Sunak is coming out of this with his reputation enhanced – politicalbetting.com

Malmesbury said:

Sandpit said:

another_richard said:

NHS employment increases by another 19k in 2023q1:

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.

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.

My wife and I have recently had the opportunity to experience the NHS close up thanks to a miscarriage (we hope(!) - back in for a scan today as her HCG levels aren't quite behaving as expected, so it's possibly an ectopic instead) , and it's a strange beast. Staff have been great, no problem getting appointments, indeed the follow up has been very good.
On the other hand - trying to navigate a large busy hospital with inconsistent signage and a very stressed slightly distressed wife was not fun (most of the relevant departments seem to trade under "less distressing" names - eg she had an ultrasound in the "Jasmine suit", but the appointment information referenced the "early pregnancy unit" which wasn't to be found anywhere).
The really annoying stuff is things like having to go in person to the doctors to collect a stack of A4 sheets of paper they had printed to hand in at the blood test clinic - could they just be emailed for us to print? System says no.
The basics are goood, it just seems there are a lot of small things which could be so much better for little or no effort or cost.

kle4 said:

Sandpit said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

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.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/06/13/ukraine-russia-war-latest-news-counter-offensive-donetsk/

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 Russians have a serious shortage of pencils for sending notes...

Barnesian said:

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

Yes, under STV almost all the parties will get a safe seat, unlike now under FPTP. That's not better. And of course there are top party representatives, whether its formal or informal. Did the voters just randomly select Varadkar in his constituency instead of others from the same party, or did they choose him because he has the well known name and is the top representative for his party in his area.

Under STV Charles Kennedy would not have lost his seat as he remained popular enough within his own party, the problem for him was that under FPTP that wasn't enough to get a seat. Which is fair, the voters wanted someone else, so they got someone else.

Taz said:

kamski said:

prh47bridge said:

Cyclefree said:

https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/R-v.-Foster-sentencing-remarks-12.6.23.pdf

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 hardly makes the sentence he handed out any more defensible.

As he notes himself, it will do considerable damage to her family:
...I also take into account the fact that you are a good mother to three children who would suffer from your imprisonment. One of your children himself has special needs which means that he is particularly reliant upon your love and support...

In the absence of sentencing guidelines, and the context of the unique conditions of the pandemic, it would not have been impossible for him not to imprison her.

As for his comments that "it would have been better" if no one had made representations to the court, they are pompous and absurd.

BartholomewRoberts said:

IanB2 said:

NerysHughes said:

RochdalePioneers said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

RochdalePioneers said:

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.

Research it. You might be pleasantly surprised.

LostPassword said:

Barnesian said:

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.

You can automate the counting under STV. You validate in the normal way and then scan the ballots. The computer does the rest. It can be audited if necessary.

But in Ireland I think they like the drama of the manual count and cliff edge transfers. More fun. But it isn't necessary.

Melvyn Bragg is about as different from Nadine Dorries as can be imagined.

Thoroughly working-class background, part of the 1960s to 1990s British intellectual establishment who for a while made British TV the best in the workd.

Nadine Dorries, on the other hand, is in the line of the most recent, extreme incarnations of Tory populism, wanting to privatise Channel 4, and earlier generations of which helped damage British broadcasting and public life in the 1990's ; with the new advertising-led structure of C4 ; the promotion of Birt at the BBC ; the lifting of public service requirements on the ITV companies by the IBA ; and a lot or all of which was either to ingratiate with Rupert Murdoch at the time, or deregulatory and/or populist ideology.

Chalk and Cheese.

BartholomewRoberts said:

Barnesian said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

IanB2 said:

NerysHughes said:

RochdalePioneers said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

RochdalePioneers said:

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?

That's not how it has worked in practice in Ireland. Long-serving TDs have sometimes been replaced by younger candidates for the same party, because the voters have decided to eject the serving TD.

Imagine Tatton where Conservative voters wouldn't have had to vote for a non-Conservative candidate to be able to get rid of Neil Hamilton?

prh47bridge said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

carnforth said:

Cyclefree said:

https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/R-v.-Foster-sentencing-remarks-12.6.23.pdf

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.

From 9, "Indeed I consider it would have been better had the letter not been written at all" is rather pointed. Is the letter available ?

IANAL but it seems a rather chilling and inappropriate comment to me.

If the letter was not appropriate for the Judge to take into account, then the Judge should be more than qualified and capable of determining that my himself or herself. That is their role, it is not the role of the Royal College of Obstetricians etc to determine whether what they have to say is relevant or not.

I fail to see any circumstances where it would be "better" for those with a relevant interest or expertise to not express that interest or expertise.

To respond to those who've said something with "it would have been better if you'd just stayed quiet" seems to me to be entirely inappropriate.

The judge did indeed ignore the letter. His point was that it is not appropriate for people to lobby judges about sentencing, particularly when, as here, they were effectively asking the judge to ignore the law. Lobby parliament to change the law by all means. Write to the press. But don't lobby judges.

No he did not ignore the letter, he said it would be "better" had the letter not been written.

That's absurd and chilling and not at all reasonable in my eyes. We live in a free country, people who think they have standing should be free to send in letters as appropriate and the Judge should be free to ignore them, but he went further than ignoring it, he said it would be "better" had it not been written.

Its never "better" to silence people who have something to say.

And again I repeat my question from before, he's said that she is going to jail as she didn't plead guilty at magistrates court - but as far as I can tell she was not found guilty of that which she was charged with at magistrates court. So how is the fact she pled guilty later, to an offence she was never originally charged with, something to hold against her?

IANAL but the ruling and Judgment seems pompous and not at all reasonable.

.

algarkirk said:

kle4 said:

RochdalePioneers said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Nigelb said:

state_go_away said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

TimS said:

HYUFD said:

Sunil_Prasannan said:

HYUFD said:

Mexicanpete said:

HYUFD said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Leon said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Leon said:

Farooq said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

TheKitchenCabinet said:

Nigel_Foremain said:

Can I make a small point of order:

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.

Safeguarding failure.

‘Dead’ woman bangs on coffin during her own wake in Ecuador
Son Gilberto Barbera says the sound that came five hours into the service ‘gave us all a fright’
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/13/dead-woman-bangs-on-coffin-during-her-own-wake-in-ecuador

kyf_100 said:

Barnesian said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

IanB2 said:

NerysHughes said:

RochdalePioneers said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

RochdalePioneers said:

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.

Research it. You might be pleasantly surprised.

BartholomewRoberts said:

kamski said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

IanB2 said:

NerysHughes said:

RochdalePioneers said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

RochdalePioneers said:

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?

Sortition is the way to go. Never mind the single transferable vote, let's have the single vote.

At every election, one vote is procured from a hat at random, and it is the casting vote. So if 25% of people in a constituency vote Conservative, there is a 25% chance of a Conservative being elected.

Removes the idea of a "safe" seat, gives everyone a chance at getting the representative they want (what do you do if you're a Conservative voter in a seat like Bootle? Your vote simply doensn't count). And importantly, averaged out across the whole country, you get something that's fairly representative of the national vote, so you do get something that looks like proportional representation

However you also need to still keep some constituency MPs, otherwise MPs solely elected by region have very little connection to communities within it

Sandpit said:

One man in custody on suspicion of murder, it appears that his van was the weapon at at least two of the scenes.

2023 is going to be a fantastic year for the pedestrians of Nottingham.

BartholomewRoberts said:

Barnesian said:

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

Yes, under STV almost all the parties will get a safe seat, unlike now under FPTP. That's not better. And of course there are top party representatives, whether its formal or informal. Did the voters just randomly select Varadkar in his constituency instead of others from the same party, or did they choose him because he has the well known name and is the top representative for his party in his area.

Under STV Charles Kennedy would not have lost his seat as he remained popular enough within his own party, the problem for him was that under FPTP that wasn't enough to get a seat. Which is fair, the voters wanted someone else, so they got someone else.

Not sure I agree with this.

Yes, if the Lib Dems proportionately qualified for one seat in northern Scotland, it's pretty likely it would have been Kennedy (I don't know the maths on that, but for the sake of argument let's say they get one seat).

But the reason it would have been Kennedy wouldn't have been due to party patronage or anything like that. It's because people in northern Scotland voting Lib Dem would have chosen him over Danny Alexander and others.

Does that mean it's a "safe" seat? Not really - the status of being the public's top choice to be Lib Dem MP in the region if they were to have only one was something he earned over a long period of time (and could lose over a scandal or something). That's very different to being MP for a seat that is simply a very safe seat for your party under FPTP. There are good safe seat MPs... but also plenty who have their seats because no other party is at all likely to win and their is no competition from potentially better candidates in their own party (absent a very serious confidence issue, which is purely an internal party matter).

A word in favour of STV over FPTP.

I have run for election four times. Elected once, rejected the other three times. Lets park the town council election I succeeded in and look at the proper council elections.

In 2015 I ran in a two-member ward and came third (351 behind 2nd place). The two independent party candidates won, so its likely that under STV they would both have won anyway.

In 2019 I ran in a three-member ward and came fifth, 337 votes behind. The three independent party candidates won, so again its likely that under STV they still would have won.

In 2022 I ran in a three-member ward and came third (with 260 votes). Under FPTP I would have been elected, along with one Tory and one SNP - who were 884 votes ahead of me. Instead, under STV I was defeated in the 5th round by the third Tory candidate who got 24 fewer votes than me.

I much prefer STV, even though it means I wasn't elected. Why? Because it better reflects the intentions of the voters. Once you eliminate candidates from the lowest votes upwards and redistribute their 2nd preferences, you get a much better feel for what the intention of the electorate was.

In my case, most of the surplus votes of the two elected councillors went to the third Tory candidate (from the Tory) or to me (from the SNP). Most the 2nd preferences for the Green candidate went to me, and when I was eliminated in round 5 a third of my now 546 votes went to the Tory.

I've been an advocate of STV my whole political life. Yes I would have been elected under FPTP but STV showed that people actually wanted Two Tories and One SNP. Count all votes equally. Under STV when the candidate you vote for loses, your vote still has weight.

STV votes breakdown here https://aberdeenshire.gov.uk/media/26975/candidatevotesperstagereport_v0001_ward-2-troup_06052022_112103.pdf

Richard_Tyndall said:

Cyclefree said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Cyclefree said:

https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/R-v.-Foster-sentencing-remarks-12.6.23.pdf

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.

Can you please explain this, as I'm finding it hard to understand.



It seems to me that the timeline is that she was initially charged with a different offence to which she pled not guilty, her lawyers asked if the prosecutors had considered a different charge and then an agreement was reached to plead guilty to that other charge.

But then the Judge says he can't suspend the sentence because she didn't plead guilty initially.

That doesn't make any sense to me. She wasn't found guilty of the offence she was charged with initially, she pled guilty to a different charge which wasn't listed initially, so how or why should she have pled guilty to that when it wasn't even the charge originally before the courts?

The fact she pled not guilty to a charge she was never convicted of surely should not be held against her?

You misunderstand. Had she pleaded guilty to what she was charged with at the first opportunity the judge could have taken that fully into account.

But that seems ridiculous, particularly in light of the fact that the prosecution was willing to change the charges in agreement with the defence. The more I read about this case the more it seems to me that she has grounds for appeal. The judge appears to have behaved very poorly.

Yes. If she's not been found guilty of what she was charged with, then how can that be held against her?

Its like charging someone with murder, only murder, then they plead guilty at a later date to involuntary manslaughter, and the judgment holds against them the fact they didn't plead guilty at the first opportunity to murder.

She's surely not guilty of whatever she was first charged with, so the fact she didn't plead guilty to it is neither here nor there?

Richard_Tyndall said:

Cyclefree said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Cyclefree said:

https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/R-v.-Foster-sentencing-remarks-12.6.23.pdf

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.

Can you please explain this, as I'm finding it hard to understand.



It seems to me that the timeline is that she was initially charged with a different offence to which she pled not guilty, her lawyers asked if the prosecutors had considered a different charge and then an agreement was reached to plead guilty to that other charge.

But then the Judge says he can't suspend the sentence because she didn't plead guilty initially.

That doesn't make any sense to me. She wasn't found guilty of the offence she was charged with initially, she pled guilty to a different charge which wasn't listed initially, so how or why should she have pled guilty to that when it wasn't even the charge originally before the courts?

The fact she pled not guilty to a charge she was never convicted of surely should not be held against her?

You misunderstand. Had she pleaded guilty to what she was charged with at the first opportunity the judge could have taken that fully into account.

But that seems ridiculous, particularly in light of the fact that the prosecution was willing to change the charges in agreement with the defence. The more I read about this case the more it seems to me that she has grounds for appeal. The judge appears to have behaved very poorly.

If she’d been 12-14 weeks pregnant, rather than 32-34 weeks pregnant, then perhaps I might have been inclined to agree.

The lady wasn’t a naive 17-year-old, she was a 42-year-old mother of three.

turbotubbs said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Benpointer said:

I cannot fully explain why but nothing about the past 5-10 years in politics is making my blood boil quite so much as
Charlotte bloody Owen.

Sir Gavin bloody Williamson and Sir Jacob bloody Rees-Mogg boil my piss more.

Baroness Owen is just another unelected member of our upper chamber, that's an obscenity when you think they have a life tenure.

Tom Watson for me, but yes Charlotte Owen seems inexplicable right now.

I’d agree with Tom Watson. Totally debases the HoL.

Sandpit said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Cyclefree said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Cyclefree said:

https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/R-v.-Foster-sentencing-remarks-12.6.23.pdf

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.

Can you please explain this, as I'm finding it hard to understand.



It seems to me that the timeline is that she was initially charged with a different offence to which she pled not guilty, her lawyers asked if the prosecutors had considered a different charge and then an agreement was reached to plead guilty to that other charge.

But then the Judge says he can't suspend the sentence because she didn't plead guilty initially.

That doesn't make any sense to me. She wasn't found guilty of the offence she was charged with initially, she pled guilty to a different charge which wasn't listed initially, so how or why should she have pled guilty to that when it wasn't even the charge originally before the courts?

The fact she pled not guilty to a charge she was never convicted of surely should not be held against her?

You misunderstand. Had she pleaded guilty to what she was charged with at the first opportunity the judge could have taken that fully into account.

But that seems ridiculous, particularly in light of the fact that the prosecution was willing to change the charges in agreement with the defence. The more I read about this case the more it seems to me that she has grounds for appeal. The judge appears to have behaved very poorly.

If she’d been 12-14 weeks pregnant, rather than 32-34 weeks pregnant, then perhaps I might have been inclined to agree.

The lady wasn’t a naive 17-year-old, she was a 42-year-old mother of three.

How is that relevant to what is being discussed?

She wasn't found guilty of the crime she was originally charged with.

She pled guilty to a different crime, a crime that she was never originally charged with.

Now the Judge is holding against her the fact she originally pled not guilty. To the crime she's not guilty of.

Unless there's a mistake in that summary, set aside views of what she did or did not do, views on abortion or anything else. As a matter of law how can it be held against her that she pled not guilty to a crime she is now not guilty of? How can it be held against her that she pled guilty to a crime that was never originally on the docket, so she never originally pled not guilty to?

twistedfirestopper3 said:

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!

I was glad today that I brought my selection of random euro coinage with me to Vienna because the luggage lockers in this museum want a euro coin...

PS the Habsburgs had an astonishing collection of art and blingy stuff...

The_Woodpecker said:

HYUFD said:

kyf_100 said:

Barnesian said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

IanB2 said:

NerysHughes said:

RochdalePioneers said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

RochdalePioneers said:

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.

Research it. You might be pleasantly surprised.

BartholomewRoberts said:

kamski said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

IanB2 said:

NerysHughes said:

RochdalePioneers said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

RochdalePioneers said:

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?

Sortition is the way to go. Never mind the single transferable vote, let's have the single vote.

At every election, one vote is procured from a hat at random, and it is the casting vote. So if 25% of people in a constituency vote Conservative, there is a 25% chance of a Conservative being elected.

Removes the idea of a "safe" seat, gives everyone a chance at getting the representative they want (what do you do if you're a Conservative voter in a seat like Bootle? Your vote simply doensn't count). And importantly, averaged out across the whole country, you get something that's fairly representative of the national vote, so you do get something that looks like proportional representation

However you also need to still keep some constituency MPs, otherwise MPs solely elected by region have very little connection to communities within it

STV constituencies can be quite compact, rather than 'regions'. Leeds, for example, could be a 5-seat constituency and the MPs would be answerable to voters across the city.

But in rural areas like Shropshire and Herefordshire you might have just one constituency for the whole area. You'd only have compact constituencies in a few big cities.

RochdalePioneers said:

CorrectHorseBat said:

MX Master 3S: great mouse!

Get the MX Keys keyboard to go with it. Worth the £dollah

Even better - make work pay for it.

RochdalePioneers said:

A word in favour of STV over FPTP.

I have run for election four times. Elected once, rejected the other three times. Lets park the town council election I succeeded in and look at the proper council elections.

In 2015 I ran in a two-member ward and came third (351 behind 2nd place). The two independent party candidates won, so its likely that under STV they would both have won anyway.

In 2019 I ran in a three-member ward and came fifth, 337 votes behind. The three independent party candidates won, so again its likely that under STV they still would have won.

In 2022 I ran in a three-member ward and came third (with 260 votes). Under FPTP I would have been elected, along with one Tory and one SNP - who were 884 votes ahead of me. Instead, under STV I was defeated in the 5th round by the third Tory candidate who got 24 fewer votes than me.

I much prefer STV, even though it means I wasn't elected. Why? Because it better reflects the intentions of the voters. Once you eliminate candidates from the lowest votes upwards and redistribute their 2nd preferences, you get a much better feel for what the intention of the electorate was.

In my case, most of the surplus votes of the two elected councillors went to the third Tory candidate (from the Tory) or to me (from the SNP). Most the 2nd preferences for the Green candidate went to me, and when I was eliminated in round 5 a third of my now 546 votes went to the Tory.

I've been an advocate of STV my whole political life. Yes I would have been elected under FPTP but STV showed that people actually wanted Two Tories and One SNP. Count all votes equally. Under STV when the candidate you vote for loses, your vote still has weight.

STV votes breakdown here https://aberdeenshire.gov.uk/media/26975/candidatevotesperstagereport_v0001_ward-2-troup_06052022_112103.pdf

I like STV in general. The only downside is the large size of constituencies you would have to have, unless you hugely increase the number of MPs, which not many will be in favour of given we already have 650.

Famous last words but I would be surprised if the Nottingham incident turned out to be terrorist related. On a basic level of logic, who sets out to commit a mass casualty incident at 5am when the streets are empty. I would have thought that if you were going to do this it would be when the streets are at their busiest for maximum impact.

As I say I could be completely wrong but I think this will turn ot to be something more 'local'.

That said it is still 3 people dead so not something to be made light of.

NerysHughes said:

Eabhal said:

theProle said:

Malmesbury said:

Sandpit said:

another_richard said:

NHS employment increases by another 19k in 2023q1:

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.

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.

My wife and I have recently had the opportunity to experience the NHS close up thanks to a miscarriage (we hope(!) - back in for a scan today as her HCG levels aren't quite behaving as expected, so it's possibly an ectopic instead) , and it's a strange beast. Staff have been great, no problem getting appointments, indeed the follow up has been very good.
On the other hand - trying to navigate a large busy hospital with inconsistent signage and a very stressed slightly distressed wife was not fun (most of the relevant departments seem to trade under "less distressing" names - eg she had an ultrasound in the "Jasmine suit", but the appointment information referenced the "early pregnancy unit" which wasn't to be found anywhere).
The really annoying stuff is things like having to go in person to the doctors to collect a stack of A4 sheets of paper they had printed to hand in at the blood test clinic - could they just be emailed for us to print? System says no.
The basics are goood, it just seems there are a lot of small things which could be so much better for little or no effort or cost.

I find hospitals quite stressful for this reason (I'm the kind of person who has a map out when I'm in a foreign city).

I was released from A&E in Edinburgh just after a load of morphine and ended up wandering around the hospital for about an hour. Walked through a maternity ward and my friends eventually found me wandering around a car park, topless and in a sling.

My girlfriend works there and regularly comes across patients in completely the wrong place. Some of the departments aren't internally accessible so you have to walk around the perimeter. Was built in 2003.

The QA in Portsmouth is impossible to navigate around. Even the staff dion't know where wards are and the signage is wrong. I had to pick my friend up following an operation, he was in the discharge ward. It took me 90 minutes to find it, none of the staff knew where it was. It ended up being on the 2nd floor about 900 metres from the entrance and 1200 metres from the car park. An ideal location for a discharge ward.

The thing I have noticed about some modern hospitals, is that the layout is often terrible - long, long distances to walk.

Surely tower blocks make more sense? A simple layout for each floor, big lifts...

BartholomewRoberts said:

Sandpit said:

From the judgement:

3. Some weeks after that change in the law, you, Carla Foster, obtained abortion drugs by a telephone consultation designed only for abortions in the first ten weeks. You were in fact 32-34 weeks pregnant and well beyond the point at which you could lawfully obtain an abortion. Messages found on your phone indicate that you had known of your pregnancy for about three months on 1 February 2020. By mid- February, you were conducting internet searches on ways to induce a miscarriage. By the end of February, you were searching for abortion services. Your search on 25 February indicated that you then believed that you were 23 weeks pregnant. Your internet searches continued sporadically through March and April 2020. On 24 April, you searched “I need to have an abortion but I’m past 24 weeks.”

4. On 6 May, you consulted the telemedical service provided by the British Pregnancy Advisory Service. You gave false answers that would have indicated that your pregnancy was 7 weeks and 4 days in length. Abortifacient drugs were then posted out to you.

Sorry, but she wilfully killed her baby, and took advantage of the lax systems in place during a national emergency to do so.

She was seven months pregnant at the time. My sister had a baby at 34 weeks due to complications, but it was perfectly routine for everyone involved.

How is that relevant to the discussion?

The Judge held against her the fact that she pled not guilty to a charge she was never convicted of.

Do you think it is acceptable for a Judge to use the fact that you pled not guilty to a charge you are not guilty of as an aggravating factor in sentencing?

She pled guilty to the charge she was convicted of at the first opportunity for that charge. Since at Magistrates Court, the charge she pled guilty to was not the charge before the court, and she was never found guilty of the charge that she pled not guilty to at Magistrates Court.

Could she have not pleaded guilty to the crime at an earlier point? I appreciate that the crimes in question are a bit technical as opposed to "no, I didn't nick that car, but I did nick this bicycle", but that might be what this is about.

RochdalePioneers said:

CorrectHorseBat said:

MX Master 3S: great mouse!

Get the MX Keys keyboard to go with it. Worth the £dollah

Already have me the Mechanical version, love it

tlg86 said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Sandpit said:

From the judgement:

3. Some weeks after that change in the law, you, Carla Foster, obtained abortion drugs by a telephone consultation designed only for abortions in the first ten weeks. You were in fact 32-34 weeks pregnant and well beyond the point at which you could lawfully obtain an abortion. Messages found on your phone indicate that you had known of your pregnancy for about three months on 1 February 2020. By mid- February, you were conducting internet searches on ways to induce a miscarriage. By the end of February, you were searching for abortion services. Your search on 25 February indicated that you then believed that you were 23 weeks pregnant. Your internet searches continued sporadically through March and April 2020. On 24 April, you searched “I need to have an abortion but I’m past 24 weeks.”

4. On 6 May, you consulted the telemedical service provided by the British Pregnancy Advisory Service. You gave false answers that would have indicated that your pregnancy was 7 weeks and 4 days in length. Abortifacient drugs were then posted out to you.

Sorry, but she wilfully killed her baby, and took advantage of the lax systems in place during a national emergency to do so.

She was seven months pregnant at the time. My sister had a baby at 34 weeks due to complications, but it was perfectly routine for everyone involved.

How is that relevant to the discussion?

The Judge held against her the fact that she pled not guilty to a charge she was never convicted of.

Do you think it is acceptable for a Judge to use the fact that you pled not guilty to a charge you are not guilty of as an aggravating factor in sentencing?

She pled guilty to the charge she was convicted of at the first opportunity for that charge. Since at Magistrates Court, the charge she pled guilty to was not the charge before the court, and she was never found guilty of the charge that she pled not guilty to at Magistrates Court.

Could she have not pleaded guilty to the crime at an earlier point? I appreciate that the crimes in question are a bit technical as opposed to "no, I didn't nick that car, but I did nick this bicycle", but that might be what this is about.

How?

According to the Judgment her own lawyers indicated early on that they thought this was the appropriate charge, but the prosecutors were going for destruction of a child instead, and she pled not guilty to destruction of a child.

Then the prosecutors later accepted the plea suggested by her lawyers originally, according to the Judgment. But then the Judge is using the fact she pled not guilty to destruction of a child against her.

She's not guilty of destruction of a child, she's not been convicted of that. She is legally innocent of that offence, so why hold against her the fact she pled not guilty to that?

She's pled guilty to the offence she pled guilty to, but she never pled not guilty to that from the sound of it? So unless she pled not guilty at an earlier date to the offence she is guilty of then surely she has pled guilty at the first opportunity?

It seems completely inappropriate to sentence someone harsher because they never pled guilty to an unrelated crime they've not been convicted of.

.

TheScreamingEagles said:

Andy_JS said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Surely sentencing should be based on whether you pled guilty to that which you are convicted of at the first opportunity?

Not whether you pled guilty to that which are were charged with at the first opportunity?

Even if what you were charged with initially is not what you are convicted of?

Why does whether you plead guilty or not matter when it comes to sentencing? Surely it ought to be whether you are found guilty or not that matters.

Because you've not put the government, victims, witnesses, juries, legal aid budget et al through the cost and trauma of a lengthy trial.

That's fair enough, but have you any idea how the Judge can hold against her the fact she pled not guilty to a crime she's not been convicted of?

It seems to me it was the CPS who dragged this out, not her, by not originally accepting the plea her lawyers had originally suggested and then changing their minds.

It just doesn't make any sense.

BartholomewRoberts said:

.

TheScreamingEagles said:

Andy_JS said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Surely sentencing should be based on whether you pled guilty to that which you are convicted of at the first opportunity?

Not whether you pled guilty to that which are were charged with at the first opportunity?

Even if what you were charged with initially is not what you are convicted of?

Why does whether you plead guilty or not matter when it comes to sentencing? Surely it ought to be whether you are found guilty or not that matters.

Because you've not put the government, victims, witnesses, juries, legal aid budget et al through the cost and trauma of a lengthy trial.

That's fair enough, but have you any idea how the Judge can hold against her the fact she pled not guilty to a crime she's not been convicted of?

It seems to me it was the CPS who dragged this out, not her, by not originally accepting the plea her lawyers had originally suggested and then changing their minds.

It just doesn't make any sense.

I've not read the sentencing report.

algarkirk said:

kamski said:

algarkirk said:

state_go_away said:

pm215 said:

state_go_away said:

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.

Struggling a bit to understand this: are you saying you find it comforting to believe that Hitler is being punished in an afterlife?

Not sure where the unclarity is. The answer to your question is No.

The whole point of universal accountability to the one God of ethical monotheism (an idea shared by Jews, Muslims and Christians) is that ultimate questions are reserved to God, not us. As a liberal Christian I leave the matter there.

Being humans the history of religion is littered with people playing God in this regard, especially those who condemn others but not themselves, and apply double standards. And not only religious people of course.

You said:

"I would rather both Hitler and I were accountable to that God (especially in its liberal Christian versions!) than any alternative"

1) why would you prefer it? I mean Hitler, I think, killed himself because he knew he had lost the war and was going to be captured - is he accountable to God because God is then judging (and punishing) him after his death? Or what do you mean?

2) is your preference for Hitler being accountable to God the reason why you believe it to be true?

TheScreamingEagles said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

.

TheScreamingEagles said:

Andy_JS said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Surely sentencing should be based on whether you pled guilty to that which you are convicted of at the first opportunity?

Not whether you pled guilty to that which are were charged with at the first opportunity?

Even if what you were charged with initially is not what you are convicted of?

Why does whether you plead guilty or not matter when it comes to sentencing? Surely it ought to be whether you are found guilty or not that matters.

Because you've not put the government, victims, witnesses, juries, legal aid budget et al through the cost and trauma of a lengthy trial.

That's fair enough, but have you any idea how the Judge can hold against her the fact she pled not guilty to a crime she's not been convicted of?

It seems to me it was the CPS who dragged this out, not her, by not originally accepting the plea her lawyers had originally suggested and then changing their minds.

It just doesn't make any sense.

I've not read the sentencing report.

Cyclefree linked to it earlier.

https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/R-v.-Foster-sentencing-remarks-12.6.23.pdf

IANAL but this to me seems the relevant section.



I note this is now being discussed on the BBC.


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65886472

Eabhal said:

Malmesbury said:

NerysHughes said:

Eabhal said:

theProle said:

Malmesbury said:

Sandpit said:

another_richard said:

NHS employment increases by another 19k in 2023q1:

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.

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.

My wife and I have recently had the opportunity to experience the NHS close up thanks to a miscarriage (we hope(!) - back in for a scan today as her HCG levels aren't quite behaving as expected, so it's possibly an ectopic instead) , and it's a strange beast. Staff have been great, no problem getting appointments, indeed the follow up has been very good.
On the other hand - trying to navigate a large busy hospital with inconsistent signage and a very stressed slightly distressed wife was not fun (most of the relevant departments seem to trade under "less distressing" names - eg she had an ultrasound in the "Jasmine suit", but the appointment information referenced the "early pregnancy unit" which wasn't to be found anywhere).
The really annoying stuff is things like having to go in person to the doctors to collect a stack of A4 sheets of paper they had printed to hand in at the blood test clinic - could they just be emailed for us to print? System says no.
The basics are goood, it just seems there are a lot of small things which could be so much better for little or no effort or cost.

I find hospitals quite stressful for this reason (I'm the kind of person who has a map out when I'm in a foreign city).

I was released from A&E in Edinburgh just after a load of morphine and ended up wandering around the hospital for about an hour. Walked through a maternity ward and my friends eventually found me wandering around a car park, topless and in a sling.

My girlfriend works there and regularly comes across patients in completely the wrong place. Some of the departments aren't internally accessible so you have to walk around the perimeter. Was built in 2003.

The QA in Portsmouth is impossible to navigate around. Even the staff dion't know where wards are and the signage is wrong. I had to pick my friend up following an operation, he was in the discharge ward. It took me 90 minutes to find it, none of the staff knew where it was. It ended up being on the 2nd floor about 900 metres from the entrance and 1200 metres from the car park. An ideal location for a discharge ward.

The thing I have noticed about some modern hospitals, is that the layout is often terrible - long, long distances to walk.

Surely tower blocks make more sense? A simple layout for each floor, big lifts...

Difficult to get everyone out in a fire.

Don't need absurd height, multiple fireproof staircases. Also design to minimise inflammables.

It's all been done before.

williamglenn said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

williamglenn said:

If the UK data continues to point towards a stronger than expected economic situation, we could end up ahead of the other European members of the G7. Germany is the sick man of Europe at the moment.

Too many forecasts are based on dodgy assumptions, then people with those dodgy assumptions use the forecasts as "proof" that they were correct - and outcomes be damned.

People assumed that Britain not joining the Euro would be a drag on growth, then assume Brexit is going to be a drag on growth and keep forecasting it will be, despite the outcomes being otherwise.

Despite not joining the Euro, despite Brexit, the UK grew faster than the Eurozone in both the 2000s and the 2010s. I fully expect the UK will grow faster in the 2020s too, but people who assume otherwise will keep modelling otherwise, and those models will keep being accepted by those who assume otherwise as fact.

Like Kevin Keegan, I would love it if we beat the IMF forecast.

Going back to the discussion from a few days ago, it would definitely do more for British prestige in Europe than playing the good European for Emmanuel Macron.

Better GDP growth than others probably depends partly on high immigration to keep the working age population growing faster than in other countries, which might make some Leave voters think that Brexit hasn't delivered.

TheScreamingEagles said:

Andy_JS said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Surely sentencing should be based on whether you pled guilty to that which you are convicted of at the first opportunity?

Not whether you pled guilty to that which are were charged with at the first opportunity?

Even if what you were charged with initially is not what you are convicted of?

Why does whether you plead guilty or not matter when it comes to sentencing? Surely it ought to be whether you are found guilty or not that matters.

Because you've not put the government, victims, witnesses, juries, legal aid budget et al through the cost and trauma of a lengthy trial.

Presumably a swift acceptance of your guilt also contributes? I believe acceptance of guilt plays a very big part in whether a convicted prisoner is considered for parole.

Theuniondivvie said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Andy_JS said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Surely sentencing should be based on whether you pled guilty to that which you are convicted of at the first opportunity?

Not whether you pled guilty to that which are were charged with at the first opportunity?

Even if what you were charged with initially is not what you are convicted of?

Why does whether you plead guilty or not matter when it comes to sentencing? Surely it ought to be whether you are found guilty or not that matters.

Because you've not put the government, victims, witnesses, juries, legal aid budget et al through the cost and trauma of a lengthy trial.

Presumably a swift acceptance of your guilt also contributes? I believe acceptance of guilt plays a very big part in whether a convicted prisoner is considered for parole.

Yes.

BartholomewRoberts said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

.

TheScreamingEagles said:

Andy_JS said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Surely sentencing should be based on whether you pled guilty to that which you are convicted of at the first opportunity?

Not whether you pled guilty to that which are were charged with at the first opportunity?

Even if what you were charged with initially is not what you are convicted of?

Why does whether you plead guilty or not matter when it comes to sentencing? Surely it ought to be whether you are found guilty or not that matters.

Because you've not put the government, victims, witnesses, juries, legal aid budget et al through the cost and trauma of a lengthy trial.

That's fair enough, but have you any idea how the Judge can hold against her the fact she pled not guilty to a crime she's not been convicted of?

It seems to me it was the CPS who dragged this out, not her, by not originally accepting the plea her lawyers had originally suggested and then changing their minds.

It just doesn't make any sense.

I've not read the sentencing report.

Cyclefree linked to it earlier.

https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/R-v.-Foster-sentencing-remarks-12.6.23.pdf

IANAL but this to me seems the relevant section.



I note this is now being discussed on the BBC.


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65886472

I think the judge has erred, badly.

If she's eligible for HDC, and I think she should be, then she's going to be out in seven months.

BartholomewRoberts said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

.

TheScreamingEagles said:

Andy_JS said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Surely sentencing should be based on whether you pled guilty to that which you are convicted of at the first opportunity?

Not whether you pled guilty to that which are were charged with at the first opportunity?

Even if what you were charged with initially is not what you are convicted of?

Why does whether you plead guilty or not matter when it comes to sentencing? Surely it ought to be whether you are found guilty or not that matters.

Because you've not put the government, victims, witnesses, juries, legal aid budget et al through the cost and trauma of a lengthy trial.

That's fair enough, but have you any idea how the Judge can hold against her the fact she pled not guilty to a crime she's not been convicted of?

It seems to me it was the CPS who dragged this out, not her, by not originally accepting the plea her lawyers had originally suggested and then changing their minds.

It just doesn't make any sense.

I've not read the sentencing report.

Cyclefree linked to it earlier.

https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/R-v.-Foster-sentencing-remarks-12.6.23.pdf

IANAL but this to me seems the relevant section.



I note this is now being discussed on the BBC.


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65886472

It would be very troubling if the judge has missed this obvious point.

Theuniondivvie said:

A Boris Johnson mea culpa!

Not from the great man himself obviously.

Does Ben Elton qualify to be in that list?

Malmesbury said:

NerysHughes said:

Eabhal said:

theProle said:

Malmesbury said:

Sandpit said:

another_richard said:

NHS employment increases by another 19k in 2023q1:

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.

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.

My wife and I have recently had the opportunity to experience the NHS close up thanks to a miscarriage (we hope(!) - back in for a scan today as her HCG levels aren't quite behaving as expected, so it's possibly an ectopic instead) , and it's a strange beast. Staff have been great, no problem getting appointments, indeed the follow up has been very good.
On the other hand - trying to navigate a large busy hospital with inconsistent signage and a very stressed slightly distressed wife was not fun (most of the relevant departments seem to trade under "less distressing" names - eg she had an ultrasound in the "Jasmine suit", but the appointment information referenced the "early pregnancy unit" which wasn't to be found anywhere).
The really annoying stuff is things like having to go in person to the doctors to collect a stack of A4 sheets of paper they had printed to hand in at the blood test clinic - could they just be emailed for us to print? System says no.
The basics are goood, it just seems there are a lot of small things which could be so much better for little or no effort or cost.

I find hospitals quite stressful for this reason (I'm the kind of person who has a map out when I'm in a foreign city).

I was released from A&E in Edinburgh just after a load of morphine and ended up wandering around the hospital for about an hour. Walked through a maternity ward and my friends eventually found me wandering around a car park, topless and in a sling.

My girlfriend works there and regularly comes across patients in completely the wrong place. Some of the departments aren't internally accessible so you have to walk around the perimeter. Was built in 2003.

The QA in Portsmouth is impossible to navigate around. Even the staff dion't know where wards are and the signage is wrong. I had to pick my friend up following an operation, he was in the discharge ward. It took me 90 minutes to find it, none of the staff knew where it was. It ended up being on the 2nd floor about 900 metres from the entrance and 1200 metres from the car park. An ideal location for a discharge ward.

The thing I have noticed about some modern hospitals, is that the layout is often terrible - long, long distances to walk.

Surely tower blocks make more sense? A simple layout for each floor, big lifts...

In the event of a fire the lifts cannot be used, so who will carry umpteen patients (and possibly beds) down 20 flights of stairs. (Or maybe today there can be AI-powered lifts that know to skip floors on fire.)

logical_song said:

Theuniondivvie said:

A Boris Johnson mea culpa!

Not from the great man himself obviously.

Does Ben Elton qualify to be in that list?

Elliot.
Ex Tory Chairman, and fundraiser.

Korea after a share of Saudi arms sales by the look of it.

Korea, Saudi Arabia hold talks on military cooperation
https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=352895

They probably have a broader offer than does the UK these days.
Certainly way stronger in ships, non nuke submarines, armoured vehicles and (possibly) defence electronics.

And they can deliver aircraft faster and cheaper.

Nigelb said:

logical_song said:

Theuniondivvie said:

A Boris Johnson mea culpa!

Not from the great man himself obviously.

Does Ben Elton qualify to be in that list?

Elliot.
Ex Tory Chairman, and fundraiser.

Ben Elliott is also the nephew of the King and Queen Consort.

Carnyx said:

Sean_F said:

IanB2 said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Sean_F said:

Nigelb said:

Sean_F said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Sean_F said:

kamski said:

Foxy said:

state_go_away said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

TimS said:

HYUFD said:

Sunil_Prasannan said:

HYUFD said:

Mexicanpete said:

HYUFD said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Leon said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Leon said:

Farooq said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

TheKitchenCabinet said:

Nigel_Foremain said:

Can I make a small point of order:

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.

Of course, the state gods included such things as the legionary and auxiliary standards, and the Emperors, either directly (posthumously) or through some abstraction (I forget the details). Very close to home or rather the imperial power.

There was a curious event called the Miracle of the Rains, in 173. A Roman legion was cut off in what is now Czechia, and short of water, surrounded by enemies. A sudden thunder storm not only provided them with water, but so discomfited their enemies that they were able to break free.

Pagans said that it showed that prayers to the State Gods worked. The army carried out the necessary sacrifices, and the Gods responded. Christians, OTOH, put the rescue down to prayers made by Christian soldiers.

The curiosity is that there were not supposed to be any Christian soldiers. Soldiers had to both sacrifice to the State Gods, and to the Emperor as a Deity, something which Christians refused to do. So, were Roman officers operating a kind of Don't Ask/Don't Tell policy towards Christians in the army?

Andy_JS said:

The_Woodpecker said:

HYUFD said:

kyf_100 said:

Barnesian said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

IanB2 said:

NerysHughes said:

RochdalePioneers said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

RochdalePioneers said:

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.

Research it. You might be pleasantly surprised.

BartholomewRoberts said:

kamski said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

IanB2 said:

NerysHughes said:

RochdalePioneers said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

RochdalePioneers said:

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?

Sortition is the way to go. Never mind the single transferable vote, let's have the single vote.

At every election, one vote is procured from a hat at random, and it is the casting vote. So if 25% of people in a constituency vote Conservative, there is a 25% chance of a Conservative being elected.

Removes the idea of a "safe" seat, gives everyone a chance at getting the representative they want (what do you do if you're a Conservative voter in a seat like Bootle? Your vote simply doensn't count). And importantly, averaged out across the whole country, you get something that's fairly representative of the national vote, so you do get something that looks like proportional representation

However you also need to still keep some constituency MPs, otherwise MPs solely elected by region have very little connection to communities within it

STV constituencies can be quite compact, rather than 'regions'. Leeds, for example, could be a 5-seat constituency and the MPs would be answerable to voters across the city.

But in rural areas like Shropshire and Herefordshire you might have just one constituency for the whole area. You'd only have compact constituencies in a few big cities.

Rural areas are geographically bigger, that's already the case. STV constituencies can still retain local ties, eg, as in your examples, covering a single county or local government area.

BartholomewRoberts said:

prh47bridge said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

carnforth said:

Cyclefree said:

https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/R-v.-Foster-sentencing-remarks-12.6.23.pdf

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.

From 9, "Indeed I consider it would have been better had the letter not been written at all" is rather pointed. Is the letter available ?

IANAL but it seems a rather chilling and inappropriate comment to me.

If the letter was not appropriate for the Judge to take into account, then the Judge should be more than qualified and capable of determining that my himself or herself. That is their role, it is not the role of the Royal College of Obstetricians etc to determine whether what they have to say is relevant or not.

I fail to see any circumstances where it would be "better" for those with a relevant interest or expertise to not express that interest or expertise.

To respond to those who've said something with "it would have been better if you'd just stayed quiet" seems to me to be entirely inappropriate.

The judge did indeed ignore the letter. His point was that it is not appropriate for people to lobby judges about sentencing, particularly when, as here, they were effectively asking the judge to ignore the law. Lobby parliament to change the law by all means. Write to the press. But don't lobby judges.

No he did not ignore the letter, he said it would be "better" had the letter not been written.

That's absurd and chilling and not at all reasonable in my eyes. We live in a free country, people who think they have standing should be free to send in letters as appropriate and the Judge should be free to ignore them, but he went further than ignoring it, he said it would be "better" had it not been written.

Its never "better" to silence people who have something to say.

And again I repeat my question from before, he's said that she is going to jail as she didn't plead guilty at magistrates court - but as far as I can tell she was not found guilty of that which she was charged with at magistrates court. So how is the fact she pled guilty later, to an offence she was never originally charged with, something to hold against her?

IANAL but the ruling and Judgment seems pompous and not at all reasonable.

If you prefer, he did not take the letter into account in sentencing. I simplified that to saying he ignored it. And he isn't in any respects silencing the letter writers. He makes it clear that, if they want the law changed (which is what they were asking the judge to do) they should lobby parliament.

I agree with the judge. We don't want people lobbying judges about sentencing. It would have been equally inappropriate for those wanting tighter abortion laws to lobby the judge arguing for a harsher sentence to act as a deterrent.

Regarding sentencing, she was not found not guilty of the original charge. That charge was dropped. She did not, in the magistrates' court, offer a plea of guilty to the alternative charge. Indeed, it wasn't until later that her barrister suggested the alternative charge. Under the Sentencing Guidelines, which the judge is required to follow, that means she gets a smaller reduction in sentence. Whether the Guidelines are right is a separate issue, but the Guidelines are clear that, as she didn't plead guilty to anything in the magistrates' court, she gets a smaller reduction. That isn't the judge being pompous or unreasonable. It is the judge doing what the law requires him to do.

BartholomewRoberts said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Nigelb said:

logical_song said:

Theuniondivvie said:

A Boris Johnson mea culpa!

Not from the great man himself obviously.

Does Ben Elton qualify to be in that list?

Elliot.
Ex Tory Chairman, and fundraiser.

Ben Elliott is also the nephew of the King and Queen Consort.

Nephew of both of them?

I knew that European Royalty is very incestuous, but I didn't realise they were that closely related.

Count his fingers!

I believe Anne Boleyn had an extra finger though of course that gene would have died out with QEI.

prh47bridge said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

prh47bridge said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

carnforth said:

Cyclefree said:

https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/R-v.-Foster-sentencing-remarks-12.6.23.pdf

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.

From 9, "Indeed I consider it would have been better had the letter not been written at all" is rather pointed. Is the letter available ?

IANAL but it seems a rather chilling and inappropriate comment to me.

If the letter was not appropriate for the Judge to take into account, then the Judge should be more than qualified and capable of determining that my himself or herself. That is their role, it is not the role of the Royal College of Obstetricians etc to determine whether what they have to say is relevant or not.

I fail to see any circumstances where it would be "better" for those with a relevant interest or expertise to not express that interest or expertise.

To respond to those who've said something with "it would have been better if you'd just stayed quiet" seems to me to be entirely inappropriate.

The judge did indeed ignore the letter. His point was that it is not appropriate for people to lobby judges about sentencing, particularly when, as here, they were effectively asking the judge to ignore the law. Lobby parliament to change the law by all means. Write to the press. But don't lobby judges.

No he did not ignore the letter, he said it would be "better" had the letter not been written.

That's absurd and chilling and not at all reasonable in my eyes. We live in a free country, people who think they have standing should be free to send in letters as appropriate and the Judge should be free to ignore them, but he went further than ignoring it, he said it would be "better" had it not been written.

Its never "better" to silence people who have something to say.

And again I repeat my question from before, he's said that she is going to jail as she didn't plead guilty at magistrates court - but as far as I can tell she was not found guilty of that which she was charged with at magistrates court. So how is the fact she pled guilty later, to an offence she was never originally charged with, something to hold against her?

IANAL but the ruling and Judgment seems pompous and not at all reasonable.

If you prefer, he did not take the letter into account in sentencing. I simplified that to saying he ignored it. And he isn't in any respects silencing the letter writers. He makes it clear that, if they want the law changed (which is what they were asking the judge to do) they should lobby parliament.

I agree with the judge. We don't want people lobbying judges about sentencing. It would have been equally inappropriate for those wanting tighter abortion laws to lobby the judge arguing for a harsher sentence to act as a deterrent.

Regarding sentencing, she was not found not guilty of the original charge. That charge was dropped. She did not, in the magistrates' court, offer a plea of guilty to the alternative charge. Indeed, it wasn't until later that her barrister suggested the alternative charge. Under the Sentencing Guidelines, which the judge is required to follow, that means she gets a smaller reduction in sentence. Whether the Guidelines are right is a separate issue, but the Guidelines are clear that, as she didn't plead guilty to anything in the magistrates' court, she gets a smaller reduction. That isn't the judge being pompous or unreasonable. It is the judge doing what the law requires him to do.

If the charge is dropped, then she's not guilty of the charge surely?

She didn't plead guilty to anything in the Magistrates Court as all charges before the Magistrates Court were dropped.

How can the Judge reasonably hold against someone the fact they did not plead guilty to any charges at Magistrates Court when every charge before the Magistrates Court has been dropped?