come here who was proselytising Islam on this site.
I and others on here debated with him and were quite happy to reject his beliefs as much as anyone who espouses their views on this site can be rejected.
He tried calling those who disagreed with him Islamophobic and it was bullshit then, and its bullshit now from you, and didn't silence anyone. And last I checked, we all still have our heads.
Islam is a religion with some ridiculous beliefs just like Christianity is. Not remotely Islamophobic or fatal to say that.
OK go and draw a satirical cartoon of the Prophet and put it on social media in your name. Or burn a copy of the Koran in Basingstoke Aldi. Or rant about the evil of Islam on Youtube. You won’t do this, will you? Because you are scared of what would happen to you. For good reason. Yet you would do all these things vis a vis Christianity or Buddhism. So we have a de facto blasphemy law that protects Islam and pretty much only Islam
PB is an anonymous forum, it is entirely different
Not for all of us. And I am still happy to say that Islam is a belief in Middle Eastern Sky Fairies - just like Christianity.
It doesn't believe in the Trinity though, Islam sees Jesus as a prophet (albeit a less important one than Muhammad) but it doesn't see him as God and Holy Spirit too as Christians do
I believe anyone should be allowed to indulge themselves in their own faith, whatever that may be.
Where you and I differ is my view that such divinity is best served in solitude. Organized religion on the other hand is the root of much of the World's woes. It is not your Gods or your prophets who are to blame, it is avarice of men who build their churches, idols and finery with money they demand with menaces from the poor. From the Church of Rome to the Church of Scientology, Charlatans become wealthy and then politically connected to enhance that wealth.
So when you pray in solitude, ask your God if he is angered that the CoE owns so much real estate here in the UK, and why don't the C of E liquidate these assets to clothe, feed and educate the needy?
Substitute C of E for just about any faith based organised church throughout the World if you like.
As the C of E is not a socialist organisation but a Christian organisation focused on worship of the living Christ. Yes it also provides foodbanks, schools and homeless shelters too but its ultimate purpose is to provide places of worship for fellow Anglicans to partake of Holy Communion, read the Bible and worship
Jesus was a socialist.
He wasn't, read the parable of the talents. He was also a social conservative, albeit with compassion for the sinner provided they recognised their sin
Jesus was an orange book Lib Dem.
Depending upon the passage he was somewhere between a socialist and an orange book Lib Dem.
Sort of like the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The tragedy of Christianity is that "Christians" are far more interested in the teachings of Paul than of Christ.
As a Christian myself , I dont think Christianity is 'tragic' and the teaching of Paul and Jesus are not one or the other.
There's an overlap in their teachings, but also a large disconnect. Paul is the favourite of social reactionaries for good reason.
Precisely.
Jesus was far more concerned with saying things like "Judge not lest ye be judged" or "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" than he was with whether a man lay with another man, or a woman terminated a pregnancy.
Social conservative "Christians" who judge others for being sinners neither follow, nor care about, the teachings of Christ.
Yep, hence me using "Christians" as a descriptor. Because they have a Bible which consists of Genesis, Leviticus, the juiciest smitings in the old Testament, then Paul's letters written to smite the women in what appears to be the direct opposite of what Jesus actually said and did.
Which leads us to "Gog Hates Fags" etc...
I guess Paul nodded off during some of those long sermons out in the levant sunshine and missed a few bits.
Saul (for at that point, it was he) would probably have been persecuting Jesus at that stage.
Fair point. Perhaps that stumble on the road to Damascus started to wear off after awhile.
Nadine Dorries is unhinged. Not suitable for elevation to the House of Lords, and her hissy fit in being rejected has been entertaining.
But - Charlotte Owen. So Dorries has a point.
This whole tawdry process demonstrates quite clearly several things: That the issuance of rewards from disgraced ex-PMs should be banned* That the "honours" system is pitifully anachronistic That the House of Lords is an absurd spectacle**
*David TC Davies on Any Questions at the weekend foaming on and on about how many peers Gordon Brown had appointed and with Boris it was "only 7". It isn't the number, its that he appointed DJ Party and his [superinjunction] and wanted to appoint crazy people like Nadine
**They are being kept up well into the early hours o repeated days trying to plough through the illegal Illegal Migration bill to make it legal and moral. This will be hurled out by the corruption cult, but the HofL is doing an important job. Its just that some of the people doing said important job are bishops, flunkies, donors etc. And there are 800 of them. Time to replace it with something modern.
Sorry, but how on Earth does Dorries have a point because of Charlotte Owen?
From the reporting it seems that Dorries was told she would have to resign from the Commons to be made a Lord, to which she said she was not going to resign thinking she'd still get her Lordship anyway at a time that suited her better rather than the process. That's entirely her choice if so.
Did Charlotte Owen refuse to resign from the Commons?
The two situations are not remotely the same.
Dorries has a point because of Lord Lebedev and anyone else who shouldn't be in the Lords. The institution is already so disgraced that excluding any of the Boris picks is absurd when you look at the other people he has put in.
A large number of MPs are pretty unhinged, look at how many have been suspended. What should we do about the standard of candidate for MP?
Introduce a voting system that doesn't have safe seats?
We already have marginal seats. The fact is if you are a high flyer earning over £100k you are not very likely to want to take a pay cut for a job of long hours, lots of abuse on social media and little private life unless you are an egotist who likes publicity and think you can get a fast track to the Cabinet or even PM.
Plus of course safe seats or not, the party machines and party associations will still select the candidates, even more so under PR Party lists
Indeed. Abolishing safe seats will make a parliamentary career less attractive, and increase the power of the central party.
Nadine Dorries is unhinged. Not suitable for elevation to the House of Lords, and her hissy fit in being rejected has been entertaining.
But - Charlotte Owen. So Dorries has a point.
This whole tawdry process demonstrates quite clearly several things: That the issuance of rewards from disgraced ex-PMs should be banned* That the "honours" system is pitifully anachronistic That the House of Lords is an absurd spectacle**
*David TC Davies on Any Questions at the weekend foaming on and on about how many peers Gordon Brown had appointed and with Boris it was "only 7". It isn't the number, its that he appointed DJ Party and his [superinjunction] and wanted to appoint crazy people like Nadine
**They are being kept up well into the early hours o repeated days trying to plough through the illegal Illegal Migration bill to make it legal and moral. This will be hurled out by the corruption cult, but the HofL is doing an important job. Its just that some of the people doing said important job are bishops, flunkies, donors etc. And there are 800 of them. Time to replace it with something modern.
Sorry, but how on Earth does Dorries have a point because of Charlotte Owen?
From the reporting it seems that Dorries was told she would have to resign from the Commons to be made a Lord, to which she said she was not going to resign thinking she'd still get her Lordship anyway at a time that suited her better rather than the process. That's entirely her choice if so.
Did Charlotte Owen refuse to resign from the Commons?
The two situations are not remotely the same.
Dorries has a point because of Lord Lebedev and anyone else who shouldn't be in the Lords. The institution is already so disgraced that excluding any of the Boris picks is absurd when you look at the other people he has put in.
A large number of MPs are pretty unhinged, look at how many have been suspended. What should we do about the standard of candidate for MP?
Introduce a voting system that doesn't have safe seats?
We already have marginal seats. The fact is if you are a high flyer earning over £100k you are not very likely to want to take a pay cut for a job of long hours, lots of abuse on social media and little private life unless you are an egotist who likes publicity and think you can get a fast track to the Cabinet or even PM.
Plus of course safe seats or not, the party machines and party associations will still select the candidates, even more so under PR Party lists
Indeed. Abolishing safe seats will make a parliamentary career less attractive, and increase the power of the central party.
A total increase of over 250k during the last four years.
If the Conservatives were more competent and less self-obsessed then they would be shouting about this at every opportunity.
They should be measuring outputs rather than inputs.
What are all these new staff doing - how many are clinicians, how many take workload off clinicians, and how many are administrators aimlessly pushing papers among themselves?
A top Russian general leading troops in southern Ukraine has been killed in a missile strike, pro-Russian military bloggers have said.
Major General Sergei Goryachev, the chief of staff of the 35th Combined Arms Army, was reportedly killed on June 12 amid heavy fighting around the so-called “Vremivka Ledge” region in southern Donetsk, where Ukraine has liberated four villages in their counter-offensive.
Goryachev, who is at least the fifth high-ranking Russian general to die in Ukraine, had previously served in Transnistria, the self-declared militarised region of Moldova, and Tajikistan.
Ukraine has launched a counter offensive in recent days aimed a recapturing territory from Russian forces.
The Russian losses of senior officers have been nothing short of astonishing.
They seem to have generals standing on the front line, or moving around in really obvious vehicles. We already know that their command and control centres are so obvious, we can pick them out FROM SPACE, and have done with dozens of them.
The British did the same in the First World War, as viewers of Blackadder will know. Eventually, General Melchett and his chums were ordered to stop visiting the front lines in dress uniform where they could be picked off by German snipers.
It was actually more to do with generals realising the gap between the planning and the actuality of the conditions at the front and, by going to the front and even leading attacks, to understand what was going on better.
Nadine Dorries is unhinged. Not suitable for elevation to the House of Lords, and her hissy fit in being rejected has been entertaining.
But - Charlotte Owen. So Dorries has a point.
This whole tawdry process demonstrates quite clearly several things: That the issuance of rewards from disgraced ex-PMs should be banned* That the "honours" system is pitifully anachronistic That the House of Lords is an absurd spectacle**
*David TC Davies on Any Questions at the weekend foaming on and on about how many peers Gordon Brown had appointed and with Boris it was "only 7". It isn't the number, its that he appointed DJ Party and his [superinjunction] and wanted to appoint crazy people like Nadine
**They are being kept up well into the early hours o repeated days trying to plough through the illegal Illegal Migration bill to make it legal and moral. This will be hurled out by the corruption cult, but the HofL is doing an important job. Its just that some of the people doing said important job are bishops, flunkies, donors etc. And there are 800 of them. Time to replace it with something modern.
Sorry, but how on Earth does Dorries have a point because of Charlotte Owen?
From the reporting it seems that Dorries was told she would have to resign from the Commons to be made a Lord, to which she said she was not going to resign thinking she'd still get her Lordship anyway at a time that suited her better rather than the process. That's entirely her choice if so.
Did Charlotte Owen refuse to resign from the Commons?
The two situations are not remotely the same.
Dorries has a point because of Lord Lebedev and anyone else who shouldn't be in the Lords. The institution is already so disgraced that excluding any of the Boris picks is absurd when you look at the other people he has put in.
A large number of MPs are pretty unhinged, look at how many have been suspended. What should we do about the standard of candidate for MP?
We elect MPs Voters look at Jonathan Gullis and think "better him be in Parliament than teaching our kids". That is democracy. What is democratic about Lebedev? Or Welby? Or any of them?
A total increase of over 250k during the last four years.
If the Conservatives were more competent and less self-obsessed then they would be shouting about this at every opportunity.
They should be measuring outputs rather than inputs.
What are all these new staff doing - how many are clinicians, how many take workload off clinicians, and how many are administrators aimlessly pushing papers among themselves?
Certainly that would be the rational way of looking at the NHS.
But millions of people look at the NHS in a religious rather than a rational way and for them inputs are more important than outputs.
Nadine Dorries is unhinged. Not suitable for elevation to the House of Lords, and her hissy fit in being rejected has been entertaining.
But - Charlotte Owen. So Dorries has a point.
This whole tawdry process demonstrates quite clearly several things: That the issuance of rewards from disgraced ex-PMs should be banned* That the "honours" system is pitifully anachronistic That the House of Lords is an absurd spectacle**
*David TC Davies on Any Questions at the weekend foaming on and on about how many peers Gordon Brown had appointed and with Boris it was "only 7". It isn't the number, its that he appointed DJ Party and his [superinjunction] and wanted to appoint crazy people like Nadine
**They are being kept up well into the early hours o repeated days trying to plough through the illegal Illegal Migration bill to make it legal and moral. This will be hurled out by the corruption cult, but the HofL is doing an important job. Its just that some of the people doing said important job are bishops, flunkies, donors etc. And there are 800 of them. Time to replace it with something modern.
Sorry, but how on Earth does Dorries have a point because of Charlotte Owen?
From the reporting it seems that Dorries was told she would have to resign from the Commons to be made a Lord, to which she said she was not going to resign thinking she'd still get her Lordship anyway at a time that suited her better rather than the process. That's entirely her choice if so.
Did Charlotte Owen refuse to resign from the Commons?
The two situations are not remotely the same.
Dorries has a point because of Lord Lebedev and anyone else who shouldn't be in the Lords. The institution is already so disgraced that excluding any of the Boris picks is absurd when you look at the other people he has put in.
A large number of MPs are pretty unhinged, look at how many have been suspended. What should we do about the standard of candidate for MP?
Introduce a voting system that doesn't have safe seats?
We already have marginal seats. The fact is if you are a high flyer earning over £100k you are not very likely to want to take a pay cut for a job of long hours, lots of abuse on social media and little private life unless you are an egotist who likes publicity and think you can get a fast track to the Cabinet or even PM.
Plus of course safe seats or not, the party machines and party associations will still select the candidates, even more so under PR Party lists
Indeed. Abolishing safe seats will make a parliamentary career less attractive, and increase the power of the central party.
The idea that abolishing safe seats makes a Parliamentary career less attractive (and presumably lowers standards) is total guff.
There aren't a lot of job-for-life careers nowadays, and a job where the requirement is to go through a competitive election once every few years is hardly unstable in the context of the wider jobs market.
In any event, where is your evidence that safe seat MPs tend to be of a higher standard than those in marginals?
A total increase of over 250k during the last four years.
If the Conservatives were more competent and less self-obsessed then they would be shouting about this at every opportunity.
They should be measuring outputs rather than inputs.
What are all these new staff doing - how many are clinicians, how many take workload off clinicians, and how many are administrators aimlessly pushing papers among themselves?
The NHS actually has a low ratio of administrators to staff. It has been suggested, by experts in organisation efficiency, that this pushes admin work onto the medical staff. Which frustrates the staff and slows everything down.
The Giant NHS IT projects that failed so miserably were an attempt at a top down fix of this. What is needed is a bottom up approach - systems designed to work together, but small pieces of the puzzle. The main thing is inter-compatibility of the data.
Sunak coming out of this with his reputation enhanced. Is he, seriously, not what I hear round here. He also has the disaster of his "eating out" policy in August 2020, which is now coming home to roost.
Nadine Dorries is unhinged. Not suitable for elevation to the House of Lords, and her hissy fit in being rejected has been entertaining.
But - Charlotte Owen. So Dorries has a point.
This whole tawdry process demonstrates quite clearly several things: That the issuance of rewards from disgraced ex-PMs should be banned* That the "honours" system is pitifully anachronistic That the House of Lords is an absurd spectacle**
*David TC Davies on Any Questions at the weekend foaming on and on about how many peers Gordon Brown had appointed and with Boris it was "only 7". It isn't the number, its that he appointed DJ Party and his [superinjunction] and wanted to appoint crazy people like Nadine
**They are being kept up well into the early hours o repeated days trying to plough through the illegal Illegal Migration bill to make it legal and moral. This will be hurled out by the corruption cult, but the HofL is doing an important job. Its just that some of the people doing said important job are bishops, flunkies, donors etc. And there are 800 of them. Time to replace it with something modern.
Sorry, but how on Earth does Dorries have a point because of Charlotte Owen?
From the reporting it seems that Dorries was told she would have to resign from the Commons to be made a Lord, to which she said she was not going to resign thinking she'd still get her Lordship anyway at a time that suited her better rather than the process. That's entirely her choice if so.
Did Charlotte Owen refuse to resign from the Commons?
The two situations are not remotely the same.
Can you give us any conceivable reason why Charlotte One deserves a peerage?
That's the link - both are totally unsuitable, if for slightly different reasons.
Yes, because she was nominated by a former Prime Minister.
Dorries wasn't rejected because she was deemed unsuitable, she was rejected as she refused to resign from the Commons which took her name off the list.
Her choice, her responsibility.
Constitutionally, isn't appointment to the Other Place an automatic ban from the Commons? She didn't refuse to resign, she wouldn't need to resign. It sounds like she wanted to delay it. Which would benefit Sunak, not her. So who told her its ok, a good idea? She's hardly got there herself...
A total increase of over 250k during the last four years.
If the Conservatives were more competent and less self-obsessed then they would be shouting about this at every opportunity.
They should be measuring outputs rather than inputs.
What are all these new staff doing - how many are clinicians, how many take workload off clinicians, and how many are administrators aimlessly pushing papers among themselves?
Trouble is, if you sack the administrators without reducing (or worse, while increasing) the amount of paperwork required, the NHS ends up paying doctors to do the admin instead, and they don't like it so they leave.
ETA as Malmesbury said. Of course, a lot of admin is created by grand government schemes like the internal market, patient choice, commissioning and so on.
Nadine Dorries is unhinged. Not suitable for elevation to the House of Lords, and her hissy fit in being rejected has been entertaining.
But - Charlotte Owen. So Dorries has a point.
This whole tawdry process demonstrates quite clearly several things: That the issuance of rewards from disgraced ex-PMs should be banned* That the "honours" system is pitifully anachronistic That the House of Lords is an absurd spectacle**
*David TC Davies on Any Questions at the weekend foaming on and on about how many peers Gordon Brown had appointed and with Boris it was "only 7". It isn't the number, its that he appointed DJ Party and his [superinjunction] and wanted to appoint crazy people like Nadine
**They are being kept up well into the early hours o repeated days trying to plough through the illegal Illegal Migration bill to make it legal and moral. This will be hurled out by the corruption cult, but the HofL is doing an important job. Its just that some of the people doing said important job are bishops, flunkies, donors etc. And there are 800 of them. Time to replace it with something modern.
Sorry, but how on Earth does Dorries have a point because of Charlotte Owen?
From the reporting it seems that Dorries was told she would have to resign from the Commons to be made a Lord, to which she said she was not going to resign thinking she'd still get her Lordship anyway at a time that suited her better rather than the process. That's entirely her choice if so.
Did Charlotte Owen refuse to resign from the Commons?
The two situations are not remotely the same.
Dorries has a point because of Lord Lebedev and anyone else who shouldn't be in the Lords. The institution is already so disgraced that excluding any of the Boris picks is absurd when you look at the other people he has put in.
A large number of MPs are pretty unhinged, look at how many have been suspended. What should we do about the standard of candidate for MP?
We elect MPs Voters look at Jonathan Gullis and think "better him be in Parliament than teaching our kids". That is democracy. What is democratic about Lebedev? Or Welby? Or any of them?
The standard of debate and scrutiny of legislation is generally much higher in the unelected House of Lords than the elected House of Commons. Now it is right the elected Commons ultimately gets its way in the passage of legislation but being elected does not automatically make you a great legislator
Nadine Dorries is unhinged. Not suitable for elevation to the House of Lords, and her hissy fit in being rejected has been entertaining.
But - Charlotte Owen. So Dorries has a point.
This whole tawdry process demonstrates quite clearly several things: That the issuance of rewards from disgraced ex-PMs should be banned* That the "honours" system is pitifully anachronistic That the House of Lords is an absurd spectacle**
*David TC Davies on Any Questions at the weekend foaming on and on about how many peers Gordon Brown had appointed and with Boris it was "only 7". It isn't the number, its that he appointed DJ Party and his [superinjunction] and wanted to appoint crazy people like Nadine
**They are being kept up well into the early hours o repeated days trying to plough through the illegal Illegal Migration bill to make it legal and moral. This will be hurled out by the corruption cult, but the HofL is doing an important job. Its just that some of the people doing said important job are bishops, flunkies, donors etc. And there are 800 of them. Time to replace it with something modern.
Sorry, but how on Earth does Dorries have a point because of Charlotte Owen?
From the reporting it seems that Dorries was told she would have to resign from the Commons to be made a Lord, to which she said she was not going to resign thinking she'd still get her Lordship anyway at a time that suited her better rather than the process. That's entirely her choice if so.
Did Charlotte Owen refuse to resign from the Commons?
The two situations are not remotely the same.
Dorries has a point because of Lord Lebedev and anyone else who shouldn't be in the Lords. The institution is already so disgraced that excluding any of the Boris picks is absurd when you look at the other people he has put in.
A large number of MPs are pretty unhinged, look at how many have been suspended. What should we do about the standard of candidate for MP?
Introduce a voting system that doesn't have safe seats?
So definitely not PR then which makes anyone at the top of their list pretty safe in their seat even if there's a swing against them and their party drops down to second or lower then?
You're better than this. You know there are variations of PR which don't involve party-ordered lists of candidates.
Why waste everyone's time instead of engaging with the issue?
Public opinion as to the origins of Covid is not entirely reliable.
.Quarter in UK believe Covid was a hoax, poll on conspiracy theories finds Survey also finds one in seven say violence is fair response to alleged conspiracies such as ‘15-minute cities’ https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jun/13/quarter-in-uk-believe-covid-was-a-hoax-poll-on-conspiracy-theories-findsP The UK is home to millions more conspiracy theorists than most people realise, with almost a quarter of the population believing Covid-19 was probably or definitely a hoax, polling has revealed.
About a third of the population are convinced that the cost of living crisis is a government plot to control the public, and similar numbers think “15-minute cities” – an attempt to increase walking in neighbourhoods – are a government surveillance ruse, and that the “great replacement theory” – the idea that white people are being replaced by non-white immigrants – is happening...
I have neighbours who are covid conspiracy theorists. Fortunately I know where they walk their ghastly pug type dogs and can avoid them. It's impossible to get away from them once they got started.....
A top Russian general leading troops in southern Ukraine has been killed in a missile strike, pro-Russian military bloggers have said.
Major General Sergei Goryachev, the chief of staff of the 35th Combined Arms Army, was reportedly killed on June 12 amid heavy fighting around the so-called “Vremivka Ledge” region in southern Donetsk, where Ukraine has liberated four villages in their counter-offensive.
Goryachev, who is at least the fifth high-ranking Russian general to die in Ukraine, had previously served in Transnistria, the self-declared militarised region of Moldova, and Tajikistan.
Ukraine has launched a counter offensive in recent days aimed a recapturing territory from Russian forces.
The Russian losses of senior officers have been nothing short of astonishing.
They seem to have generals standing on the front line, or moving around in really obvious vehicles. We already know that their command and control centres are so obvious, we can pick them out FROM SPACE, and have done with dozens of them.
They must have real problems with compliance or accurate reporting if they have to send the generals to the front line.
The USSR and Russia had the problem with progressive lying being built into the system. That is, the chap at the bottom gilds the lily a bit in his reports. The next chap up does the same. By the time it reaches The Man At The Top, the connection to reality is tenuous.
A classic of this was the grai production reports in the USSR. The CIA stole the reports given to the Politburo. Meanwhile, a small team within the CIA, using satellite imagery and vists to the countryside by people from the embassy, proved that production was vastly less than was in the reports.
On topic, I wonder if Sunak is thinking to himself 'I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.'
Resolve and Johnson don't really correlate in any way, do they?
No but I did think about doing a piece comparing Sunak to Nimitz and Johnson to Yamamoto and this episode to their Midway with Dorries & Adams to Akagi and Kaga.
Police, paramedics, firefighters and National inter-agency liaison officers are in the city where several streets have been taped off.
The cause of the incident is not immediately known. Roads shut include Ilkeston Road, Milton Street, Maples Street, and Woodborough Road, from the junction with Magdala Road into the city.
The Nottingham Express Transit (NET) tram network said it had suspended all services due to ‘major police incidents around the city and suburbs’.
Nottinghamshire Police said it was dealing with an “ongoing serious incident”.
Chief inspector Neil Humphries said: “Officers are currently on scene at multiple road closures due to an ongoing incident. “Please avoid these areas as they are expected to remain closed for some time.”
Nadine Dorries is unhinged. Not suitable for elevation to the House of Lords, and her hissy fit in being rejected has been entertaining.
But - Charlotte Owen. So Dorries has a point.
This whole tawdry process demonstrates quite clearly several things: That the issuance of rewards from disgraced ex-PMs should be banned* That the "honours" system is pitifully anachronistic That the House of Lords is an absurd spectacle**
*David TC Davies on Any Questions at the weekend foaming on and on about how many peers Gordon Brown had appointed and with Boris it was "only 7". It isn't the number, its that he appointed DJ Party and his [superinjunction] and wanted to appoint crazy people like Nadine
**They are being kept up well into the early hours o repeated days trying to plough through the illegal Illegal Migration bill to make it legal and moral. This will be hurled out by the corruption cult, but the HofL is doing an important job. Its just that some of the people doing said important job are bishops, flunkies, donors etc. And there are 800 of them. Time to replace it with something modern.
Sorry, but how on Earth does Dorries have a point because of Charlotte Owen?
From the reporting it seems that Dorries was told she would have to resign from the Commons to be made a Lord, to which she said she was not going to resign thinking she'd still get her Lordship anyway at a time that suited her better rather than the process. That's entirely her choice if so.
Did Charlotte Owen refuse to resign from the Commons?
The two situations are not remotely the same.
Can you give us any conceivable reason why Charlotte One deserves a peerage?
That's the link - both are totally unsuitable, if for slightly different reasons.
Yes, because she was nominated by a former Prime Minister.
Dorries wasn't rejected because she was deemed unsuitable, she was rejected as she refused to resign from the Commons which took her name off the list.
Her choice, her responsibility.
Constitutionally, isn't appointment to the Other Place an automatic ban from the Commons? She didn't refuse to resign, she wouldn't need to resign. It sounds like she wanted to delay it. Which would benefit Sunak, not her. So who told her its ok, a good idea? She's hardly got there herself...
There is a real oddity to this story.
The obvious answer is that Johnson has a record of being a lying bastard so is obviously lying.
But Sunak would have been the one to benefit from MPs not being elevated to the Lords triggering by-elections. As it turns out, they've triggered by-elections anyway. But it's in his interest for them not to have the offer of a peerage on the table.
A total increase of over 250k during the last four years.
If the Conservatives were more competent and less self-obsessed then they would be shouting about this at every opportunity.
They should be measuring outputs rather than inputs.
What are all these new staff doing - how many are clinicians, how many take workload off clinicians, and how many are administrators aimlessly pushing papers among themselves?
It's less harmful when they just push papers around, but when they actually prevent front line staff doing their jobs it's much more serious.
I was at some drinks last Friday and a friend, who is one of the country's top cancer surgeons, complained to me that he wasn't allowed to do his job by some 24-year-old administrator until he had completed a meaningless and irrelevant course and filled in some form about it.
(I would like the story better if it was a diversity course as he's not British by ethnicity, but actually it was some IT thing).
But NHS administrators are an important component of the blob, much more than front line doctors or nurses, and you mess with them at your peril.
Police, paramedics, firefighters and National inter-agency liaison officers are in the city where several streets have been taped off.
The cause of the incident is not immediately known. Roads shut include Ilkeston Road, Milton Street, Maples Street, and Woodborough Road, from the junction with Magdala Road into the city.
The Nottingham Express Transit (NET) tram network said it had suspended all services due to ‘major police incidents around the city and suburbs’.
Nottinghamshire Police said it was dealing with an “ongoing serious incident”.
Chief inspector Neil Humphries said: “Officers are currently on scene at multiple road closures due to an ongoing incident. “Please avoid these areas as they are expected to remain closed for some time.”
I was heading in this morning and have turned back. Apparently the centre around the Theatre Royal is also now closed off.
A total increase of over 250k during the last four years.
If the Conservatives were more competent and less self-obsessed then they would be shouting about this at every opportunity.
They should be measuring outputs rather than inputs.
What are all these new staff doing - how many are clinicians, how many take workload off clinicians, and how many are administrators aimlessly pushing papers among themselves?
Trouble is, if you sack the administrators without reducing (or worse, while increasing) the amount of paperwork required, the NHS ends up paying doctors to do the admin instead, and they don't like it so they leave.
ETA as Malmesbury said. Of course, a lot of admin is created by grand government schemes like the internal market, patient choice, commissioning and so on.
You mean that @Foxy and chums didn't go to medical school to copy and pasta from one system into Excel, twiddle some values and then upload to another system, just so they can order one test for a patient?
Nadine Dorries is unhinged. Not suitable for elevation to the House of Lords, and her hissy fit in being rejected has been entertaining.
But - Charlotte Owen. So Dorries has a point.
This whole tawdry process demonstrates quite clearly several things: That the issuance of rewards from disgraced ex-PMs should be banned* That the "honours" system is pitifully anachronistic That the House of Lords is an absurd spectacle**
*David TC Davies on Any Questions at the weekend foaming on and on about how many peers Gordon Brown had appointed and with Boris it was "only 7". It isn't the number, its that he appointed DJ Party and his [superinjunction] and wanted to appoint crazy people like Nadine
**They are being kept up well into the early hours o repeated days trying to plough through the illegal Illegal Migration bill to make it legal and moral. This will be hurled out by the corruption cult, but the HofL is doing an important job. Its just that some of the people doing said important job are bishops, flunkies, donors etc. And there are 800 of them. Time to replace it with something modern.
Sorry, but how on Earth does Dorries have a point because of Charlotte Owen?
From the reporting it seems that Dorries was told she would have to resign from the Commons to be made a Lord, to which she said she was not going to resign thinking she'd still get her Lordship anyway at a time that suited her better rather than the process. That's entirely her choice if so.
Did Charlotte Owen refuse to resign from the Commons?
The two situations are not remotely the same.
Dorries has a point because of Lord Lebedev and anyone else who shouldn't be in the Lords. The institution is already so disgraced that excluding any of the Boris picks is absurd when you look at the other people he has put in.
A large number of MPs are pretty unhinged, look at how many have been suspended. What should we do about the standard of candidate for MP?
We elect MPs Voters look at Jonathan Gullis and think "better him be in Parliament than teaching our kids". That is democracy. What is democratic about Lebedev? Or Welby? Or any of them?
The standard of debate and scrutiny of legislation is generally much higher in the unelected House of Lords than the elected House of Commons. Now it is right the elected Commons ultimately gets its way in the passage of legislation but being elected does not automatically make you a great legislator
We have a full spectrum of members of both houses - great, terrible, super intellects and morons.
My point is very simple - I am a democrat. We elect the Commons - if we dislike an MP we can remove them. We cannot remove the Archbishop of Canterbury. Or Lebedev. Or the various bits of Johnson debris heading in there.
Final point - the Commons has primacy of course. A second chamber is there to hold the primary chamber in check when it does stupid and/or illegal things. As your corruption party is doing right now with this illegal Illegal Migration Bill. Peers are working through the night to uphold the things you supposedly hold dear like the rule of law. The government will then try and overturn the amendments and the rule of law because its frit of the pro-Golliwog vote.
A top Russian general leading troops in southern Ukraine has been killed in a missile strike, pro-Russian military bloggers have said.
Major General Sergei Goryachev, the chief of staff of the 35th Combined Arms Army, was reportedly killed on June 12 amid heavy fighting around the so-called “Vremivka Ledge” region in southern Donetsk, where Ukraine has liberated four villages in their counter-offensive.
Goryachev, who is at least the fifth high-ranking Russian general to die in Ukraine, had previously served in Transnistria, the self-declared militarised region of Moldova, and Tajikistan.
Ukraine has launched a counter offensive in recent days aimed a recapturing territory from Russian forces.
The Russian losses of senior officers have been nothing short of astonishing.
They seem to have generals standing on the front line, or moving around in really obvious vehicles. We already know that their command and control centres are so obvious, we can pick them out FROM SPACE, and have done with dozens of them.
They must have real problems with compliance or accurate reporting if they have to send the generals to the front line.
The USSR and Russia had the problem with progressive lying being built into the system. That is, the chap at the bottom gilds the lily a bit in his reports. The next chap up does the same. By the time it reaches The Man At The Top, the connection to reality is tenuous.
A classic of this was the grai production reports in the USSR. The CIA stole the reports given to the Politburo. Meanwhile, a small team within the CIA, using satellite imagery and vists to the countryside by people from the embassy, proved that production was vastly less than was in the reports.
Talking of lying within an organisation, and my last post on this for the morning, here's the text of part of David Grusch's complaint to the US inspector-general of intelligence, released today. This was apparently deemed by "credible and urgent" by the US IG, with no official denial of this in the last week. Fairly remarkable stuff, by any standard.
Nadine Dorries is unhinged. Not suitable for elevation to the House of Lords, and her hissy fit in being rejected has been entertaining.
But - Charlotte Owen. So Dorries has a point.
This whole tawdry process demonstrates quite clearly several things: That the issuance of rewards from disgraced ex-PMs should be banned* That the "honours" system is pitifully anachronistic That the House of Lords is an absurd spectacle**
*David TC Davies on Any Questions at the weekend foaming on and on about how many peers Gordon Brown had appointed and with Boris it was "only 7". It isn't the number, its that he appointed DJ Party and his [superinjunction] and wanted to appoint crazy people like Nadine
**They are being kept up well into the early hours o repeated days trying to plough through the illegal Illegal Migration bill to make it legal and moral. This will be hurled out by the corruption cult, but the HofL is doing an important job. Its just that some of the people doing said important job are bishops, flunkies, donors etc. And there are 800 of them. Time to replace it with something modern.
Sorry, but how on Earth does Dorries have a point because of Charlotte Owen?
From the reporting it seems that Dorries was told she would have to resign from the Commons to be made a Lord, to which she said she was not going to resign thinking she'd still get her Lordship anyway at a time that suited her better rather than the process. That's entirely her choice if so.
Did Charlotte Owen refuse to resign from the Commons?
The two situations are not remotely the same.
Dorries has a point because of Lord Lebedev and anyone else who shouldn't be in the Lords. The institution is already so disgraced that excluding any of the Boris picks is absurd when you look at the other people he has put in.
A large number of MPs are pretty unhinged, look at how many have been suspended. What should we do about the standard of candidate for MP?
Introduce a voting system that doesn't have safe seats?
So definitely not PR then which makes anyone at the top of their list pretty safe in their seat even if there's a swing against them and their party drops down to second or lower then?
You seem remarkably unaware that there are different forms of PR
Perhaps you can name any one specific example that doesn't result in safe seats?
STV giving a safe seat to each party doesn't eliminate safe seats, it reinforces them.
A top Russian general leading troops in southern Ukraine has been killed in a missile strike, pro-Russian military bloggers have said.
Major General Sergei Goryachev, the chief of staff of the 35th Combined Arms Army, was reportedly killed on June 12 amid heavy fighting around the so-called “Vremivka Ledge” region in southern Donetsk, where Ukraine has liberated four villages in their counter-offensive.
Goryachev, who is at least the fifth high-ranking Russian general to die in Ukraine, had previously served in Transnistria, the self-declared militarised region of Moldova, and Tajikistan.
Ukraine has launched a counter offensive in recent days aimed a recapturing territory from Russian forces.
The Russian losses of senior officers have been nothing short of astonishing.
They seem to have generals standing on the front line, or moving around in really obvious vehicles. We already know that their command and control centres are so obvious, we can pick them out FROM SPACE, and have done with dozens of them.
They must have real problems with compliance or accurate reporting if they have to send the generals to the front line.
The USSR and Russia had the problem with progressive lying being built into the system. That is, the chap at the bottom gilds the lily a bit in his reports. The next chap up does the same. By the time it reaches The Man At The Top, the connection to reality is tenuous.
A classic of this was the grai production reports in the USSR. The CIA stole the reports given to the Politburo. Meanwhile, a small team within the CIA, using satellite imagery and vists to the countryside by people from the embassy, proved that production was vastly less than was in the reports.
Something similar is said to have happened in the Conservative Party under William Hague, with false reports on the popularity of the campaign against the Euro being fed back up the chain. (Not that the Euro was popular, of course, but that Gordon Brown had already saved the pound.) (ETA do we have any Tory activists from that period?)
The sentencing remarks in the abortion case. Not quite how it was presented earlier. Deception and lying are not viewed favourably by the courts. The sentence does seem a tad harsh.
There was a thread about this case on Mumsnet. I only scanned it quickly, but my impression was that the majority of those who understood the facts of the case supported the sentence. There were, however, some against, with the most vociferous posters seeming to be those who believe a woman should be able to abort a pregnancy right up to full term.
Having read the sentencing remarks in full, I have to say the case is very different from the impression I got reading social media posts by BPAS and others.
Nadine Dorries is unhinged. Not suitable for elevation to the House of Lords, and her hissy fit in being rejected has been entertaining.
But - Charlotte Owen. So Dorries has a point.
This whole tawdry process demonstrates quite clearly several things: That the issuance of rewards from disgraced ex-PMs should be banned* That the "honours" system is pitifully anachronistic That the House of Lords is an absurd spectacle**
*David TC Davies on Any Questions at the weekend foaming on and on about how many peers Gordon Brown had appointed and with Boris it was "only 7". It isn't the number, its that he appointed DJ Party and his [superinjunction] and wanted to appoint crazy people like Nadine
**They are being kept up well into the early hours o repeated days trying to plough through the illegal Illegal Migration bill to make it legal and moral. This will be hurled out by the corruption cult, but the HofL is doing an important job. Its just that some of the people doing said important job are bishops, flunkies, donors etc. And there are 800 of them. Time to replace it with something modern.
Sorry, but how on Earth does Dorries have a point because of Charlotte Owen?
From the reporting it seems that Dorries was told she would have to resign from the Commons to be made a Lord, to which she said she was not going to resign thinking she'd still get her Lordship anyway at a time that suited her better rather than the process. That's entirely her choice if so.
Did Charlotte Owen refuse to resign from the Commons?
The two situations are not remotely the same.
Can you give us any conceivable reason why Charlotte One deserves a peerage?
That's the link - both are totally unsuitable, if for slightly different reasons.
Yes, because she was nominated by a former Prime Minister.
Dorries wasn't rejected because she was deemed unsuitable, she was rejected as she refused to resign from the Commons which took her name off the list.
Her choice, her responsibility.
Constitutionally, isn't appointment to the Other Place an automatic ban from the Commons? She didn't refuse to resign, she wouldn't need to resign. It sounds like she wanted to delay it. Which would benefit Sunak, not her. So who told her its ok, a good idea? She's hardly got there herself...
From the reporting she had to agree to resign and refused to. So her choice.
She wanted her cake and to eat it too. That it's blown up in her own face and she's thrown her toys out of the pram afterwards so now she has neither is nobodies fault but her own.
Nadine Dorries is unhinged. Not suitable for elevation to the House of Lords, and her hissy fit in being rejected has been entertaining.
But - Charlotte Owen. So Dorries has a point.
This whole tawdry process demonstrates quite clearly several things: That the issuance of rewards from disgraced ex-PMs should be banned* That the "honours" system is pitifully anachronistic That the House of Lords is an absurd spectacle**
*David TC Davies on Any Questions at the weekend foaming on and on about how many peers Gordon Brown had appointed and with Boris it was "only 7". It isn't the number, its that he appointed DJ Party and his [superinjunction] and wanted to appoint crazy people like Nadine
**They are being kept up well into the early hours o repeated days trying to plough through the illegal Illegal Migration bill to make it legal and moral. This will be hurled out by the corruption cult, but the HofL is doing an important job. Its just that some of the people doing said important job are bishops, flunkies, donors etc. And there are 800 of them. Time to replace it with something modern.
Sorry, but how on Earth does Dorries have a point because of Charlotte Owen?
From the reporting it seems that Dorries was told she would have to resign from the Commons to be made a Lord, to which she said she was not going to resign thinking she'd still get her Lordship anyway at a time that suited her better rather than the process. That's entirely her choice if so.
Did Charlotte Owen refuse to resign from the Commons?
The two situations are not remotely the same.
Dorries has a point because of Lord Lebedev and anyone else who shouldn't be in the Lords. The institution is already so disgraced that excluding any of the Boris picks is absurd when you look at the other people he has put in.
The wider point here is that we shouldn’t be giving people seats for life in our legislature on the whim of the government.
I am fairly relaxed about what form a reformed Lords takes (Id favour some form of indirect election myself), but the patronage element of the whole process needs to go.
Go Boris. Sunak has issued a Fatwa. The dirty committee has Expelled you. Brexit is under threat. You must come to the rescue, defeat both evil remainers like Sunak and Bernard Jenkin and traitors like Braverman.
Not sure whether any of the existing hard right parties are the right vehicle. We've just seen a pact between Reform and Reclaim, and before that between Reform and the SDP.
A New Party is needed. To bring together these disparate groups. Under a common leader. Boris! The legend. Boris! The winner! Boris! The people's princess. With millions and millions of Russian money ready to fund it and barely trained client media ready to preach and dark web social media bots ready to weaponise. It just needs a leader.
Radio NZ substantially edited a Reuters article about a transgender school shooter in Nashville in March without changing the attribution. I've found multiple other articles relating to gender identity that have been edited in order to protect a particular bias……
RNZ has also been editing BBC articles on the topic of trans-identifying males in sport. Specifically to make it seem trans people were banned entirely rather than female sport restricted to females. Then removed all contextual info & just added some angry quotes.
Nadine Dorries is unhinged. Not suitable for elevation to the House of Lords, and her hissy fit in being rejected has been entertaining.
But - Charlotte Owen. So Dorries has a point.
This whole tawdry process demonstrates quite clearly several things: That the issuance of rewards from disgraced ex-PMs should be banned* That the "honours" system is pitifully anachronistic That the House of Lords is an absurd spectacle**
*David TC Davies on Any Questions at the weekend foaming on and on about how many peers Gordon Brown had appointed and with Boris it was "only 7". It isn't the number, its that he appointed DJ Party and his [superinjunction] and wanted to appoint crazy people like Nadine
**They are being kept up well into the early hours o repeated days trying to plough through the illegal Illegal Migration bill to make it legal and moral. This will be hurled out by the corruption cult, but the HofL is doing an important job. Its just that some of the people doing said important job are bishops, flunkies, donors etc. And there are 800 of them. Time to replace it with something modern.
Sorry, but how on Earth does Dorries have a point because of Charlotte Owen?
From the reporting it seems that Dorries was told she would have to resign from the Commons to be made a Lord, to which she said she was not going to resign thinking she'd still get her Lordship anyway at a time that suited her better rather than the process. That's entirely her choice if so.
Did Charlotte Owen refuse to resign from the Commons?
The two situations are not remotely the same.
Dorries has a point because of Lord Lebedev and anyone else who shouldn't be in the Lords. The institution is already so disgraced that excluding any of the Boris picks is absurd when you look at the other people he has put in.
A large number of MPs are pretty unhinged, look at how many have been suspended. What should we do about the standard of candidate for MP?
Introduce a voting system that doesn't have safe seats?
So definitely not PR then which makes anyone at the top of their list pretty safe in their seat even if there's a swing against them and their party drops down to second or lower then?
Like you, I detest the List System which removes the choice of MP from voters and gives it to party machines - just like FPTP.
Single Transferable Vote with multi-member constituencies, as in Ireland, puts the choice squarely in the hands of the voter. Candidates from the the same party have to compete with one another. The geographical link is maintained. And the results are broadly proportional.
A total increase of over 250k during the last four years.
If the Conservatives were more competent and less self-obsessed then they would be shouting about this at every opportunity.
They should be measuring outputs rather than inputs.
What are all these new staff doing - how many are clinicians, how many take workload off clinicians, and how many are administrators aimlessly pushing papers among themselves?
It's less harmful when they just push papers around, but when they actually prevent front line staff doing their jobs it's much more serious.
I was at some drinks last Friday and a friend, who is one of the country's top cancer surgeons, complained to me that he wasn't allowed to do his job by some 24-year-old administrator until he had completed a meaningless and irrelevant course and filled in some form about it.
(I would like the story better if it was a diversity course as he's not British by ethnicity, but actually it was some IT thing).
But NHS administrators are an important component of the blob, much more than front line doctors or nurses, and you mess with them at your peril.
Well quite, there’s good admin and bad admin. Doctors should have a PA or similar role, to manage their diary, ensure that records are available before meetings and updated afterwards, letters sent to whomever is required etc. That’s good admin, makes the clinicians more productive.
The bad admin is the poorly designed IT, the DEI stuff telling them not to be racist, and the people paid to needlessly shuffle the papers around at higher levels.
This is not only bollocks, but it is actually the reality of Sunak's Britain.
Question - how is 616 crossing in small boats yesterday the fault of Keir Starmer? "Labour oppose a crackdown" - what, the current crackdown which saw 616 arrive in one day?
The comedy with the Daily Blackshirt isn't what they write - its a business. Its the people who see that front page and think "how awful, I must pay £1 and read all about this"
The sentencing remarks in the abortion case. Not quite how it was presented earlier. Deception and lying are not viewed favourably by the courts. The sentence does seem a tad harsh.
There was a thread about this case on Mumsnet. I only scanned it quickly, but my impression was that the majority of those who understood the facts of the case supported the sentence. There were, however, some against, with the most vociferous posters seeming to be those who believe a woman should be able to abort a pregnancy right up to full term.
Having read the sentencing remarks in full, I have to say the case is very different from the impression I got reading social media posts by BPAS and others.
BPAS were possibly lucky not to be in trouble themselves, given that they supplied the drugs involved in this case.
IMHO piling in on HYUFD for his political opinions is fine, but piling in on him because of his religious faith demeans those that do it. Just sayin'
That is spot on. HYFUD's religious beliefs should be respected. I also suspect that those piling on would be slightly more reticent if HYFUD proclaimed himself Muslim (and, yes, that means you think because HYFUD is a Christian it is fair game to attack his faith whereas you would be concerned about being called Islamophobic etc if you attacked the faith of those with different religions).
Oh what sanctimonious rubbish.
I'm happy to take anyone on who tries to shove their stuff down other people's throats, and yes that includes Muslims too. If someone is preaching Islam then its not Islamophobic to reject or rebut it, any more than its antisemitic to do so for someone preaching Judaism.
Discriminating against someone because they're x, y or z is wrong, but debating ideas if someone is putting theirs forwards and you view things differently is never wrong. Its civilised and enlightened and can be a pleasant conversation for both parties. He likes it as much as we do.
^ this.
If someone turns up telling people that they should live in this or that way because some book says so, that person gets to be told they're wrong if the target of their proselytising disagrees.
It doesn't matter if that book is Mein Kampf, the Bible, the Communist Manifesto, the Qur'an, On Liberty, The Torah, or Harry fucking Potter and the Prisoner of fucking Azkaban,
If your book says you should forgo sex before marriage, seize the means of production, observe Saturday as the Sabbath, wipe out those tho observe Saturday as the Sabbath, or use time travel to save Buckbeak the fucking Hippogriff, it may well be deep and profound to you, and you're welcome to try your hand at persuading others. But if someone tells you no, you're wrong and frankly you're an idiot for thinking that, then there's no "boo hoo but religion" card to be played. It's just a belief system, and someone testing it through either reasoned argument or dismissive contempt is your problem, not the problem of the person who refuses to listen to your enthused babble.
I agree entirely, but you kinda miss the point that we now have a de facto blasphemy law. If you stand up and criticise or ridicule Islam - as should be your right, this is why we had The Enlightenment - you are likely to get into big trouble, if not get yourself beheaded. So people don’t do it. They stay silent. Think of that poor teacher in Batley. He is STILL in hiding with his family
We have allowed a grotesque medieval creed to destroy our precious Free Speech, thanks to misguided policies of migration and multiculturalism. Policies which, I suspect, you approve of
A couple of years ago we had someone come here who was proselytising Islam on this site.
I and others on here debated with him and were quite happy to reject his beliefs as much as anyone who espouses their views on this site can be rejected.
He tried calling those who disagreed with him Islamophobic and it was bullshit then, and its bullshit now from you, and didn't silence anyone. And last I checked, we all still have our heads.
Islam is a religion with some ridiculous beliefs just like Christianity is. Not remotely Islamophobic or fatal to say that.
OK go and draw a satirical cartoon of the Prophet and put it on social media in your name. Or burn a copy of the Koran in Basingstoke Aldi. Or rant about the evil of Islam on Youtube. You won’t do this, will you? Because you are scared of what would happen to you. For good reason. Yet you would do all these things vis a vis Christianity or Buddhism. So we have a de facto blasphemy law that protects Islam and pretty much only Islam
PB is an anonymous forum, it is entirely different
Not for all of us. And I am still happy to say that Islam is a belief in Middle Eastern Sky Fairies - just like Christianity.
It doesn't believe in the Trinity though, Islam sees Jesus as a prophet (albeit a less important one than Muhammad) but it doesn't see him as God and Holy Spirit too as Christians do
I believe anyone should be allowed to indulge themselves in their own faith, whatever that may be.
Where you and I differ is my view that such divinity is best served in solitude. Organized religion on the other hand is the root of much of the World's woes. It is not your Gods or your prophets who are to blame, it is avarice of men who build their churches, idols and finery with money they demand with menaces from the poor. From the Church of Rome to the Church of Scientology, Charlatans become wealthy and then politically connected to enhance that wealth.
So when you pray in solitude, ask your God if he is angered that the CoE owns so much real estate here in the UK, and why don't the C of E liquidate these assets to clothe, feed and educate the needy?
Substitute C of E for just about any faith based organised church throughout the World if you like.
As the C of E is not a socialist organisation but a Christian organisation focused on worship of the living Christ. Yes it also provides foodbanks, schools and homeless shelters too but its ultimate purpose is to provide places of worship for fellow Anglicans to partake of Holy Communion, read the Bible and worship
Jesus was a socialist.
He wasn't, read the parable of the talents. He was also a social conservative, albeit with compassion for the sinner provided they recognised their sin
Jesus was an orange book Lib Dem.
Depending upon the passage he was somewhere between a socialist and an orange book Lib Dem.
Sort of like the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The tragedy of Christianity is that "Christians" are far more interested in the teachings of Paul than of Christ.
As a Christian myself , I dont think Christianity is 'tragic' and the teaching of Paul and Jesus are not one or the other.
I should also point out that Jesus was not political, not Socialist nor Social Conservative. His Kingdom is not of this world.
According to Wikipedia, crucifixion was used by the Romans 'to punish slaves, pirates, and enemies of the state'. Don't think Jesus was a slave or a pirate.
He was alleged to be a rebel, challenging the authority of the emperor.
Which is very much political.
His argument that His kingdom was not of this world is a nuance that would have flown over the heads of those who saw just another Jewish troublemaker.
Though a century or two later, the empire recognised what a useful political tool that was, and adopted it for themselves.
Here, I would disagree. And as usual, I blame Gibbon, to whom, the aristocracy saw all religions as equally useful, the philosophers equally false, and the masses equally true. Most pagans of all classes were quite sincere in their beliefs.
Roman imperial cult proclaimed emperors divine. Did they believe in their own divinity ? It seems more likely that rulers, irrespective of what they believed, were well aware of the usefulness of religion as a political tool.
Two messages of Christianity - render unto Caesar, and your reward will be in the next world, not this - are of obvious utility, quite aside from any intrinsic merit.
I agree and its one of the reasons why i think religion should stay out of politics . I am never impressed when the Lord Bishops speak on political issues or indeed non religious issues - His Grace , the Archbishop of Canterbury occasionally does this but the most ridiculous example was the Bishop of St Albans talking about the pest of grey squirells in his capacity as a member of the Lords - The bishops and all church leaders should be a conduit to bring people to God and Jesus from whatever political stances they have or indeed what they think of grey squirells
On the other hand if you have a strong religiously derived set of moral views and are in a position where you can speak on a political subject that intersects strongly with those moral views (not grey squirrels, but perhaps treatment of asylum seekers or similar) and have your voice carry some persuasive power, I think a lot of religions and moral codes would say you have an obligation to use the advantage of your position to try to persuade others to follow the more moral course of action.
So I'm an atheist, and I'm not sure I'd have bishops in the HoL, but I think they're entirely right to speak up on some "political" issues, whether they're in the HoL or merely opining from their pulpit. (I might agree or disagree on the individual opinions, of course.)
To me though religion isn't a moral thing (morals and society norms change over time but God does not for that would imply God is led by humans) but a spiritual thing. Bishops shoudl be there to bring people to God not to lecture on politics or even morals
Petulance is rarely attractive, neither is is self-pity and neither is self-entitlement.
Boris is wallowing in them all.
I wonder if he realises how strong his position was and how he ruined it through a lack of self discipline - if so its really going to haunt him for the rest of his life.
A total increase of over 250k during the last four years.
If the Conservatives were more competent and less self-obsessed then they would be shouting about this at every opportunity.
They should be measuring outputs rather than inputs.
What are all these new staff doing - how many are clinicians, how many take workload off clinicians, and how many are administrators aimlessly pushing papers among themselves?
It's less harmful when they just push papers around, but when they actually prevent front line staff doing their jobs it's much more serious.
I was at some drinks last Friday and a friend, who is one of the country's top cancer surgeons, complained to me that he wasn't allowed to do his job by some 24-year-old administrator until he had completed a meaningless and irrelevant course and filled in some form about it.
(I would like the story better if it was a diversity course as he's not British by ethnicity, but actually it was some IT thing).
But NHS administrators are an important component of the blob, much more than front line doctors or nurses, and you mess with them at your peril.
Well quite, there’s good admin and bad admin. Doctors should have a PA or similar role, to manage their diary, ensure that records are available before meetings and updated afterwards, letters sent to whomever is required etc. That’s good admin, makes the clinicians more productive.
The bad admin is the poorly designed IT, the DEI stuff telling them not to be racist, and the people paid to needlessly shuffle the papers around at higher levels.
There does seem to be a problem with racism in the NHS.
What isn't helpful is performative stuff that enables people to say "Racist? But everyone has completed the Anti-Racism Course, and done the multiple choice exam at the end and got their certificate. Our department won an award for 100% compliance for the 4th year running".
Good admin is like good management - invisible. Until it goes away and everything goes to hell in 5 minutes.
This is not only bollocks, but it is actually the reality of Sunak's Britain.
As others have noted, no longer being able to blame the last Labour Government for failures of the current Tory Government, they have started blaming the next Labour Government instead...
Nadine Dorries is unhinged. Not suitable for elevation to the House of Lords, and her hissy fit in being rejected has been entertaining.
But - Charlotte Owen. So Dorries has a point.
This whole tawdry process demonstrates quite clearly several things: That the issuance of rewards from disgraced ex-PMs should be banned* That the "honours" system is pitifully anachronistic That the House of Lords is an absurd spectacle**
*David TC Davies on Any Questions at the weekend foaming on and on about how many peers Gordon Brown had appointed and with Boris it was "only 7". It isn't the number, its that he appointed DJ Party and his [superinjunction] and wanted to appoint crazy people like Nadine
**They are being kept up well into the early hours o repeated days trying to plough through the illegal Illegal Migration bill to make it legal and moral. This will be hurled out by the corruption cult, but the HofL is doing an important job. Its just that some of the people doing said important job are bishops, flunkies, donors etc. And there are 800 of them. Time to replace it with something modern.
Sorry, but how on Earth does Dorries have a point because of Charlotte Owen?
From the reporting it seems that Dorries was told she would have to resign from the Commons to be made a Lord, to which she said she was not going to resign thinking she'd still get her Lordship anyway at a time that suited her better rather than the process. That's entirely her choice if so.
Did Charlotte Owen refuse to resign from the Commons?
The two situations are not remotely the same.
Dorries has a point because of Lord Lebedev and anyone else who shouldn't be in the Lords. The institution is already so disgraced that excluding any of the Boris picks is absurd when you look at the other people he has put in.
A large number of MPs are pretty unhinged, look at how many have been suspended. What should we do about the standard of candidate for MP?
Introduce a voting system that doesn't have safe seats?
So definitely not PR then which makes anyone at the top of their list pretty safe in their seat even if there's a swing against them and their party drops down to second or lower then?
Like you, I detest the List System which removes the choice of MP from voters and gives it to party machines - just like FPTP.
Single Transferable Vote with multi-member constituencies, as in Ireland, puts the choice squarely in the hands of the voter. Candidates from the the same party have to compete with one another. The geographical link is maintained. And the results are broadly proportional.
Research it. You might be pleasantly surprised.
In STV candidates from the same party have to compete against each other if the parties stand enough candidates for that to be the case. Unfortunately, every system can be gamed, and it was striking in the recent local elections in Scotland how often the parties only stood as many candidates as they expected to win seats, and so the voters were denied this choice in practice.
Perhaps you could change the nominating rules to prevent such shenanigans, and the experience of Sinn Fein in the last Irish general election does show that parties following such an approach can come a cropper if they receive more votes than they expected, but no voting system is perfect.
On topic, I wonder if Sunak is thinking to himself 'I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.'
Nope.
It’s more like letting a tired and emotional child who is screaming and crying and lashing out because they can’t have an ice cream just carry on until they are out of puff. Best to ignore and not indulge.
IMHO piling in on HYUFD for his political opinions is fine, but piling in on him because of his religious faith demeans those that do it. Just sayin'
That is spot on. HYFUD's religious beliefs should be respected. I also suspect that those piling on would be slightly more reticent if HYFUD proclaimed himself Muslim (and, yes, that means you think because HYFUD is a Christian it is fair game to attack his faith whereas you would be concerned about being called Islamophobic etc if you attacked the faith of those with different religions).
Oh what sanctimonious rubbish.
I'm happy to take anyone on who tries to shove their stuff down other people's throats, and yes that includes Muslims too. If someone is preaching Islam then its not Islamophobic to reject or rebut it, any more than its antisemitic to do so for someone preaching Judaism.
Discriminating against someone because they're x, y or z is wrong, but debating ideas if someone is putting theirs forwards and you view things differently is never wrong. Its civilised and enlightened and can be a pleasant conversation for both parties. He likes it as much as we do.
^ this.
If someone turns up telling people that they should live in this or that way because some book says so, that person gets to be told they're wrong if the target of their proselytising disagrees.
It doesn't matter if that book is Mein Kampf, the Bible, the Communist Manifesto, the Qur'an, On Liberty, The Torah, or Harry fucking Potter and the Prisoner of fucking Azkaban,
If your book says you should forgo sex before marriage, seize the means of production, observe Saturday as the Sabbath, wipe out those tho observe Saturday as the Sabbath, or use time travel to save Buckbeak the fucking Hippogriff, it may well be deep and profound to you, and you're welcome to try your hand at persuading others. But if someone tells you no, you're wrong and frankly you're an idiot for thinking that, then there's no "boo hoo but religion" card to be played. It's just a belief system, and someone testing it through either reasoned argument or dismissive contempt is your problem, not the problem of the person who refuses to listen to your enthused babble.
I agree entirely, but you kinda miss the point that we now have a de facto blasphemy law. If you stand up and criticise or ridicule Islam - as should be your right, this is why we had The Enlightenment - you are likely to get into big trouble, if not get yourself beheaded. So people don’t do it. They stay silent. Think of that poor teacher in Batley. He is STILL in hiding with his family
We have allowed a grotesque medieval creed to destroy our precious Free Speech, thanks to misguided policies of migration and multiculturalism. Policies which, I suspect, you approve of
A couple of years ago we had someone come here who was proselytising Islam on this site.
I and others on here debated with him and were quite happy to reject his beliefs as much as anyone who espouses their views on this site can be rejected.
He tried calling those who disagreed with him Islamophobic and it was bullshit then, and its bullshit now from you, and didn't silence anyone. And last I checked, we all still have our heads.
Islam is a religion with some ridiculous beliefs just like Christianity is. Not remotely Islamophobic or fatal to say that.
OK go and draw a satirical cartoon of the Prophet and put it on social media in your name. Or burn a copy of the Koran in Basingstoke Aldi. Or rant about the evil of Islam on Youtube. You won’t do this, will you? Because you are scared of what would happen to you. For good reason. Yet you would do all these things vis a vis Christianity or Buddhism. So we have a de facto blasphemy law that protects Islam and pretty much only Islam
PB is an anonymous forum, it is entirely different
Not for all of us. And I am still happy to say that Islam is a belief in Middle Eastern Sky Fairies - just like Christianity.
It doesn't believe in the Trinity though, Islam sees Jesus as a prophet (albeit a less important one than Muhammad) but it doesn't see him as God and Holy Spirit too as Christians do
I believe anyone should be allowed to indulge themselves in their own faith, whatever that may be.
Where you and I differ is my view that such divinity is best served in solitude. Organized religion on the other hand is the root of much of the World's woes. It is not your Gods or your prophets who are to blame, it is avarice of men who build their churches, idols and finery with money they demand with menaces from the poor. From the Church of Rome to the Church of Scientology, Charlatans become wealthy and then politically connected to enhance that wealth.
So when you pray in solitude, ask your God if he is angered that the CoE owns so much real estate here in the UK, and why don't the C of E liquidate these assets to clothe, feed and educate the needy?
Substitute C of E for just about any faith based organised church throughout the World if you like.
As the C of E is not a socialist organisation but a Christian organisation focused on worship of the living Christ. Yes it also provides foodbanks, schools and homeless shelters too but its ultimate purpose is to provide places of worship for fellow Anglicans to partake of Holy Communion, read the Bible and worship
Jesus was a socialist.
He wasn't, read the parable of the talents. He was also a social conservative, albeit with compassion for the sinner provided they recognised their sin
Jesus was an orange book Lib Dem.
Depending upon the passage he was somewhere between a socialist and an orange book Lib Dem.
Sort of like the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The tragedy of Christianity is that "Christians" are far more interested in the teachings of Paul than of Christ.
As a Christian myself , I dont think Christianity is 'tragic' and the teaching of Paul and Jesus are not one or the other.
There's an overlap in their teachings, but also a large disconnect. Paul is the favourite of social reactionaries for good reason.
Precisely.
Jesus was far more concerned with saying things like "Judge not lest ye be judged" or "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" than he was with whether a man lay with another man, or a woman terminated a pregnancy.
Social conservative "Christians" who judge others for being sinners neither follow, nor care about, the teachings of Christ.
Yep, hence me using "Christians" as a descriptor. Because they have a Bible which consists of Genesis, Leviticus, the juiciest smitings in the old Testament, then Paul's letters written to smite the women in what appears to be the direct opposite of what Jesus actually said and did.
Which leads us to "Gog Hates Fags" etc...
I guess Paul nodded off during some of those long sermons out in the levant sunshine and missed a few bits.
Saul (for at that point, it was he) would probably have been persecuting Jesus at that stage.
Fair point. Perhaps that stumble on the road to Damascus started to wear off after awhile.
Second wave supporters always change things.
It's not surprising that a Roman citizen, with the world view that entails, would promulgate a version of Christianity in some degree sympathetic to the empire.
This is not only bollocks, but it is actually the reality of Sunak's Britain.
Question - how is 616 crossing in small boats yesterday the fault of Keir Starmer? "Labour oppose a crackdown" - what, the current crackdown which saw 616 arrive in one day?
The comedy with the Daily Blackshirt isn't what they write - its a business. Its the people who see that front page and think "how awful, I must pay £1 and read all about this"
They lay the failings of the government not at the ministers in charge but at the undefined, lefty, sandal wearing woke blob which they see as controlling all institutions of state and preventing genuine action being taken on these issues. And that’s Labours fault because it’s the face of this nebulous group of wrong-uns, even though it’s not in power.
It is unhinged, but there you go. The fact of the matter is that the actions of this government are coming home to roost, and it no longer has the popular will, support, competence or money to actually institute well-considered and meaningful reform. That is by far the bigger issue here.
The yield on two-year gilts has jumped to 4.73% - passing levels seen after Liz Truss's mini-budget - highest since 2008
More pain may be coming as markets digest the thought of even higher BOE rates...
For some reason there’s not dozens of Tory MPs writing to newspapers this time, and none of the wall-to-wall coverage of how it’s the end of the world and the government has to resign.
A top Russian general leading troops in southern Ukraine has been killed in a missile strike, pro-Russian military bloggers have said.
Major General Sergei Goryachev, the chief of staff of the 35th Combined Arms Army, was reportedly killed on June 12 amid heavy fighting around the so-called “Vremivka Ledge” region in southern Donetsk, where Ukraine has liberated four villages in their counter-offensive.
Goryachev, who is at least the fifth high-ranking Russian general to die in Ukraine, had previously served in Transnistria, the self-declared militarised region of Moldova, and Tajikistan.
Ukraine has launched a counter offensive in recent days aimed a recapturing territory from Russian forces.
The Russian losses of senior officers have been nothing short of astonishing.
They seem to have generals standing on the front line, or moving around in really obvious vehicles. We already know that their command and control centres are so obvious, we can pick them out FROM SPACE, and have done with dozens of them.
They must have real problems with compliance or accurate reporting if they have to send the generals to the front line.
The USSR and Russia had the problem with progressive lying being built into the system. That is, the chap at the bottom gilds the lily a bit in his reports. The next chap up does the same. By the time it reaches The Man At The Top, the connection to reality is tenuous.
A classic of this was the grai production reports in the USSR. The CIA stole the reports given to the Politburo. Meanwhile, a small team within the CIA, using satellite imagery and vists to the countryside by people from the embassy, proved that production was vastly less than was in the reports.
This is not only bollocks, but it is actually the reality of Sunak's Britain.
Question - how is 616 crossing in small boats yesterday the fault of Keir Starmer? "Labour oppose a crackdown" - what, the current crackdown which saw 616 arrive in one day?
The comedy with the Daily Blackshirt isn't what they write - its a business. Its the people who see that front page and think "how awful, I must pay £1 and read all about this"
Republicans take heart. The latest four vessels acquired by Border Force to do absolutely nothing about this are titled 'BF' (for Border Force) rather than HMC (for His Majesty's Cuttter).
As mentioned earlier, here is the video sent to me by an eyewitness, with interview from him to confirm what happened at 5.45am this morning in Nottingham City Centre, in a "major incident"
Shots fired at van. Lone man tasered/cuffed. "Massive knife" & backpack retrieved >>
The yield on two-year gilts has jumped to 4.73% - passing levels seen after Liz Truss's mini-budget - highest since 2008
More pain may be coming as markets digest the thought of even higher BOE rates...
I remember a time when the news that "the total number of people in work rising to its highest level ever in the three months to April." was a good thing. Apparently now that is bad news.
What ever happened to the the economic crash everyone was expecting this spring/summer?
The sentencing remarks in the abortion case. Not quite how it was presented earlier. Deception and lying are not viewed favourably by the courts. The sentence does seem a tad harsh.
There was a thread about this case on Mumsnet. I only scanned it quickly, but my impression was that the majority of those who understood the facts of the case supported the sentence. There were, however, some against, with the most vociferous posters seeming to be those who believe a woman should be able to abort a pregnancy right up to full term.
Having read the sentencing remarks in full, I have to say the case is very different from the impression I got reading social media posts by BPAS and others.
It's a difficult case. My gut feeling would be not to send her to prison on the grounds that she has already suffered enough, and mitigating circumstances.
I agree and its one of the reasons why i think religion should stay out of politics . I am never impressed when the Lord Bishops speak on political issues or indeed non religious issues - His Grace , the Archbishop of Canterbury occasionally does this but the most ridiculous example was the Bishop of St Albans talking about the pest of grey squirells in his capacity as a member of the Lords - The bishops and all church leaders should be a conduit to bring people to God and Jesus from whatever political stances they have or indeed what they think of grey squirells
On the other hand if you have a strong religiously derived set of moral views and are in a position where you can speak on a political subject that intersects strongly with those moral views (not grey squirrels, but perhaps treatment of asylum seekers or similar) and have your voice carry some persuasive power, I think a lot of religions and moral codes would say you have an obligation to use the advantage of your position to try to persuade others to follow the more moral course of action.
So I'm an atheist, and I'm not sure I'd have bishops in the HoL, but I think they're entirely right to speak up on some "political" issues, whether they're in the HoL or merely opining from their pulpit. (I might agree or disagree on the individual opinions, of course.)
To me though religion isn't a moral thing (morals and society norms change over time but God does not for that would imply God is led by humans) but a spiritual thing. Bishops shoudl be there to bring people to God not to lecture on politics or even morals
Fair enough; there are loads of spiritual traditions that say religion isn't a moral thing. But for four fifths of the earth's surface the predominant tradition for centuries has been 'ethical monotheism'. That is, there is one God, and we are accountable to God. A sort of universal Ofsted/CQC/Supreme Court.
This, like all things, gets perverted, but for myself as a very liberal Christian I would rather both Hitler and I were accountable to that God (especially in its liberal Christian versions!) than any alternative. Like accountable to no-one; or accountable to the Daily Mail.
anyway staying in Scarborough for a week so off to those cosy collectible shops near the Grand Hotel again today- Is there anything more pleasant than being able to discuss your niche hobby (mine is collecting playing cards) with the shopkeeper whilst being shown what they have in your niche area? Bought some cards that still had the playing card tax wrapper on them yesterday (unbelievable this tax ran for hundreds of years until 1960) and going back for a french set today! and the sun is shining
The sentencing remarks in the abortion case. Not quite how it was presented earlier. Deception and lying are not viewed favourably by the courts. The sentence does seem a tad harsh.
There was a thread about this case on Mumsnet. I only scanned it quickly, but my impression was that the majority of those who understood the facts of the case supported the sentence. There were, however, some against, with the most vociferous posters seeming to be those who believe a woman should be able to abort a pregnancy right up to full term.
Having read the sentencing remarks in full, I have to say the case is very different from the impression I got reading social media posts by BPAS and others.
It's a difficult case. My gut feeling would be not to send her to prison on the grounds that she has already suffered enough, and mitigating circumstances.
The Judge has said had she pled guilty earlier she would have had a suspended sentence.
The yield on two-year gilts has jumped to 4.73% - passing levels seen after Liz Truss's mini-budget - highest since 2008
More pain may be coming as markets digest the thought of even higher BOE rates...
For some reason there’s not dozens of Tory MPs writing to newspapers this time, and none of the wall-to-wall coverage of how it’s the end of the world and the government has to resign.
Because it does not represent a risk premium on UK sovereign debt this time???
Nadine Dorries is unhinged. Not suitable for elevation to the House of Lords, and her hissy fit in being rejected has been entertaining.
But - Charlotte Owen. So Dorries has a point.
This whole tawdry process demonstrates quite clearly several things: That the issuance of rewards from disgraced ex-PMs should be banned* That the "honours" system is pitifully anachronistic That the House of Lords is an absurd spectacle**
*David TC Davies on Any Questions at the weekend foaming on and on about how many peers Gordon Brown had appointed and with Boris it was "only 7". It isn't the number, its that he appointed DJ Party and his [superinjunction] and wanted to appoint crazy people like Nadine
**They are being kept up well into the early hours o repeated days trying to plough through the illegal Illegal Migration bill to make it legal and moral. This will be hurled out by the corruption cult, but the HofL is doing an important job. Its just that some of the people doing said important job are bishops, flunkies, donors etc. And there are 800 of them. Time to replace it with something modern.
Sorry, but how on Earth does Dorries have a point because of Charlotte Owen?
From the reporting it seems that Dorries was told she would have to resign from the Commons to be made a Lord, to which she said she was not going to resign thinking she'd still get her Lordship anyway at a time that suited her better rather than the process. That's entirely her choice if so.
Did Charlotte Owen refuse to resign from the Commons?
The two situations are not remotely the same.
Dorries has a point because of Lord Lebedev and anyone else who shouldn't be in the Lords. The institution is already so disgraced that excluding any of the Boris picks is absurd when you look at the other people he has put in.
A large number of MPs are pretty unhinged, look at how many have been suspended. What should we do about the standard of candidate for MP?
Introduce a voting system that doesn't have safe seats?
So definitely not PR then which makes anyone at the top of their list pretty safe in their seat even if there's a swing against them and their party drops down to second or lower then?
Like you, I detest the List System which removes the choice of MP from voters to party machines - just like FPTP.
Single Transferable Vote with multi-member constituencies, as in Ireland, puts the choice squarely in the hands of the voter. Candidates from the the same party have to compete with one another. The geographical link is maintained. And the results are broadly proportional.
Nadine Dorries is unhinged. Not suitable for elevation to the House of Lords, and her hissy fit in being rejected has been entertaining.
But - Charlotte Owen. So Dorries has a point.
This whole tawdry process demonstrates quite clearly several things: That the issuance of rewards from disgraced ex-PMs should be banned* That the "honours" system is pitifully anachronistic That the House of Lords is an absurd spectacle**
*David TC Davies on Any Questions at the weekend foaming on and on about how many peers Gordon Brown had appointed and with Boris it was "only 7". It isn't the number, its that he appointed DJ Party and his [superinjunction] and wanted to appoint crazy people like Nadine
**They are being kept up well into the early hours o repeated days trying to plough through the illegal Illegal Migration bill to make it legal and moral. This will be hurled out by the corruption cult, but the HofL is doing an important job. Its just that some of the people doing said important job are bishops, flunkies, donors etc. And there are 800 of them. Time to replace it with something modern.
Sorry, but how on Earth does Dorries have a point because of Charlotte Owen?
From the reporting it seems that Dorries was told she would have to resign from the Commons to be made a Lord, to which she said she was not going to resign thinking she'd still get her Lordship anyway at a time that suited her better rather than the process. That's entirely her choice if so.
Did Charlotte Owen refuse to resign from the Commons?
The two situations are not remotely the same.
Dorries has a point because of Lord Lebedev and anyone else who shouldn't be in the Lords. The institution is already so disgraced that excluding any of the Boris picks is absurd when you look at the other people he has put in.
A large number of MPs are pretty unhinged, look at how many have been suspended. What should we do about the standard of candidate for MP?
Introduce a voting system that doesn't have safe seats?
So definitely not PR then which makes anyone at the top of their list pretty safe in their seat even if there's a swing against them and their party drops down to second or lower then?
You seem remarkably unaware that there are different forms of PR
Perhaps you can name any one specific example that doesn't result in safe seats?
STV giving a safe seat to each party doesn't eliminate safe seats, it reinforces them.
STV doesn't give safe seats to candidates. Candidates from the same party have to compete with one another. Hardly safe. The fact that a party that has say 30% of the vote in a five member constituency is guaranteed to get a seat is not a problem, it is a benefit.
In Richmond upon Thames, at the last local elections, under FPTP, the Tories got nearly 25% of the vote and just one seat out of 52! (And he is 92 years old.)
It is a LibDem monopoly - a ridiculous consequence of FPTP. Surely you will agree?
OK words from Sunak, but the disgraceful honours list is as much Sunak's as Johnson's. The prime minister actually makes the recommendations. Sunak could have said, No.
The worrying thing is, he did.
That is, he considered some things totally unacceptable yet somehow decided Fabric*nt and Mogg deserved knighthoods.
Which is bizarre.
I also suspect blocking Peerages for Sharma, Dorries and Atkins was primarily in avoidance of by elections (Sharma is after all a decent guy). That worked out well!
I can't level that about the non-knighthood for Sir Stan, but maybe a knighthood for "my dad" was too absurd by any metric.
That's an easy one. Boris gave his own brother a peerage, so a knighthood for his dad is run of the mill.
I agree and its one of the reasons why i think religion should stay out of politics . I am never impressed when the Lord Bishops speak on political issues or indeed non religious issues - His Grace , the Archbishop of Canterbury occasionally does this but the most ridiculous example was the Bishop of St Albans talking about the pest of grey squirells in his capacity as a member of the Lords - The bishops and all church leaders should be a conduit to bring people to God and Jesus from whatever political stances they have or indeed what they think of grey squirells
On the other hand if you have a strong religiously derived set of moral views and are in a position where you can speak on a political subject that intersects strongly with those moral views (not grey squirrels, but perhaps treatment of asylum seekers or similar) and have your voice carry some persuasive power, I think a lot of religions and moral codes would say you have an obligation to use the advantage of your position to try to persuade others to follow the more moral course of action.
So I'm an atheist, and I'm not sure I'd have bishops in the HoL, but I think they're entirely right to speak up on some "political" issues, whether they're in the HoL or merely opining from their pulpit. (I might agree or disagree on the individual opinions, of course.)
To me though religion isn't a moral thing (morals and society norms change over time but God does not for that would imply God is led by humans) but a spiritual thing. Bishops shoudl be there to bring people to God not to lecture on politics or even morals
Fair enough; there are loads of spiritual traditions that say religion isn't a moral thing. But for four fifths of the earth's surface the predominant tradition for centuries has been 'ethical monotheism'. That is, there is one God, and we are accountable to God. A sort of universal Ofsted/CQC/Supreme Court.
This, like all things, gets perverted, but for myself as a very liberal Christian I would rather both Hitler and I were accountable to that God (especially in its liberal Christian versions!) than any alternative. Like accountable to no-one; or accountable to the Daily Mail.
We are accountable to our consciences. Which is very convenient for those that don't have one.
Nadine Dorries is unhinged. Not suitable for elevation to the House of Lords, and her hissy fit in being rejected has been entertaining.
But - Charlotte Owen. So Dorries has a point.
This whole tawdry process demonstrates quite clearly several things: That the issuance of rewards from disgraced ex-PMs should be banned* That the "honours" system is pitifully anachronistic That the House of Lords is an absurd spectacle**
*David TC Davies on Any Questions at the weekend foaming on and on about how many peers Gordon Brown had appointed and with Boris it was "only 7". It isn't the number, its that he appointed DJ Party and his [superinjunction] and wanted to appoint crazy people like Nadine
**They are being kept up well into the early hours o repeated days trying to plough through the illegal Illegal Migration bill to make it legal and moral. This will be hurled out by the corruption cult, but the HofL is doing an important job. Its just that some of the people doing said important job are bishops, flunkies, donors etc. And there are 800 of them. Time to replace it with something modern.
Sorry, but how on Earth does Dorries have a point because of Charlotte Owen?
From the reporting it seems that Dorries was told she would have to resign from the Commons to be made a Lord, to which she said she was not going to resign thinking she'd still get her Lordship anyway at a time that suited her better rather than the process. That's entirely her choice if so.
Did Charlotte Owen refuse to resign from the Commons?
The two situations are not remotely the same.
Dorries has a point because of Lord Lebedev and anyone else who shouldn't be in the Lords. The institution is already so disgraced that excluding any of the Boris picks is absurd when you look at the other people he has put in.
A large number of MPs are pretty unhinged, look at how many have been suspended. What should we do about the standard of candidate for MP?
Introduce a voting system that doesn't have safe seats?
So definitely not PR then which makes anyone at the top of their list pretty safe in their seat even if there's a swing against them and their party drops down to second or lower then?
Like you, I detest the List System which removes the choice of MP from voters to party machines - just like FPTP.
Single Transferable Vote with multi-member constituencies, as in Ireland, puts the choice squarely in the hands of the voter. Candidates from the the same party have to compete with one another. The geographical link is maintained. And the results are broadly proportional.
Nadine Dorries is unhinged. Not suitable for elevation to the House of Lords, and her hissy fit in being rejected has been entertaining.
But - Charlotte Owen. So Dorries has a point.
This whole tawdry process demonstrates quite clearly several things: That the issuance of rewards from disgraced ex-PMs should be banned* That the "honours" system is pitifully anachronistic That the House of Lords is an absurd spectacle**
*David TC Davies on Any Questions at the weekend foaming on and on about how many peers Gordon Brown had appointed and with Boris it was "only 7". It isn't the number, its that he appointed DJ Party and his [superinjunction] and wanted to appoint crazy people like Nadine
**They are being kept up well into the early hours o repeated days trying to plough through the illegal Illegal Migration bill to make it legal and moral. This will be hurled out by the corruption cult, but the HofL is doing an important job. Its just that some of the people doing said important job are bishops, flunkies, donors etc. And there are 800 of them. Time to replace it with something modern.
Sorry, but how on Earth does Dorries have a point because of Charlotte Owen?
From the reporting it seems that Dorries was told she would have to resign from the Commons to be made a Lord, to which she said she was not going to resign thinking she'd still get her Lordship anyway at a time that suited her better rather than the process. That's entirely her choice if so.
Did Charlotte Owen refuse to resign from the Commons?
The two situations are not remotely the same.
Dorries has a point because of Lord Lebedev and anyone else who shouldn't be in the Lords. The institution is already so disgraced that excluding any of the Boris picks is absurd when you look at the other people he has put in.
A large number of MPs are pretty unhinged, look at how many have been suspended. What should we do about the standard of candidate for MP?
Introduce a voting system that doesn't have safe seats?
So definitely not PR then which makes anyone at the top of their list pretty safe in their seat even if there's a swing against them and their party drops down to second or lower then?
Like you, I detest the List System which removes the choice of MP from voters and gives it to party machines - just like FPTP.
Single Transferable Vote with multi-member constituencies, as in Ireland, puts the choice squarely in the hands of the voter. Candidates from the the same party have to compete with one another. The geographical link is maintained. And the results are broadly proportional.
Research it. You might be pleasantly surprised.
In STV candidates from the same party have to compete against each other if the parties stand enough candidates for that to be the case. Unfortunately, every system can be gamed, and it was striking in the recent local elections in Scotland how often the parties only stood as many candidates as they expected to win seats, and so the voters were denied this choice in practice.
Perhaps you could change the nominating rules to prevent such shenanigans, and the experience of Sinn Fein in the last Irish general election does show that parties following such an approach can come a cropper if they receive more votes than they expected, but no voting system is perfect.
Good point. I'd change the nominating rules. It would also mean that a tiny one man band one issue party would have to find say five candidates to stand.
Just been to the village petrol station. The pumps all have signs on them that state "Due to Internet issues CASH ONLY TODAY!" I had to nurse the van into Loughborough to get fuel as the nearest cashpoint machine was further away than the next fuel station! Bloody cashless society, my arse!
Nadine Dorries is unhinged. Not suitable for elevation to the House of Lords, and her hissy fit in being rejected has been entertaining.
But - Charlotte Owen. So Dorries has a point.
This whole tawdry process demonstrates quite clearly several things: That the issuance of rewards from disgraced ex-PMs should be banned* That the "honours" system is pitifully anachronistic That the House of Lords is an absurd spectacle**
*David TC Davies on Any Questions at the weekend foaming on and on about how many peers Gordon Brown had appointed and with Boris it was "only 7". It isn't the number, its that he appointed DJ Party and his [superinjunction] and wanted to appoint crazy people like Nadine
**They are being kept up well into the early hours o repeated days trying to plough through the illegal Illegal Migration bill to make it legal and moral. This will be hurled out by the corruption cult, but the HofL is doing an important job. Its just that some of the people doing said important job are bishops, flunkies, donors etc. And there are 800 of them. Time to replace it with something modern.
Sorry, but how on Earth does Dorries have a point because of Charlotte Owen?
From the reporting it seems that Dorries was told she would have to resign from the Commons to be made a Lord, to which she said she was not going to resign thinking she'd still get her Lordship anyway at a time that suited her better rather than the process. That's entirely her choice if so.
Did Charlotte Owen refuse to resign from the Commons?
The two situations are not remotely the same.
Dorries has a point because of Lord Lebedev and anyone else who shouldn't be in the Lords. The institution is already so disgraced that excluding any of the Boris picks is absurd when you look at the other people he has put in.
A large number of MPs are pretty unhinged, look at how many have been suspended. What should we do about the standard of candidate for MP?
Introduce a voting system that doesn't have safe seats?
So definitely not PR then which makes anyone at the top of their list pretty safe in their seat even if there's a swing against them and their party drops down to second or lower then?
Like you, I detest the List System which removes the choice of MP from voters and gives it to party machines - just like FPTP.
Single Transferable Vote with multi-member constituencies, as in Ireland, puts the choice squarely in the hands of the voter. Candidates from the the same party have to compete with one another. The geographical link is maintained. And the results are broadly proportional.
Research it. You might be pleasantly surprised.
And each major party is pretty much guaranteed a seat in each constituency, so if you're the parties top representative in the area then you've pretty much got a seat for life.
In the UK major politicians like Michael Portillo can be ejected by the electorate. Had Boris Johnson not resigned he'd have probably been rejected from Uxbridge next time too.
Whereas in Ireland someone like Portillo or Boris can have enough votes from their own party to have a safe seat and who cares that most of the local electorate wanted somebody else?
The yield on two-year gilts has jumped to 4.73% - passing levels seen after Liz Truss's mini-budget - highest since 2008
More pain may be coming as markets digest the thought of even higher BOE rates...
I remember a time when the news that "the total number of people in work rising to its highest level ever in the three months to April." was a good thing. Apparently now that is bad news.
What ever happened to the the economic crash everyone was expecting this spring/summer?
Full employment and high pay rises for the low paid:
The rise in the minimum wage had had a "significant" impact on the April pay figures, said Andrew Hunter, co-founder of the job search engine Adzuna.
The minimum wage - known as the National Living Wage - rose to £10.42 an hour in April for those aged 23 and over.
"Nearly two million workers in the UK saw an almost 10% increase in pay this spring," Mr Hunter told the BBC's Today programme.
"What we're seeing is some signs of optimism from British employers during what is often a time of year where discussions around pay and bonuses are had. So we are seeing wage improvements."
The sentencing remarks in the abortion case. Not quite how it was presented earlier. Deception and lying are not viewed favourably by the courts. The sentence does seem a tad harsh.
There was a thread about this case on Mumsnet. I only scanned it quickly, but my impression was that the majority of those who understood the facts of the case supported the sentence. There were, however, some against, with the most vociferous posters seeming to be those who believe a woman should be able to abort a pregnancy right up to full term.
Having read the sentencing remarks in full, I have to say the case is very different from the impression I got reading social media posts by BPAS and others.
It's a difficult case. My gut feeling would be not to send her to prison on the grounds that she has already suffered enough, and mitigating circumstances.
The Judge has said had she pled guilty earlier she would have had a suspended sentence.
which is a bit harsh given the reason she did not was probably the fear of going to jail and not being able to look after her kids especially as one is of special needs
Just been to the village petrol station. The pumps all have signs on them that state "Due to Internet issues CASH ONLY TODAY!" I had to nurse the van into Loughborough to get fuel as the nearest cashpoint machine was further away than the next fuel station! Bloody cashless society, my arse!
The sentencing remarks in the abortion case. Not quite how it was presented earlier. Deception and lying are not viewed favourably by the courts. The sentence does seem a tad harsh.
There was a thread about this case on Mumsnet. I only scanned it quickly, but my impression was that the majority of those who understood the facts of the case supported the sentence. There were, however, some against, with the most vociferous posters seeming to be those who believe a woman should be able to abort a pregnancy right up to full term.
Having read the sentencing remarks in full, I have to say the case is very different from the impression I got reading social media posts by BPAS and others.
It's a difficult case. My gut feeling would be not to send her to prison on the grounds that she has already suffered enough, and mitigating circumstances.
That was the view I just expressed to my wife when the headlines came up on the news at the top of the hour. Clearly she has comitted a crime and in my view it should be a crime but a custodial sentence seems somehow wrong to me. There was emphasis put on the fact this happened during lockdown and it would be interesting to see how this might have influenced things.
As mentioned earlier, here is the video sent to me by an eyewitness, with interview from him to confirm what happened at 5.45am this morning in Nottingham City Centre, in a "major incident"
Shots fired at van. Lone man tasered/cuffed. "Massive knife" & backpack retrieved >>
So why is Nottingham still closed? Presumably police will be checking this man's house for bombs but unless they think he has planted explosives all over the city, this seems like overkill three or four hours later.
ETA the caller does suggest there has been a separate incident in the city centre, so perhaps things are more understandable if the police fear some sort of coordinated terrorist action.
IMHO piling in on HYUFD for his political opinions is fine, but piling in on him because of his religious faith demeans those that do it. Just sayin'
That is spot on. HYFUD's religious beliefs should be respected. I also suspect that those piling on would be slightly more reticent if HYFUD proclaimed himself Muslim (and, yes, that means you think because HYFUD is a Christian it is fair game to attack his faith whereas you would be concerned about being called Islamophobic etc if you attacked the faith of those with different religions).
Oh what sanctimonious rubbish.
I'm happy to take anyone on who tries to shove their stuff down other people's throats, and yes that includes Muslims too. If someone is preaching Islam then its not Islamophobic to reject or rebut it, any more than its antisemitic to do so for someone preaching Judaism.
Discriminating against someone because they're x, y or z is wrong, but debating ideas if someone is putting theirs forwards and you view things differently is never wrong. Its civilised and enlightened and can be a pleasant conversation for both parties. He likes it as much as we do.
^ this.
If someone turns up telling people that they should live in this or that way because some book says so, that person gets to be told they're wrong if the target of their proselytising disagrees.
It doesn't matter if that book is Mein Kampf, the Bible, the Communist Manifesto, the Qur'an, On Liberty, The Torah, or Harry fucking Potter and the Prisoner of fucking Azkaban,
If your book says you should forgo sex before marriage, seize the means of production, observe Saturday as the Sabbath, wipe out those tho observe Saturday as the Sabbath, or use time travel to save Buckbeak the fucking Hippogriff, it may well be deep and profound to you, and you're welcome to try your hand at persuading others. But if someone tells you no, you're wrong and frankly you're an idiot for thinking that, then there's no "boo hoo but religion" card to be played. It's just a belief system, and someone testing it through either reasoned argument or dismissive contempt is your problem, not the problem of the person who refuses to listen to your enthused babble.
I agree entirely, but you kinda miss the point that we now have a de facto blasphemy law. If you stand up and criticise or ridicule Islam - as should be your right, this is why we had The Enlightenment - you are likely to get into big trouble, if not get yourself beheaded. So people don’t do it. They stay silent. Think of that poor teacher in Batley. He is STILL in hiding with his family
We have allowed a grotesque medieval creed to destroy our precious Free Speech, thanks to misguided policies of migration and multiculturalism. Policies which, I suspect, you approve of
A couple of years ago we had someone come here who was proselytising Islam on this site.
I and others on here debated with him and were quite happy to reject his beliefs as much as anyone who espouses their views on this site can be rejected.
He tried calling those who disagreed with him Islamophobic and it was bullshit then, and its bullshit now from you, and didn't silence anyone. And last I checked, we all still have our heads.
Islam is a religion with some ridiculous beliefs just like Christianity is. Not remotely Islamophobic or fatal to say that.
OK go and draw a satirical cartoon of the Prophet and put it on social media in your name. Or burn a copy of the Koran in Basingstoke Aldi. Or rant about the evil of Islam on Youtube. You won’t do this, will you? Because you are scared of what would happen to you. For good reason. Yet you would do all these things vis a vis Christianity or Buddhism. So we have a de facto blasphemy law that protects Islam and pretty much only Islam
PB is an anonymous forum, it is entirely different
Not for all of us. And I am still happy to say that Islam is a belief in Middle Eastern Sky Fairies - just like Christianity.
It doesn't believe in the Trinity though, Islam sees Jesus as a prophet (albeit a less important one than Muhammad) but it doesn't see him as God and Holy Spirit too as Christians do
I believe anyone should be allowed to indulge themselves in their own faith, whatever that may be.
Where you and I differ is my view that such divinity is best served in solitude. Organized religion on the other hand is the root of much of the World's woes. It is not your Gods or your prophets who are to blame, it is avarice of men who build their churches, idols and finery with money they demand with menaces from the poor. From the Church of Rome to the Church of Scientology, Charlatans become wealthy and then politically connected to enhance that wealth.
So when you pray in solitude, ask your God if he is angered that the CoE owns so much real estate here in the UK, and why don't the C of E liquidate these assets to clothe, feed and educate the needy?
Substitute C of E for just about any faith based organised church throughout the World if you like.
As the C of E is not a socialist organisation but a Christian organisation focused on worship of the living Christ. Yes it also provides foodbanks, schools and homeless shelters too but its ultimate purpose is to provide places of worship for fellow Anglicans to partake of Holy Communion, read the Bible and worship
Jesus was a socialist.
He wasn't, read the parable of the talents. He was also a social conservative, albeit with compassion for the sinner provided they recognised their sin
Jesus was an orange book Lib Dem.
Depending upon the passage he was somewhere between a socialist and an orange book Lib Dem.
Sort of like the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The tragedy of Christianity is that "Christians" are far more interested in the teachings of Paul than of Christ.
As a Christian myself , I dont think Christianity is 'tragic' and the teaching of Paul and Jesus are not one or the other.
There's an overlap in their teachings, but also a large disconnect. Paul is the favourite of social reactionaries for good reason.
Precisely.
Jesus was far more concerned with saying things like "Judge not lest ye be judged" or "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" than he was with whether a man lay with another man, or a woman terminated a pregnancy.
Social conservative "Christians" who judge others for being sinners neither follow, nor care about, the teachings of Christ.
Yep, hence me using "Christians" as a descriptor. Because they have a Bible which consists of Genesis, Leviticus, the juiciest smitings in the old Testament, then Paul's letters written to smite the women in what appears to be the direct opposite of what Jesus actually said and did.
Which leads us to "Gog Hates Fags" etc...
I guess Paul nodded off during some of those long sermons out in the levant sunshine and missed a few bits.
Whether Paul nodded off is not known. But his audience did; se this from Acts chapter 20:
On the first day of the week we came together to break bread. Paul spoke to the people and, because he intended to leave the next day, kept on talking until midnight. 8 There were many lamps in the upstairs room where we were meeting. 9 Seated in a window was a young man named Eutychus, who was sinking into a deep sleep as Paul talked on and on. When he was sound asleep, he fell to the ground from the third story and was picked up dead.
Nadine Dorries is unhinged. Not suitable for elevation to the House of Lords, and her hissy fit in being rejected has been entertaining.
But - Charlotte Owen. So Dorries has a point.
This whole tawdry process demonstrates quite clearly several things: That the issuance of rewards from disgraced ex-PMs should be banned* That the "honours" system is pitifully anachronistic That the House of Lords is an absurd spectacle**
*David TC Davies on Any Questions at the weekend foaming on and on about how many peers Gordon Brown had appointed and with Boris it was "only 7". It isn't the number, its that he appointed DJ Party and his [superinjunction] and wanted to appoint crazy people like Nadine
**They are being kept up well into the early hours o repeated days trying to plough through the illegal Illegal Migration bill to make it legal and moral. This will be hurled out by the corruption cult, but the HofL is doing an important job. Its just that some of the people doing said important job are bishops, flunkies, donors etc. And there are 800 of them. Time to replace it with something modern.
Sorry, but how on Earth does Dorries have a point because of Charlotte Owen?
From the reporting it seems that Dorries was told she would have to resign from the Commons to be made a Lord, to which she said she was not going to resign thinking she'd still get her Lordship anyway at a time that suited her better rather than the process. That's entirely her choice if so.
Did Charlotte Owen refuse to resign from the Commons?
The two situations are not remotely the same.
Dorries has a point because of Lord Lebedev and anyone else who shouldn't be in the Lords. The institution is already so disgraced that excluding any of the Boris picks is absurd when you look at the other people he has put in.
A large number of MPs are pretty unhinged, look at how many have been suspended. What should we do about the standard of candidate for MP?
Introduce a voting system that doesn't have safe seats?
So definitely not PR then which makes anyone at the top of their list pretty safe in their seat even if there's a swing against them and their party drops down to second or lower then?
Like you, I detest the List System which removes the choice of MP from voters to party machines - just like FPTP.
Single Transferable Vote with multi-member constituencies, as in Ireland, puts the choice squarely in the hands of the voter. Candidates from the the same party have to compete with one another. The geographical link is maintained. And the results are broadly proportional.
Nadine Dorries is unhinged. Not suitable for elevation to the House of Lords, and her hissy fit in being rejected has been entertaining.
But - Charlotte Owen. So Dorries has a point.
This whole tawdry process demonstrates quite clearly several things: That the issuance of rewards from disgraced ex-PMs should be banned* That the "honours" system is pitifully anachronistic That the House of Lords is an absurd spectacle**
*David TC Davies on Any Questions at the weekend foaming on and on about how many peers Gordon Brown had appointed and with Boris it was "only 7". It isn't the number, its that he appointed DJ Party and his [superinjunction] and wanted to appoint crazy people like Nadine
**They are being kept up well into the early hours o repeated days trying to plough through the illegal Illegal Migration bill to make it legal and moral. This will be hurled out by the corruption cult, but the HofL is doing an important job. Its just that some of the people doing said important job are bishops, flunkies, donors etc. And there are 800 of them. Time to replace it with something modern.
Sorry, but how on Earth does Dorries have a point because of Charlotte Owen?
From the reporting it seems that Dorries was told she would have to resign from the Commons to be made a Lord, to which she said she was not going to resign thinking she'd still get her Lordship anyway at a time that suited her better rather than the process. That's entirely her choice if so.
Did Charlotte Owen refuse to resign from the Commons?
The two situations are not remotely the same.
Dorries has a point because of Lord Lebedev and anyone else who shouldn't be in the Lords. The institution is already so disgraced that excluding any of the Boris picks is absurd when you look at the other people he has put in.
A large number of MPs are pretty unhinged, look at how many have been suspended. What should we do about the standard of candidate for MP?
Introduce a voting system that doesn't have safe seats?
So definitely not PR then which makes anyone at the top of their list pretty safe in their seat even if there's a swing against them and their party drops down to second or lower then?
Like you, I detest the List System which removes the choice of MP from voters and gives it to party machines - just like FPTP.
Single Transferable Vote with multi-member constituencies, as in Ireland, puts the choice squarely in the hands of the voter. Candidates from the the same party have to compete with one another. The geographical link is maintained. And the results are broadly proportional.
Research it. You might be pleasantly surprised.
In STV candidates from the same party have to compete against each other if the parties stand enough candidates for that to be the case. Unfortunately, every system can be gamed, and it was striking in the recent local elections in Scotland how often the parties only stood as many candidates as they expected to win seats, and so the voters were denied this choice in practice.
Perhaps you could change the nominating rules to prevent such shenanigans, and the experience of Sinn Fein in the last Irish general election does show that parties following such an approach can come a cropper if they receive more votes than they expected, but no voting system is perfect.
Good point. I'd change the nominating rules. It would also mean that a tiny one man band one issue party would have to find say five candidates to stand.
Good points about STV with multi member seats. I would prefer that of any method of PR should we change however in practise I cannot see any of the main parties who operate a very top down approach to managing selections allowing it. It would take too much power out of their hands.
Good point. I'd change the nominating rules. It would also mean that a tiny one man band one issue party would have to find say five candidates to stand.
You could do that, but then for a five member constituency, with seven parties (I think they have eight in many constituencies in Ireland) and some independents, you are looking at forty-odd candidates on the ballot paper, and an extensive count.
I've wondered about a requirement to stand one more candidate than sitting MPs, but it's a factor that makes me wonder whether open-list PR might be better, as the counting would only be a two stage process then.
Nadine Dorries is unhinged. Not suitable for elevation to the House of Lords, and her hissy fit in being rejected has been entertaining.
But - Charlotte Owen. So Dorries has a point.
This whole tawdry process demonstrates quite clearly several things: That the issuance of rewards from disgraced ex-PMs should be banned* That the "honours" system is pitifully anachronistic That the House of Lords is an absurd spectacle**
*David TC Davies on Any Questions at the weekend foaming on and on about how many peers Gordon Brown had appointed and with Boris it was "only 7". It isn't the number, its that he appointed DJ Party and his [superinjunction] and wanted to appoint crazy people like Nadine
**They are being kept up well into the early hours o repeated days trying to plough through the illegal Illegal Migration bill to make it legal and moral. This will be hurled out by the corruption cult, but the HofL is doing an important job. Its just that some of the people doing said important job are bishops, flunkies, donors etc. And there are 800 of them. Time to replace it with something modern.
Sorry, but how on Earth does Dorries have a point because of Charlotte Owen?
From the reporting it seems that Dorries was told she would have to resign from the Commons to be made a Lord, to which she said she was not going to resign thinking she'd still get her Lordship anyway at a time that suited her better rather than the process. That's entirely her choice if so.
Did Charlotte Owen refuse to resign from the Commons?
The two situations are not remotely the same.
Dorries has a point because of Lord Lebedev and anyone else who shouldn't be in the Lords. The institution is already so disgraced that excluding any of the Boris picks is absurd when you look at the other people he has put in.
A large number of MPs are pretty unhinged, look at how many have been suspended. What should we do about the standard of candidate for MP?
Introduce a voting system that doesn't have safe seats?
So definitely not PR then which makes anyone at the top of their list pretty safe in their seat even if there's a swing against them and their party drops down to second or lower then?
Like you, I detest the List System which removes the choice of MP from voters to party machines - just like FPTP.
Single Transferable Vote with multi-member constituencies, as in Ireland, puts the choice squarely in the hands of the voter. Candidates from the the same party have to compete with one another. The geographical link is maintained. And the results are broadly proportional.
Nadine Dorries is unhinged. Not suitable for elevation to the House of Lords, and her hissy fit in being rejected has been entertaining.
But - Charlotte Owen. So Dorries has a point.
This whole tawdry process demonstrates quite clearly several things: That the issuance of rewards from disgraced ex-PMs should be banned* That the "honours" system is pitifully anachronistic That the House of Lords is an absurd spectacle**
*David TC Davies on Any Questions at the weekend foaming on and on about how many peers Gordon Brown had appointed and with Boris it was "only 7". It isn't the number, its that he appointed DJ Party and his [superinjunction] and wanted to appoint crazy people like Nadine
**They are being kept up well into the early hours o repeated days trying to plough through the illegal Illegal Migration bill to make it legal and moral. This will be hurled out by the corruption cult, but the HofL is doing an important job. Its just that some of the people doing said important job are bishops, flunkies, donors etc. And there are 800 of them. Time to replace it with something modern.
Sorry, but how on Earth does Dorries have a point because of Charlotte Owen?
From the reporting it seems that Dorries was told she would have to resign from the Commons to be made a Lord, to which she said she was not going to resign thinking she'd still get her Lordship anyway at a time that suited her better rather than the process. That's entirely her choice if so.
Did Charlotte Owen refuse to resign from the Commons?
The two situations are not remotely the same.
Dorries has a point because of Lord Lebedev and anyone else who shouldn't be in the Lords. The institution is already so disgraced that excluding any of the Boris picks is absurd when you look at the other people he has put in.
A large number of MPs are pretty unhinged, look at how many have been suspended. What should we do about the standard of candidate for MP?
Introduce a voting system that doesn't have safe seats?
So definitely not PR then which makes anyone at the top of their list pretty safe in their seat even if there's a swing against them and their party drops down to second or lower then?
Like you, I detest the List System which removes the choice of MP from voters and gives it to party machines - just like FPTP.
Single Transferable Vote with multi-member constituencies, as in Ireland, puts the choice squarely in the hands of the voter. Candidates from the the same party have to compete with one another. The geographical link is maintained. And the results are broadly proportional.
Research it. You might be pleasantly surprised.
And each major party is pretty much guaranteed a seat in each constituency, so if you're the parties top representative in the area then you've pretty much got a seat for life.
In the UK major politicians like Michael Portillo can be ejected by the electorate. Had Boris Johnson not resigned he'd have probably been rejected from Uxbridge next time too.
Whereas in Ireland someone like Portillo or Boris can have enough votes from their own party to have a safe seat and who cares that most of the local electorate wanted somebody else?
Undrrt STV, almost all of the local electorate will get someone they want, unlike now under FPTP.
Under STV there isn't a "Party top representative" guaranteed a seat. The candidates from that party have to compete against each other and the local electors have the last say.
IMHO piling in on HYUFD for his political opinions is fine, but piling in on him because of his religious faith demeans those that do it. Just sayin'
That is spot on. HYFUD's religious beliefs should be respected. I also suspect that those piling on would be slightly more reticent if HYFUD proclaimed himself Muslim (and, yes, that means you think because HYFUD is a Christian it is fair game to attack his faith whereas you would be concerned about being called Islamophobic etc if you attacked the faith of those with different religions).
Oh what sanctimonious rubbish.
I'm happy to take anyone on who tries to shove their stuff down other people's throats, and yes that includes Muslims too. If someone is preaching Islam then its not Islamophobic to reject or rebut it, any more than its antisemitic to do so for someone preaching Judaism.
Discriminating against someone because they're x, y or z is wrong, but debating ideas if someone is putting theirs forwards and you view things differently is never wrong. Its civilised and enlightened and can be a pleasant conversation for both parties. He likes it as much as we do.
^ this.
If someone turns up telling people that they should live in this or that way because some book says so, that person gets to be told they're wrong if the target of their proselytising disagrees.
It doesn't matter if that book is Mein Kampf, the Bible, the Communist Manifesto, the Qur'an, On Liberty, The Torah, or Harry fucking Potter and the Prisoner of fucking Azkaban,
If your book says you should forgo sex before marriage, seize the means of production, observe Saturday as the Sabbath, wipe out those tho observe Saturday as the Sabbath, or use time travel to save Buckbeak the fucking Hippogriff, it may well be deep and profound to you, and you're welcome to try your hand at persuading others. But if someone tells you no, you're wrong and frankly you're an idiot for thinking that, then there's no "boo hoo but religion" card to be played. It's just a belief system, and someone testing it through either reasoned argument or dismissive contempt is your problem, not the problem of the person who refuses to listen to your enthused babble.
I agree entirely, but you kinda miss the point that we now have a de facto blasphemy law. If you stand up and criticise or ridicule Islam - as should be your right, this is why we had The Enlightenment - you are likely to get into big trouble, if not get yourself beheaded. So people don’t do it. They stay silent. Think of that poor teacher in Batley. He is STILL in hiding with his family
We have allowed a grotesque medieval creed to destroy our precious Free Speech, thanks to misguided policies of migration and multiculturalism. Policies which, I suspect, you approve of
A couple of years ago we had someone come here who was proselytising Islam on this site.
I and others on here debated with him and were quite happy to reject his beliefs as much as anyone who espouses their views on this site can be rejected.
He tried calling those who disagreed with him Islamophobic and it was bullshit then, and its bullshit now from you, and didn't silence anyone. And last I checked, we all still have our heads.
Islam is a religion with some ridiculous beliefs just like Christianity is. Not remotely Islamophobic or fatal to say that.
OK go and draw a satirical cartoon of the Prophet and put it on social media in your name. Or burn a copy of the Koran in Basingstoke Aldi. Or rant about the evil of Islam on Youtube. You won’t do this, will you? Because you are scared of what would happen to you. For good reason. Yet you would do all these things vis a vis Christianity or Buddhism. So we have a de facto blasphemy law that protects Islam and pretty much only Islam
PB is an anonymous forum, it is entirely different
Not for all of us. And I am still happy to say that Islam is a belief in Middle Eastern Sky Fairies - just like Christianity.
It doesn't believe in the Trinity though, Islam sees Jesus as a prophet (albeit a less important one than Muhammad) but it doesn't see him as God and Holy Spirit too as Christians do
I believe anyone should be allowed to indulge themselves in their own faith, whatever that may be.
Where you and I differ is my view that such divinity is best served in solitude. Organized religion on the other hand is the root of much of the World's woes. It is not your Gods or your prophets who are to blame, it is avarice of men who build their churches, idols and finery with money they demand with menaces from the poor. From the Church of Rome to the Church of Scientology, Charlatans become wealthy and then politically connected to enhance that wealth.
So when you pray in solitude, ask your God if he is angered that the CoE owns so much real estate here in the UK, and why don't the C of E liquidate these assets to clothe, feed and educate the needy?
Substitute C of E for just about any faith based organised church throughout the World if you like.
As the C of E is not a socialist organisation but a Christian organisation focused on worship of the living Christ. Yes it also provides foodbanks, schools and homeless shelters too but its ultimate purpose is to provide places of worship for fellow Anglicans to partake of Holy Communion, read the Bible and worship
Jesus was a socialist.
He wasn't, read the parable of the talents. He was also a social conservative, albeit with compassion for the sinner provided they recognised their sin
Jesus was an orange book Lib Dem.
Depending upon the passage he was somewhere between a socialist and an orange book Lib Dem.
Sort of like the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The tragedy of Christianity is that "Christians" are far more interested in the teachings of Paul than of Christ.
As a Christian myself , I dont think Christianity is 'tragic' and the teaching of Paul and Jesus are not one or the other.
I should also point out that Jesus was not political, not Socialist nor Social Conservative. His Kingdom is not of this world.
According to Wikipedia, crucifixion was used by the Romans 'to punish slaves, pirates, and enemies of the state'. Don't think Jesus was a slave or a pirate.
He was alleged to be a rebel, challenging the authority of the emperor.
Which is very much political.
His argument that His kingdom was not of this world is a nuance that would have flown over the heads of those who saw just another Jewish troublemaker.
Though a century or two later, the empire recognised what a useful political tool that was, and adopted it for themselves.
Here, I would disagree. And as usual, I blame Gibbon, to whom, the aristocracy saw all religions as equally useful, the philosophers equally false, and the masses equally true. Most pagans of all classes were quite sincere in their beliefs.
People of all classes are quite adept at very sincerely twisting beliefs into meaning whatever is useful for them. So the two are not contradictory.
To merge different but related conversations we see that today where avowed Christians manage to twist Christianity into being a judgemental set of beliefs that view other people as being sinners because they're doing things the speaker doesn't like (such as abortion, homosexuality etc) when Christ himself didn't say anything on those subjects and did speak about how you should not be judging others.
I don't think those doing so are being insincere. They simply while being sincere Christians don't care about what Christ actually said and care about their beliefs as they hold them and how they suit their own agenda.
Which the aristocracy or others in positions of power throughout time have been extremely capable of doing, adapting religion (however sincerely held) to further their own agenda.
Which of course is why later Romans found Christianity to be a more attractive prospect that its multi-deity alternatives, since with the former you could promulgate supposed absolute truths enforced from the top by decree and ranks of priests, whereas with the latter the punters were free to choose the deity they needed from time to time according to circumstances and preference.
Pagan Rome had no interest in belief. What the authorities were extremely interested in was that the Gods be honoured, and the correct rituals be performed, because they believed, entirely sincerely, that calamity would befall if this was not done. So, no you were not free at all to opt out of doing this, and that's why they persecuted the Christians, and some other sects. They didn't care whether Christians privately worshipped Christ as another deity. They cared enormously that Christians would not give the official Gods their proper honour and respect. As they saw it, the calamities of the Third Century were entirely down to the fact that this sect of wretched atheists were increasing in number.
Constantine himself, hedged his bets. He patronised Christianity, but remained a pagan, until he was dying.
The yield on two-year gilts has jumped to 4.73% - passing levels seen after Liz Truss's mini-budget - highest since 2008
More pain may be coming as markets digest the thought of even higher BOE rates...
I remember a time when the news that "the total number of people in work rising to its highest level ever in the three months to April." was a good thing. Apparently now that is bad news.
What ever happened to the the economic crash everyone was expecting this spring/summer?
Full employment and high pay rises for the low paid:
The rise in the minimum wage had had a "significant" impact on the April pay figures, said Andrew Hunter, co-founder of the job search engine Adzuna.
The minimum wage - known as the National Living Wage - rose to £10.42 an hour in April for those aged 23 and over.
"Nearly two million workers in the UK saw an almost 10% increase in pay this spring," Mr Hunter told the BBC's Today programme.
"What we're seeing is some signs of optimism from British employers during what is often a time of year where discussions around pay and bonuses are had. So we are seeing wage improvements."
Comments
Plus of course safe seats or not, the party machines and party associations will still select the candidates, even more so under PR Party lists
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/publicsectorpersonnel/datasets/publicsectoremploymentreferencetable
A total increase of over 250k during the last four years.
If the Conservatives were more competent and less self-obsessed then they would be shouting about this at every opportunity.
Baroness Owen is just another unelected member of our upper chamber, that's an obscenity when you think they have a life tenure.
Australia are ‘woke’ – and their former players do not like it as culture wars divide tourists
Following Justin Langer's dismissal last year, a row has been brewing among the current crop of players and their predecessors
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2023/06/12/australia-ashes-culture-war-woke-pat-cummins/
That isn't legally possibly given the "resign your site within 6 months" rule without playing games that Rishi was unable to play.
Year 9 do it all the time.
Second wave supporters always change things.
What are all these new staff doing - how many are clinicians, how many take workload off clinicians, and how many are administrators aimlessly pushing papers among themselves?
Well, sometimes that screws them. Not often enough.
But millions of people look at the NHS in a religious rather than a rational way and for them inputs are more important than outputs.
There aren't a lot of job-for-life careers nowadays, and a job where the requirement is to go through a competitive election once every few years is hardly unstable in the context of the wider jobs market.
In any event, where is your evidence that safe seat MPs tend to be of a higher standard than those in marginals?
The Giant NHS IT projects that failed so miserably were an attempt at a top down fix of this. What is needed is a bottom up approach - systems designed to work together, but small pieces of the puzzle. The main thing is inter-compatibility of the data.
Yes 25%
No 56%
2019 Conservative voters
Yes 49%
No 33%
Leave voters
Yes 42%
No 39%
https://twitter.com/ProfTimBale/status/1668508161584644096?s=20
ETA as Malmesbury said. Of course, a lot of admin is created by grand government schemes like the internal market, patient choice, commissioning and so on.
Why waste everyone's time instead of engaging with the issue?
A classic of this was the grai production reports in the USSR. The CIA stole the reports given to the Politburo. Meanwhile, a small team within the CIA, using satellite imagery and vists to the countryside by people from the embassy, proved that production was vastly less than was in the reports.
Police, paramedics, firefighters and National inter-agency liaison officers are in the city where several streets have been taped off.
The cause of the incident is not immediately known. Roads shut include Ilkeston Road, Milton Street, Maples Street, and Woodborough Road, from the junction with Magdala Road into the city.
The Nottingham Express Transit (NET) tram network said it had suspended all services due to ‘major police incidents around the city and suburbs’.
Nottinghamshire Police said it was dealing with an “ongoing serious incident”.
Chief inspector Neil Humphries said: “Officers are currently on scene at multiple road closures due to an ongoing incident.
“Please avoid these areas as they are expected to remain closed for some time.”
The obvious answer is that Johnson has a record of being a lying bastard so is obviously lying.
But Sunak would have been the one to benefit from MPs not being elevated to the Lords triggering by-elections. As it turns out, they've triggered by-elections anyway. But it's in his interest for them not to have the offer of a peerage on the table.
I was at some drinks last Friday and a friend, who is one of the country's top cancer surgeons, complained to me that he wasn't allowed to do his job by some 24-year-old administrator until he had completed a meaningless and irrelevant course and filled in some form about it.
(I would like the story better if it was a diversity course as he's not British by ethnicity, but actually it was some IT thing).
But NHS administrators are an important component of the blob, much more than front line doctors or nurses, and you mess with them at your peril.
That's probably heresy.
My point is very simple - I am a democrat. We elect the Commons - if we dislike an MP we can remove them. We cannot remove the Archbishop of Canterbury. Or Lebedev. Or the various bits of Johnson debris heading in there.
Final point - the Commons has primacy of course. A second chamber is there to hold the primary chamber in check when it does stupid and/or illegal things. As your corruption party is doing right now with this illegal Illegal Migration Bill. Peers are working through the night to uphold the things you supposedly hold dear like the rule of law. The government will then try and overturn the amendments and the rule of law because its frit of the pro-Golliwog vote.
https://twitter.com/TheUfoJoe/status/1668521639552909318/photo/1
STV giving a safe seat to each party doesn't eliminate safe seats, it reinforces them.
Having read the sentencing remarks in full, I have to say the case is very different from the impression I got reading social media posts by BPAS and others.
She wanted her cake and to eat it too. That it's blown up in her own face and she's thrown her toys out of the pram afterwards so now she has neither is nobodies fault but her own.
Suck it up buttercup.
I am fairly relaxed about what form a reformed Lords takes (Id favour some form of indirect election myself), but the patronage element of the whole process needs to go.
https://twitter.com/arusbridger/status/1668526152011378689/photo/1
This is not only bollocks, but it is actually the reality of Sunak's Britain.
Not sure whether any of the existing hard right parties are the right vehicle. We've just seen a pact between Reform and Reclaim, and before that between Reform and the SDP.
A New Party is needed. To bring together these disparate groups. Under a common leader. Boris! The legend. Boris! The winner! Boris! The people's princess. With millions and millions of Russian money ready to fund it and barely trained client media ready to preach and dark web social media bots ready to weaponise. It just needs a leader.
Boris!
Radio NZ substantially edited a Reuters article about a transgender school shooter in Nashville in March without changing the attribution.
I've found multiple other articles relating to gender identity that have been edited in order to protect a particular bias……
RNZ has also been editing BBC articles on the topic of trans-identifying males in sport. Specifically to make it seem trans people were banned entirely rather than female sport restricted to females. Then removed all contextual info & just added some angry quotes.
https://twitter.com/aniobrien/status/1668485973641138176?s=20
Single Transferable Vote with multi-member constituencies, as in Ireland, puts the choice squarely in the hands of the voter. Candidates from the the same party have to compete with one another. The geographical link is maintained. And the results are broadly proportional.
Research it. You might be pleasantly surprised.
The bad admin is the poorly designed IT, the DEI stuff telling them not to be racist, and the people paid to needlessly shuffle the papers around at higher levels.
The comedy with the Daily Blackshirt isn't what they write - its a business. Its the people who see that front page and think "how awful, I must pay £1 and read all about this"
It seems more likely that rulers, irrespective of what they believed, were well aware of the usefulness of religion as a political tool.
Two messages of Christianity - render unto Caesar, and your reward will be in the next world, not this - are of obvious utility, quite aside from any intrinsic merit.
It's not possible to say Gavin bloody Williamson or Jacob bloody Rees-Mogg without sneering contempt.
What isn't helpful is performative stuff that enables people to say "Racist? But everyone has completed the Anti-Racism Course, and done the multiple choice exam at the end and got their certificate. Our department won an award for 100% compliance for the 4th year running".
Good admin is like good management - invisible. Until it goes away and everything goes to hell in 5 minutes.
After 🔥 UK jobs data...
The yield on two-year gilts has jumped to 4.73% - passing levels seen after Liz Truss's mini-budget - highest since 2008
More pain may be coming as markets digest the thought of even higher BOE rates...
Perhaps you could change the nominating rules to prevent such shenanigans, and the experience of Sinn Fein in the last Irish general election does show that parties following such an approach can come a cropper if they receive more votes than they expected, but no voting system is perfect.
It is unhinged, but there you go. The fact of the matter is that the actions of this government are coming home to roost, and it no longer has the popular will, support, competence or money to actually institute well-considered and meaningful reform. That is by far the bigger issue here.
Shots fired at van. Lone man tasered/cuffed. "Massive knife" & backpack retrieved >>
https://twitter.com/MartinDaubney/status/1668534019099590657?s=20
What ever happened to the the economic crash everyone was expecting this spring/summer?
This, like all things, gets perverted, but for myself as a very liberal Christian I would rather both Hitler and I were accountable to that God (especially in its liberal Christian versions!) than any alternative. Like accountable to no-one; or accountable to the Daily Mail.
Single Transferable Vote with multi-member constituencies, as in Ireland, puts the choice squarely in the hands of the voter. Candidates from the the same party have to compete with one another. The geographical link is maintained. And the results are broadly proportional.
Research it. You might be pleasantly surprised. STV doesn't give safe seats to candidates. Candidates from the same party have to compete with one another. Hardly safe.
The fact that a party that has say 30% of the vote in a five member constituency is guaranteed to get a seat is not a problem, it is a benefit.
In Richmond upon Thames, at the last local elections, under FPTP, the Tories got nearly 25% of the vote and just one seat out of 52! (And he is 92 years old.)
It is a LibDem monopoly - a ridiculous consequence of FPTP. Surely you will agree?
Which is very convenient for those that don't have one.
Single Transferable Vote with multi-member constituencies, as in Ireland, puts the choice squarely in the hands of the voter. Candidates from the the same party have to compete with one another. The geographical link is maintained. And the results are broadly proportional.
Research it. You might be pleasantly surprised. Good point. I'd change the nominating rules. It would also mean that a tiny one man band one issue party would have to find say five candidates to stand.
I had to nurse the van into Loughborough to get fuel as the nearest cashpoint machine was further away than the next fuel station! Bloody cashless society, my arse!
In the UK major politicians like Michael Portillo can be ejected by the electorate. Had Boris Johnson not resigned he'd have probably been rejected from Uxbridge next time too.
Whereas in Ireland someone like Portillo or Boris can have enough votes from their own party to have a safe seat and who cares that most of the local electorate wanted somebody else?
The rise in the minimum wage had had a "significant" impact on the April pay figures, said Andrew Hunter, co-founder of the job search engine Adzuna.
The minimum wage - known as the National Living Wage - rose to £10.42 an hour in April for those aged 23 and over.
"Nearly two million workers in the UK saw an almost 10% increase in pay this spring," Mr Hunter told the BBC's Today programme.
"What we're seeing is some signs of optimism from British employers during what is often a time of year where discussions around pay and bonuses are had. So we are seeing wage improvements."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-65876822
Together with house prices falling we're seeing the country become fairer and more aspirational.
Or life peers born in Liverpool?
ETA the caller does suggest there has been a separate incident in the city centre, so perhaps things are more understandable if the police fear some sort of coordinated terrorist action.
Whether Paul nodded off is not known. But his audience did; se this from Acts chapter 20:
On the first day of the week we came together to break bread. Paul spoke to the people and, because he intended to leave the next day, kept on talking until midnight. 8 There were many lamps in the upstairs room where we were meeting. 9 Seated in a window was a young man named Eutychus, who was sinking into a deep sleep as Paul talked on and on. When he was sound asleep, he fell to the ground from the third story and was picked up dead.
I've wondered about a requirement to stand one more candidate than sitting MPs, but it's a factor that makes me wonder whether open-list PR might be better, as the counting would only be a two stage process then.
Single Transferable Vote with multi-member constituencies, as in Ireland, puts the choice squarely in the hands of the voter. Candidates from the the same party have to compete with one another. The geographical link is maintained. And the results are broadly proportional.
Research it. You might be pleasantly surprised. Undrrt STV, almost all of the local electorate will get someone they want, unlike now under FPTP.
Under STV there isn't a "Party top representative" guaranteed a seat. The candidates from that party have to compete against each other and the local electors have the last say.
For the record - Richmond upon Thames in May 2022
https://cabnet.richmond.gov.uk/mgElectionResults.aspx?XXR=0&ID=18&AC=EDIT_ELECTION&RPID=19208730
Constantine himself, hedged his bets. He patronised Christianity, but remained a pagan, until he was dying.