Are pensions normally included in working age benefits? Better questions would be why exclude tax relief on pension contributions (or free bikes or anything else paid to workers) and more importantly, why express it as a percentage of GDP?
Keir Starmer and his Attorney General are still trying to open up prosecutions against Northern Ireland veterans.
Is it any surprise that they're not taking our country's security seriously, when this is how they treat people who've risked their lives to keep us safe?
Risked their lives? I guess Soldier F could have got a nasty blister from the amount of rounds he fired on Bloody Sunday.
Someone wanted the army sent in to shoot the rioters yesterday. Is soldier F busy, or can he do consultancy?
If my memory serves me, his conclusion as to what constituted a rioter wasn't fantastic, although he turned out to be a brilliant recruiting sergeant for top drawer Nationalist rioters and bone fide terrorists. Is that the sort of experience and quality you had in mind?
I was being sarcastic. The suggestion that the Army shooting at rioters would improve the situation. Or indeed The Peace Process.
Which is, apparently, sacred.
So was I. Personally as a regular visitor to the Northern part of the Emerald Isle I wouldn't dick about with the GFA either.
I still reject the idea that the GFA necessarily includes non-prosecution of criminals for murder, mass drug dealing, bank robberies and arson with side order of racism.
That wasn’t what we voted for. The politicians just found peace at any price the easy way forward.
EDIT: note the firebomb attack in Manchester. The Peace Process visiting the mainland?
Sorry, but have you gone completely loony? The Peace Process has nothing to do with the firebombing of an imam in Manchester.
I am drawing a line between scum doing racist firebombing in Northern Ireland and scum doing racist firebombing in Manchester.
Monkey see. Monkey do.
Remember all the EDL/BNP/etc efforts to pal up with the Community Leaders in NI?
To the racist scum here, the Peace Process style is what they want. Power for them. on the streets.
I know. You keep repeating yourself. But it's still bonkers.
It's not bonkers to state that the Community Leaders have been given qualified immunity to Carry On Being Criminal. They have.
It's not bonkers to point out that this now includes ethnic cleansing. It does
It's not bonkers to point out the frequent attempts by the extreme right, in the UK, to join up with the Ulster paramilitaries. See stories in the Guardian and BBC.
If you let the scum be scum, you get scummy behaviour.
Sure. But my reading of your view based on the many posts we've had on it in the last few days is as follows:
The Northern Island peace process, which ended the thirty year orgy of sectarian violence known as the Troubles, was in fact a straight up appeasement of sectarian violence. The persistence of sectarian violence today, albeit at vastly reduced levels, proves this and shows what a big mistake it was.
It's an odd view but clearly a passionate one. I sense there's a personal axe in this for you. Would that be right?
No, the Peace Process *was* a political settlement, in which both sides agreed to use democratic norms to settle differences, by getting elected to an assembly and forming a partnership government.
The Men of Violence were persuaded to stop murdering by a combination of force and the offer of jobs.
As the peace process progressed, the MoV pushed against what they saw as annoying things. Like being arrested for entirely civilian crimes.
The response of the Governments in London and Dublin was to give them whatever they wanted. So, after each riot or permeative terroristic attack, the police were pulled back further and investigations were dropped. The alternative was not an instant return to WAR!!!! but some possibility of violence, if the investigations were continued.
This appeasement then created a situation in which the social democratic politicians were seen as increasingly irrelevant, on the streets. So the SDLP gave way to SF and in Unionist politics, the ratchet followed, as the UUP faded, the DUP came in etc etc.
The final result of this ratcheting of the appeasement is that racist firebombing of homes is not a prosecutable crime.
Ok. That's a clearer explanation. And the personal axe? Was I right about that?
It's not a particularly rational explanation. Surely the greater good has been achieved through the GFA.
Chasing down evil bastard sectarians of both flavours sadly seems not worth the deaths and maimings resulting in the Europa Hotel continuing to be blown up every few months.
That assumes that prosecuting individuals for "civilian" crimes would lead straight back to war.
According to that logic, if I want my mainland crime syndicate to be untouched, I should just threaten to bomb the Savoy each year, until the police stop investigating me.
So don't complain about the racist firebombing. Perhaps we should celebrate them?
For The Greater Good.
I have no desire to see Loyalist and Republican criminals getting away with murder, but if they promise to never do it again, are as good as their word and several thousands people who would otherwise have died if the sectarian criminals hadn't made that promise live to tell the tail, reluctantly I would live with it.
I think you're mixing up two issues.
As part of the GFA, we decided to not to go after the MoV for their former activities, prior to the GFA, in return for them ceasing to be MoV. That was unpalatable, but probably necessary.
What we've also done, in practice, is give the MoV a degree of immunity from investigation for crimes committed post GFA. This is very much not OK, because ultimately it's allowing the MoV to continue to exert control via thier violence. Thus we arrive at the point where we sentence English people who may have posted unkind things about on Twitter about immigrants more harshly than the MoV who have been pulling the strings behind the latest round of burning people out of their houses in Belfast.
(I'm actually in NI this week, I encountered a load of stuff dumped and set on fire at a junction on the A55 in East Belfast on my way through on Tuesday night, which was a bit surreal when you're not used to that sort of thing - presumably in some way connected to the protests).
Thanks for the summary. While the police may be taking a different approach in Belfast, @Malmesbury is exaggerating. Multiple people have been arrested and charged in Belfast.
Multiple junior spides. The men in masks handing out lists of houses to target - nope. The men behind them? They had lunch at Stormont.
Same as the mainland. Some banged up in Southampton, others in the House of Commons.
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Alanis Morrisette wasn't very good.
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