Undefined discussion subject.

___Bobajob___ said:

saddened said:

___Bobajob___ said:

saddened said:

___Bobajob___ said:

saddened said:

___Bobajob___ said:

saddened said:

TwistedFireStopper said:

GeoffM said:

___Bobajob___ said:

Tim_B said:

Another high school shooting - this one in Marysville Washington.

Shooter dead and about 6 injured

Federal ban on guns. Obama should make this his legacy. But won't.

Ban no-gun zones. They are what's causing the problem here.

Killers who want to rampage will naturally head for places that don't allow guns. Schools, cinemas, etc. No chance of an armed civilian there to stop them.

Personally I try not eat in a gun-free restaurant when I go to the US ... I don't feel safe in one.

The first step to sort this nonsense out is Concealed Carry for teachers.

I'm going to have to disagree. Civilised human beings have no need to carry guns. The US is its own worst enemy with this right to bear arms malarky.

The problem is we are where we are. There are literally millions of firearms in the hands of the public in America. To get back to the state of no-one owning a fire arm is like getting tooth paste back in the tube.

Everyone with an idea is a crank until the idea works. If the US can put a man on the Moon, it can mop up the guns.

So why does the UK starting from a point that is considerably easier than the USA have such easy access to illegal firearms?

We don't. Do you think the US should retain its firearms laws? Or are you simply saying it can't be changed?

I think you are incredibly naive, you think that because, the government says no more guns, it means no more guns. I hate to break it to you, but it's not true.

There will always be some guns out there, just as there are some guns in the UK. But you could massively restrict access to them. It would help, a lot.

I ask again: Do you support the status quo in the US? A simple yes or no answer will suffice.

Have you stopped beating your wife? A simple yes or no will suffice.

It's a massively complex problem and your last statement just goes to show you are too dim to understand it.

Oh dear. Touchy. It really isn't like asking that question is it? I think you need to have a lie down now and work out why 99% of people feel able to say whether they support the right to bear arms or not, except you, and why you choose an irrelevant hackneyed question to defend your absurd equivocation.

Watch the python video that's the level out your debate.

Socrates said:

SeanT said:

for saddened:

But use of the word "problem" is a misprision, as well. Why is American gun law a "problem"? It's like saying Islam is a "problem" for Muslims, whereas the vast majority of Muslims are perfectly happy to be Muslim. It's what they are. It's not a "problem" for them, though their attitudes might be problematic to others.

Most Americans revere their constitution (with some reason, and some irrationality), many of them are very attached to the "right to bear arms". In this light, the large number of American deaths by firearms are seen as an acceptable price to pay, or simply irrelevant, by hundreds of millions of American voters. And that's not going to change soon.

If Sandy Hook couldn't change American gun law, it's hard to see what will.

I don't think the US will ever have a total gun ban in the forseeable future, but I think some sensible gun law reform will come with time. The population is becoming less rural and more urban, less frontier culture and more internationalist, and, perhaps most importantly, less from white farmer stock and more from black and Hispanic people who have seen to damage caused by inner city gun violence. There will be a tipping point at some point. Stuff like the gun show loop hole really isn't sustainable as a sensible position.

Also, there isn't much appetite for new laws when a right-wing SCOTUS will just strike it down. That might change when there's a liberal majority, part-way through Clinton's second term.

Gun laws in the US have been becoming more liberal in recent years, not more restrictive.

anotherDave said:

TwistedFireStopper said:

GeoffM said:

True. Plenty of guns in Switzerland too and that's very safe as well.

Again we fall into the stupid NHS trap of thinking that there are only two ways of doing things in the entire world; our way that nobody else copies and the US way that nobody else copies.

Authoritarian regimes ban guns to keep their population docile.

Not many guns in the Uk, and we're pretty safe. So I guess our way is pretty good.

The UK was pretty safe before we regulated gun ownership too. I believe the crime stats were lower than now.

This kind of inter-country and historical comparison has far too many confounding variables to be of much use, I think. More relevant might be inter-state comparisons in the USA, where gun laws do vary at a state level (though obviously within a range restricted by the constitution).

The basic point is that there are some countries - like Switzerland or Israel, say - which have got a broadly functional gun culture. Countries like Britain which have got a broadly functional pretty-much-no-gun culture, and who had a broadly functional system of more widespread gun ownership in the past. And America sadly has a dysfunctional but widespread gun culture that will be hard to roll back - as do some other countries where guns are widespread and legal (e.g. South Africa and Mexico) and where they are illegal (e.g. Venezuela).

Firearms laws in the US are patently crazy, but as was pointed out down thread, they are where they are, and nothing's gonna change anytime soon.That's to their detriment, civilised human beings have no need to carry weapons. .

Socrates said:

SeanT said:

for saddened:

But use of the word "problem" is a misprision, as well. Why is American gun law a "problem"? It's like saying Islam is a "problem" for Muslims, whereas the vast majority of Muslims are perfectly happy to be Muslim. It's what they are. It's not a "problem" for them, though their attitudes might be problematic to others.

Most Americans revere their constitution (with some reason, and some irrationality), many of them are very attached to the "right to bear arms". In this light, the large number of American deaths by firearms are seen as an acceptable price to pay, or simply irrelevant, by hundreds of millions of American voters. And that's not going to change soon.

If Sandy Hook couldn't change American gun law, it's hard to see what will.

I don't think the US will ever have a total gun ban in the forseeable future, but I think some sensible gun law reform will come with time. The population is becoming less rural and more urban, less frontier culture and more internationalist, and, perhaps most importantly, less from white farmer stock and more from black and Hispanic people who have seen to damage caused by inner city gun violence. There will be a tipping point at some point. Stuff like the gun show loop hole really isn't sustainable as a sensible position.

Also, there isn't much appetite for new laws when a right-wing SCOTUS will just strike it down. That might change when there's a liberal majority, part-way through Clinton's second term.

Still irrelevant. What one Supreme Court decides, a later one can reverse (or clarify, or reinterpret, or whatever nicety they want to give it). The only sure way is to change the constitution itself. In any case, a second Clinton term would be 6-8 years away and assumes 16 years of Democrat control of the White House, which they've come nowhere near since Civil Rights wrote off the South.

Socrates said:

Sunil_Prasannan said:

Is it true that Americans love the Monarchy but would balk at the notion of actually being a Monarchy?

Indeed. Americans love the monarchy as a bit of fun but they find the idea of having a hereditary head of state ridiculous.

That's right. If you interpolate Bushes and Clintons it's definitely not hereditary

Plato said:

AndyJS said:

Sunil_Prasannan said:

Guess I'm the only vegetarian in the PB Village

Is that through choice or custom, or both?

I'm a quasi-veggie for the next two weeks. Tesco had an offer of £5 off if I spent £20 on fresh veg.

My fridge is now heaving with root vegetables. I will be resorting to chicken Bisto to mask this....

Par-boil, cut them up, sprinkle them with sea salt and rosemary and bake them.

john_zims said:

@kle4

'I think the Labour view was Cameron should have done something about this a week ago'

Does anyone give a monkey's what Labour's view is on the EU?

I'm sure some people do. I'm not saying their view makes much sense or is good - it sounds like the laziest sort of default position where they don't know what to say, but obviously need to find a shoe to beat Cameron with, though quite what they expected Cameron to do in a single week or a month I don't know, given a Tory or Labour PM would have to pay up eventually anyway and I'm sure they accept that.

Paul_Mid_Beds said:

The funny thing is that if Cameron were prepared to say the following and follow it through.

"We are not going to pay this £1.7 billion - ever.

They will claim we are acting illegally, we don't care. Parliament is sovereign

They will then try and fine us. We won't pay.

They will then be obstructive. We will stop paying our membership fees until they stop being obstructive

They will threaten us with sanctions. This is an empty threat we import far more from them than we export them.

We also have the most powerful armed forces in Europe. They are a toothless tiger and need to be taught a lesson.

If we leave, we leave. They have far more to lose than us.

The tories would walk the next election

That stance sounds popular but the results for the economy wouldn't be. This would be a lot worse than leaving the EU, because not only would British businesses find they couldn't do business where they expected to, this would be happening suddenly and unpredictably as other countries said, "they're breaking their treaty obligations to us, no reason for us to keep our treaty obligations to them".

edmundintokyo said:

Paul_Mid_Beds said:

The funny thing is that if Cameron were prepared to say the following and follow it through.

"We are not going to pay this £1.7 billion - ever.

They will claim we are acting illegally, we don't care. Parliament is sovereign

They will then try and fine us. We won't pay.

They will then be obstructive. We will stop paying our membership fees until they stop being obstructive

They will threaten us with sanctions. This is an empty threat we import far more from them than we export them.

We also have the most powerful armed forces in Europe. They are a toothless tiger and need to be taught a lesson.

If we leave, we leave. They have far more to lose than us.

The tories would walk the next election

That stance sounds popular but the results for the economy wouldn't be. This would be a lot worse than leaving the EU, because not only would British businesses find they couldn't do business where they expected to, this would be happening suddenly and unpredictably as other countries said, "they're breaking their treaty obligations to us, no reason for us to keep our treaty obligations to them".

Damn you and your facts

MyBurningEars said:

Can't agree that the Cameroons can be described as being on the "extreme right" on economics, unless you think Labour are on the almost-extreme right. If you were trying to mark out an approximate spectrum on economic views, and are going to discount fringe libertarian types outside parliament, then you might stick your "extreme right" post (if you didn't think the word "extreme" unduly perjorative) down roundabout where John Redwood stands on significantly cutting the size of the state. Proper communists have been basically expunged from mainstream British politics, but you could set down an "extreme left" marker with some Labour back-benchers. You could probably find support for renationalisation of some industries, perhaps as far as telecoms, and maintaining a stake in the banks.

The Labour and Tory leadership are far closer to each other, than either are to their party fringes. One the big picture of tax and spend, and the size of the state, there is very little between them. For all the anti-austerity rhetoric, Ed Balls is making all kinds of fiscally conservative noises. And while it's true that some policies could be described as "anti-business" or "interventionist" or "left-wing" (energy price-freezing) those are sprinkled across a policy which is broadly similar to that of the Coalition, and indeed to the previous Labour government. I wouldn't expect to see the tendering of NHS contracts to come to a halt, for instance, any more than it did when Labour were last in power.

For all the arguments about economics, and the personal animosity between Balls and Osborne, there's an awful lot of consensus. I'm not sure we're very far from Butskellism.

Oh, I completely agree with your last sentence. There is FAR more consensus between Balls and Osborne than I would want. It's why I'm always perplexed when people talk about Labour "lurching to the left" when it seems pretty obvious to me atleast their current economic stance is to the right of any of the Blair manifestos. It's very depressing/

A true "centre-ground" stance as far as public opinion goes would be a much slower pace of deficit reduction than any of the 3 major parties are proposing (with no requirement to eliminate the deficit completely) and only very limited further spending cuts, with maybe even a modest boost to the NHS budget.

A radical left-wing position which I would ideally want is a complete end to austerity, no attention paid to whether the deficit is cut or not, and a heavy attack on wealth and big businesses like I'm always ranting on about.

Tony Blair: Miliband has failed to connect with voters and is doomed to election defeat

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ed-miliband/11187285/Tony-Blair-Miliband-has-failed-to-connect-with-voters-and-is-doomed-to-election-defeat.html

All hear say, but we know what is really going on here.

Apparently, watching porn is now 'neoliberal' according to the Guardian http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/24/pornography-world-anti-porn-feminist-censorship-misogyny

I remember this time last year, my prediction of 13% for UKIP in 2015 was one of the more ambitious predictions on here.

This is David Cameron 3 weeks from now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIYP1ibYdZI

edmundintokyo said:

Paul_Mid_Beds said:

The funny thing is that if Cameron were prepared to say the following and follow it through.

"We are not going to pay this £1.7 billion - ever.

They will claim we are acting illegally, we don't care. Parliament is sovereign

They will then try and fine us. We won't pay.

They will then be obstructive. We will stop paying our membership fees until they stop being obstructive

They will threaten us with sanctions. This is an empty threat we import far more from them than we export them.

We also have the most powerful armed forces in Europe. They are a toothless tiger and need to be taught a lesson.

If we leave, we leave. They have far more to lose than us.

The tories would walk the next election

That stance sounds popular but the results for the economy wouldn't be. This would be a lot worse than leaving the EU, because not only would British businesses find they couldn't do business where they expected to, this would be happening suddenly and unpredictably as other countries said, "they're breaking their treaty obligations to us, no reason for us to keep our treaty obligations to them".

Furthermore it missis the object of diplomacy. Cameron might be angry and he might be justly angry but we do not elect PMs to shoot first and ask questions later. The shot might be in our, the electorate's foot. It is the sad duty of PMs to be at least a little bit circumspect.
Thick rabble rousing opposition leaders can say what they like.

david_herdson said:

MyBurningEars said:

david_herdson said:

Still irrelevant. What one Supreme Court decides, a later one can reverse (or clarify, or reinterpret, or whatever nicety they want to give it). The only sure way is to change the constitution itself. In any case, a second Clinton term would be 6-8 years away and assumes 16 years of Democrat control of the White House, which they've come nowhere near since Civil Rights wrote off the South.

I have the feeling a purely party-psephological analysis is not terribly helpful, since the biggest prospect for reform would come should an underlying culture shift raise the prospect of a change in the Republican approach. What Socrates said about demographic trends might be more helpful, but as you said, it still takes someone to take political leadership on the issue to get the ball rolling.

To succeed, it requires as a minimum a breakdown of the current Republican homogeneity on the issue, even if there wouldn't be a formally bipartisan approach to gun control. The legal process of constitutional reform has so many blocks against it, that it'd be almost impossible to carry it as a purely Democrat and aggressively partisan project.

I agree with that. I was taking issue more with the idea of there even being a second (fourth) Clinton administration, or what the long-term consequences of one would be were it to exist.

But you've identified a very important point: while the Republicans view it as a policy that defines them, there is no chance of meaningful change, even were there to be a Democratic Congress, White House and -appointed Supreme Court. It's the Republicans themselves who have to change first. It's no coincidence that it was a Southern Democrat who finally delivered Civil Rights (well, it might be a little but it was less difficult for a Johnson to deliver than, say, a North Eastern Republican).

Indeed, I thought your post was largely accurate for the point it was trying to address. I was trying to couch my language to make it clear how unhelpful I felt "Blue State, Red State" analysis is as a predictor of constitutional change, rather than to express any disagreement with what you wrote.

Having said that, I'd have some reservation about quoting historical precedent against a Clinton 2nd term. Though of course age might be an issue, and "events". The Republican pond looks in a sufficiently bad state that an extra four years to grow a big fish might not help them very much.

Socrates said:

Charles said:

Socrates said:

Sunil_Prasannan said:

Is it true that Americans love the Monarchy but would balk at the notion of actually being a Monarchy?

Indeed. Americans love the monarchy as a bit of fun but they find the idea of having a hereditary head of state ridiculous.

That's right. If you interpolate Bushes and Clintons it's definitely not hereditary

You can make a case for Dubya, but not for Clinton. Both Hillary and Bill were clearly rising Democratic stars when they were at law school together. The fact that Hillary put her potential and career on hold to her successful husband doesn't mean her subsequent career is due to nepotism.

It certainly hasn't been hindered by it on balance.

MikeK said:

from the blurb he seems a good choice.

The word on Twitter was that he wrote the blurb himself. And he had so devalued the brand he had to get a new job.

I wish him well in his new role.

Danny565 said:

Oh, I completely agree with your last sentence. There is FAR more consensus between Balls and Osborne than I would want. It's why I'm always perplexed when people talk about Labour "lurching to the left" when it seems pretty obvious to me atleast their current economic stance is to the right of any of the Blair manifestos. It's very depressing/

A true "centre-ground" stance as far as public opinion goes would be a much slower pace of deficit reduction than any of the 3 major parties are proposing (with no requirement to eliminate the deficit completely) and only very limited further spending cuts, with maybe even a modest boost to the NHS budget.

A radical left-wing position which I would ideally want is a complete end to austerity, no attention paid to whether the deficit is cut or not, and a heavy attack on wealth and big businesses like I'm always ranting on about.

You can always quit voting/supporting Labour. There are parties out there which largely support your views. Who knows, as our two-and-a-bit-party system is breaking down, some of them might "break out". The Greens are having a go at the moment. If Labour are broadly centrist and the Lib Dems have been drawn out of that left-of-Labour space, then there's plenty more room on the left. And as voteshares of the major parties go down, the odds of coalition government - and hence previously fringe parties actually getting a bit of say - goes up.

Since even the Labour backbench lefties don't hold views as extreme (I use the term non-perjoratively) as yours, you have absolutely sod all chance of "reforming the party from within". Big fat zero. Any purely Labour government is bound to support you, if you see them as your natural home. But there are plenty of radical left or left-green parties out there who you'd agree far more with, and would love your membership. In their perspective, their analysis usually says Labour is a mortal enemy because it is an inherently conservative project (this has been a complaint of The Left for decades - from the expunging of the communists to the crackdown on Militant) which nethertheless soaks up votes from vulnerable electors hungry for meaningful radical change, hence reducing the momentum for deep and serious political and economic reform. From your viewpoint, that analysis ought to be compelling.

Plato said:

AndyJS said:

Sunil_Prasannan said:

Guess I'm the only vegetarian in the PB Village

Is that through choice or custom, or both?

I'm a quasi-veggie for the next two weeks. Tesco had an offer of £5 off if I spent £20 on fresh veg.

My fridge is now heaving with root vegetables. I will be resorting to chicken Bisto to mask this....

I'll look out for the offer in my local store. Always trying to eat more healthily.

Interesting program on Abba's Agnetha Fältskog on BBC 4 just now.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b02x9zwc/agnetha-abba-and-after

MBEars A narrow Roussef reelection after a 4th term of her party in power looks most probably on Sunday in Brazil, which would offer a precedent for Hillary

MyBusiness Ears The Greens and TUSC offer a more leftwing alternative as Danny565 suggests. However a sun/yougov poll last week showed 42% believe the cuts are necessary (29% at the right level, 13% too shallow), more than the 37% who thought the cuts were too deep
http://yougov.co.uk/news/categories/politics/

Socrates said:

The great EU shakedown in one chart:

http://i.imgur.com/rgdLayB.jpg

I'm guessing that is a QMV majority of the net beneficiaries over the net losers . Can't believe the Commission hasn't factored that in..

But by the time Cam has finished 'negotiating' we will of course be paying Italy, Netherlands etc share too so it won't really matter.

Socrates said:

The great EU shakedown in one chart:

http://i.imgur.com/rgdLayB.jpg

nice, they can still "do one" though

HYUFD said:

PM Stephen Harper placed in a cupboard for 15 minutes during gun attack
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2806433/Canadian-Prime-Minister-hid-CUPBOARD-15-minutes-MPs-sharpened-flagpoles-use-spears-against-gunman.html

Cue jokes about coming out of the closet.

MBEs Indeed, never mess with a PBjunkie, night!

RodCrosby said:

The Scottish by-election was actually won on the third count, but they seem to do some weird thing of eliminating the runner-up, and (pointlessly) doing one more transfer. Unless I'm reading it totally wrong!

The rules, as set out in the legislation, require the count to continue until the winning candidate has reached the original quota - and not the de-facto reduced quota which takes into account the number of non-transferable votes. Therefore, the runner-up is sometimes eliminated and his/her votes are transferred to the winning candidate (or non-transferable) even after the winning candidate has defeated the runner-up. Occasionally the returning officer stops the count at the correct stage and ignores the superfluous legal requirement, but usually they are nincompoops and so do as the law tells them. In other words, whoever wrote that bit of the election law is a mega-nincompoop.

So you mean all that stuff about AV sometimes resulting in a winner with less than 50% was lies? You don't say...

An STV by election isn't an AV one - though it very closely resembles one until the very last stage. It is an STV election for a single vacancy - hence the seemingly odd rules at the end. If not a single voter for the 2nd placed candidate at the final stage had a transferable vote for the leading candidate, then no one would reach the quota and the election would need to be re-run. The chances of that happening in real life are infinitesimal - would be fun id it ever happened, though!