Politics Thread!

[Harlequin]

*SNIP*

.. and you'd think "certain things happen only in Russia" ...

To be fair, I think Drury Jr and I were removed at Mum and Dad's request. My existence was generally hidden from media dissemination for my protection.

[KlaxonCow]

Not for the first time a simple mis-step which could have been nothing was turned into a proof-of-character by doubling down on denial and lying. It's an issue because it highlights, once again, that the government is populated by serial liars.

Yes. You've more elegantly expressed what I was saying earlier.

It's not really about whether Boris was edited in or out (though, seriously, he was edited out - there is other evidence of his presence at that spaceport that day). It's the response. Lying, pretending like no-one can tell it's a lie when it's obviously a lie.

They're not even very good at lying. As I suggested, a natural response might be "oh, wait, yes, this photo appears to have been manipulated". Like, don't try to deny it's a fake, as it's so bloody obviously so. But express surprise that, oh dear, it seems I've been somehow fooled by a fake. Apologise for posting it, and express curiosity at "I wonder where this manipulated photo could have come from?" (which is another lie, as he does know where - Tory head office - but you can pretend like you found it on the Internet and who knows who did it, eh?).

[merman]

Only the Tories would put the MP caught watching porn in the House of Commons in charge of the online security bill... and looks like a major backbench revolt because Sunak has watered down certain measures.

[KlaxonCow]

So Westminster is going to block Scotland's gender recognition bill.

...and I can't help but wonder if Sturgeon has actually deliberately baited them.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not challenging that she might well genuinely believe it's a worthy social justice issue that needs addressing - I don't think she's so cynical as to have done this solely as a trap for the Tories at Westminster - but just that, mulling it over, she might well have realised that the Tories wouldn't ideologically tolerate it.

That Westminster would step in to block it. And, there you go, she's got an example of the Tories overriding devolution when they feel like it, overriding the democratically elected Scottish Parliament to take with her on the coming Scottish Independence campaign. "Do you remember that time when Westminster overrode the Scottish Parliament, to foist its own Westminster Tory morality over Scotland?".

And it is Tory morality, in the sense that this is the executive stepping in to stop it - using Section 35 to refuse to pass it on for Royal assent - and not as a result of a vote in the House of Commons (though, you know, I don't know that Labour and the Lib Dems wouldn't also want to block it too, for similar reasons - but the fundamental point is that they were never asked and this block is an executive government decision, not a House of Commons vote). So there's serious grounds to call this anti-democratic, as they're overriding a vote by a democratically elected Parliament without a similar vote in the House of Commons - the superior Chamber - to validate that.

Indeed, I don't doubt that when the Scottish Parliament legally debates this - as they have said they're going to seek a legal ruling on this - that that will be a part of their defence.

But, yeah, I do wonder if Sturgeon thought to herself beforehand, and realised that there's a "win / win" on this one. That if the Tories couldn't - and now haven't - been able to resist blocking the law, that actually plays into her hands on the Independence vote as well. Now they have a concrete example to take on the campaign, proving that Westminster will block Scottish democracy whenever it feels like it.

This was, I'm sure, a genuine social justice issue but the SNP could also recognise it as an opportunity to make Westminster's Tories show their "imperial colours", as they'll no doubt phrase it.

The cat is amongst the pigeons.

Also, yes, I said the coming Independence campaign. Because though Westminster is blocking the referendum from happening, it'll come eventually - the political pressure will eventually become intolerable - and the very fact that it was blocked from taking place will be on the campaign trail. It's effectively an implicit admission that they know they're going to lose, that they can't allow a simple democratic vote.

Since the previous Scottish Independence referendum, where remaining in the UK barely scraped through as it is, Westminster has done nothing but broken all its promises and made the Scottish / English divide a gaping chasm. Including Brexit - which Scotland didn't vote for - and a very big reason for voting to stay in the UK was that the UK was an EU member at the time. No more. To get back in the EU, Scotland would now have to vote for Independence and then re-apply as an independent nation.

When the vote eventually happens, Scotland's gone and the UK ceases to be and the Union Flag needs to be changed. The Tories have all but guaranteed it now.

[tufty]

Matt Green is getting better and better

[merman]

Sunak doesn’t get Zahawi out of the headlines that easily.
Zahawi’s name is on the Finance Bill about to be voted on - giving bankers unlimited bonuses while the rest of us are told we have to accept below-inflation pay rises AND more cuts to services.

And guess which company benefits by millions from the contract overseeing photo ID at elections? Why, that would be Infosys, which is part-owned by Sunak’s father-in-law. More Tory sleaze.

[KlaxonCow]

And guess which company benefits by millions from the contract overseeing photo ID at elections? Why, that would be Infosys, which is part-owned by Sunak’s father-in-law. More Tory sleaze.

Which is a "solution" seeking a problem.

If, at the last election or two, there'd been some grand controversy that thousands of fraudulent votes were cast, then you could see the justification.

But there is no significant problem with voter registration or fraudulent voting. They're providing a "solution" to something that they haven't - and can't - demonstrate is even a problem in the first place.

What this really is, is a subtle form of election gerrymandering.

Which demographic is the least likely to have current photo ID like a passport or a driving licence? The poor. As the poorest ain't got any money for foreign holidays or could afford the expense of buying and running a car.

Who tends to vote Tory? The well off, typically.

There is no known significant problem with voter registration and fraud. But, doing this, you'll "trim the fat" of likely Labour voters from elections, by raising the bar on the poorest.

This is a known electioneering trick.

Here's the Amazing Atheist trying out the "literacy test" that some Southern states in America made black people take, in order to qualify for voting. It's from the 1960s, so they were still trying to block blacks from voting with stupid tests and unnecessary barriers, even that recently, and after the laws ending segregation had been passed.



As you can see, the "test" is just bullshit designed to make people fail it. Spot a black person coming to vote? Make them take the bullshit "literacy test" and they're pretty much guaranteed to fail - as it's full of trick questions and incomprehensible nonsense, while you're given insufficient time to even complete it - and can be barred from voting.

This is really what's going on. Because the Tories face an election time bomb, in that their demographics are older, well off and more rural people. And those demographics are increasingly not holding the majority as time rolls by. So we see them constantly playing with constituency boundaries and adding in these extra barriers to poor voters, in an attempt to cling on a little longer, against an inevitable demographic time bomb that's working against them.

It's not so openly and blatantly the bullshit we see with the "literacy test" above, where it's plain as day that it was completely designed to stop black people voting.

But it's the same basic concept. Raise the complication and barriers on being able to vote, and it's the poorest - who're least likely to vote Tory - who always fall through the cracks.

[gilesgoat]

In other words "we know it's all bullshit" ... the problem is we can't stop it ...

[KlaxonCow]

In other words "we know it's all bullshit" ... the problem is we can't stop it ...

Well, the problem is that our only means of stopping it is...

...by voting. Oh, wait.

[gilesgoat]

In other words "we know it's all bullshit" ... the problem is we can't stop it ...

Well, the problem is that our only means of stopping it is...

...by voting. Oh, wait.

"Open Question" .. is there any "system" that would "mathematically work" ?

OR "any system would work IFF there would be no human greed and corruption" ?

Problem is it seems that even the "democratic/voting system" seems not to work and/or is "spoilable" also we saw "what good is really when you get a STRONG 49%-51% situation ?" ..

[Harlequin]

"Open Question" .. is there any "system" that would "mathematically work" ?

OR "any system would work IFF there would be no human greed and corruption" ?

Problem is it seems that even the "democratic/voting system" seems not to work and/or is "spoilable" also we saw "what good is really when you get a STRONG 49%-51% situation ?" ..

All systems are flawed. What surprises me is the apparent shortage of new systems being developed and tried over the last century or so.

[KlaxonCow]

What surprises me is the apparent shortage of new systems being developed and tried over the last century or so.

Indeed.

I once commented to some Americans that while electing your King was highly progressive in 1776, we can surely do better than that, nearly 250 years later.

I guess the big problem was that the last few attempts at new systems - communism, fascism, etc. - came out really, really, really bad (he says with gross understatement). Understandably putting anyone off the idea of conjuring up a new system and enthusiastically supporting it.

It's a small mercy, I guess, that Marx didn't live to see the Gulags or the Tiananmen Square massacre, as - though I think his proposed solution was simply wrong - I entirely trust that his intent was genuinely noble. He was trying to end unnecessary suffering in the world, not be the catalyst and excuse for appalling death and misery.

But, yeah, considering what atrocities have occurred in the name of Communism, would you be eagerly volunteering to be the next Karl Marx?

So, we're left with Churchill's famous quotation: "Democracy is the worst system... except for all the other systems that have ever been tried".

Better the mild-mannered evil Capitalist Devil you know, eh? It's grossly unfair. But at least everyone knows how it works and it's predictable for that.


Obligatory "Constitutional Peasant" scene from Monty Python:

[gilesgoat]

Maybe late to the party but I head that Sunak wants UK out of the European Convention on Human Rights .. "to have more control on immigration" ..

However "if that's the reason" .. the devil knows then "what UK-made replacement" they could do then ? Probably a very bad one !

It sounds more and more a "direction" to a quasi-totalitarian closed regime ...

Wasn't the original story of "V for vendetta" supposed to happen in UK ? ... maybe it wasn't that far from the truth ?

[Kelloggs]

Call me cynical ("Surely not!") but:

What surprises me is the apparent shortage of new systems being developed and tried over the last century or so.

Absent an actual revolution, with heads on pikes and a thorough realignment of everything (which I think I can safely speak for a lot of people if I say "we don't really want that") any significant changes to our voting legislation have to be made by our politicians. ("There's yer problem!"). Same reason I didn't detect any great enthusiasm from the LibDem-forced PR referendum of 2011 - you're asking the only people who can make the change, to make a change that derails the gravy train they're comfortably sat on. It can never align with their own self-interest. Whatever research will have been done (if any - there might be none) will be by a separate group of people from the ones that need to be talked into breaking their careers (who all seem to have the opinion "no, I tell you what to do, not the other way round!").

Cynical. Yes, why not?

[Dio]

Probably because the system started to please a majority. That switch flipped sometime between WW1 and WW2 - before that, the peasant have-nearly-nothings vastly outnumbered those that had anything at all. Now, the have-nearly-nothings have been reduced, in the west at least, to a rump.