British Politics
Been on holiday for a few weeks, surprised to find no general discussion of British politics so though I'd kick one off.
Tory leadership contest is quickly turning into farce. Trump has backed Boris, which should be reason enough for anyone with half a brain to exclude him.
Of the other candidates Rory Stewart looks the best of the outsiders. Surprised to see Cleverly and Javid not further up the betting, but not sure the Tory membership are ready for a brown PM.
https://www.oddschecker.com/politics/bri...
Regarding the LD leadership contest, Jo Swinson is miles ahead of any other candidate (and indeed any of the Tory lot). Should be a shoe in.
Finally, it's Groundhog Day in Labour - the more serious the anti-Semitism claims get, the more Corbyn's cronies write their own obituary by blaming it on outlandish conspiracy theories - this week, it's apparently the Jewish Embassy's fault...
What makes you think she wouldn't face very severe repercussions if she ever goes back to the UK?
Do you mean legal, or society would punish her extra-legally?
--I looked into the Begum case, and it appears Britain was able to legally deny her repatriation because she was also technically a citizen of Bangladesh, so she wouldn't be left "stateless". Bangladesh responded by saying they would not accept her either, but it was ruled by the court this did not make Britain's decision illegal.
--I dont know if Asma Al-Assad has any other citizenship. If not, it does not appear she can be legally denied repatriation. I also dont know if Britain would even want to do so in this case.
--There is also a murky gray area of whether being a family member of an alleged war criminal makes one guilty themselves. In Begum's case it was alleged she was an active participant in ISIS human rights abuses as a female morality police enforcer; although her counsel tried to argue this was mostly exaggerated.
AFAIK no one has ever accused Asma Al-Assad of being an active participant in the regimes human rights abuses.
I mean legal, as co-conspirator of countless crimes against humanity.
She has Syrian citizenship as well obviously.
She should be sent in Syria to answer Syrian courts
In 2021 she was already at risk of losing citizenship
What makes you think she wouldn't face very severe repercussions if she ever goes back to the UK?
She might have reason to worry about that possibility.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/m...
The Americans, including people associated with Mr Trump, don't seem to like her either, mainly for reasons to do with business practice, and the UK is not the least receptive place for US outreach. Far from Asma coming to the UK, her father seems to have gone to Moscow to be with her. I doubt she'd regard the UK as safe.
But as long as you have a working democracy, with free speech in the constitution people stop being put in jail for speech, simple as that. As the USA proves.
Ofc the USA has other provisions that make it harder for hitler wonnabe to get the entire power. But if Farage wins election he is not going to be Hitler. But thanks to the ABSURD follies of hate speech laws, he will be able to put people who say things he disagree with in prison, within the law.
And even if leftists deserve that in full, i
Under Art.10 of the European Convention, embodied in British law, a hypothetical Fuhrer Farage couldn't do that without a considerable constitutional makeover. And the US First Amendment only restricts what the federal government can do. Since the US still has at-will employment law, Americans can be fired for wrongthink or wrongspeech (and thus lose their health insurance) at any time without redress, which probably has a deeper and more insidious chilling effect that any European law, as you can kind of see in the Big Brother 1984 Newspeak that Americans sometimes seem to think they're obliged to talk.
Pinochet was arrested in London on a Spanish magistrate's warrant. The case was legally complex and groundbreaking, in that the suspect was detained at the behest of a third-party authority without an extradition request from his own country where the alleged crimes were committed. He was eventually released -- only on supposed grounds of ill-health, since the House of Lords ruled that former heads of state had no immunity -- but was returned to Chile where charges were filed, and he died while under investigation. I doubt he liked any of that much.
Both former British PM Thatcher and former US President George Bush called for the British to release Pinochet so he could avoid extradition.
I applaud labour for resetting the transition to electric cars back to 2030 from 2035, but they now really need to get some investment in charging infrastructure in place, otherwise people are gonna get really angry.
Is forcing people to plump for cheap electrical cars imported from China that will need completely replacing in 10 years going to solve the climate? probably not.
Serious investment in public transport is what is needed.
Newsflash. Nothing short of a leap in technology will solve the climate crisis now. It’s just about damage limitation.
That now almost certainly has to include defensive leaps. Carbon capture, atmospheric blocking etc in some form are certainties now.
In the meantime we have to push the technology/infrastructure as fast as possible even if that means a generation of relatively poor electric cars. There's a lot of politcs as well with the trump/china/etc scenarios developing.
Big yes to better public transport as well.
Free speech? Extremism is on the rise, but it was mostly a non issue in the US until ten years ago. There were always fanatical groups, but they didn't have any power because no one took them seriously, and the damage they did was minimized. Social media and foreign influence have been key factors, but if anything, censorship provokes them.
Exremism is on the rise for a number of reasons. Law of moses type consitutions being a disaster is a separate issue to a large extent except that it allows a huge degree of complacency while offer no meaningful protection and an easy path for extremism to take over.
THATS SOCIALISM!
There's hope
otoh
Spoiler
It will be Reeves or Streeting
holy crap
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has written to the UK's main watchdogs, asking them to come up with ideas for reform that could boost economic growth.
He contacted the companies - including energy regulator Ofgem and water regulator Ofwat - on Christmas Eve. They were told to submit their proposals by the middle of January, as first reported by Sky News.
With regard to Asma al-Assad, discussed earlier, it appears that her British passport expired in September 2020 and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is not minded to renew it or to allow Assad entry to the UK even on compassionate medical grounds -- she is reportedly suffering from acute myeloid leukaemia, with a fairly poor prognosis. It does not look as though she will be welcomed back under any circumstances.
Also reported by Owen Jones in the last couple of days.
The transcript of the grooming gang trials came out. The most absolutely depraved sexual and psychological abuse of children you could imagine, and worse. Many of these perpetuators will be out of jail soon after serving short stints.
Also interesting, it is reported during the trials family and friends of the perpetrators came to give support to the perpetrators and to taunt the victims.
But for whatever reason Britain has decided this is the kind of society they want to have moving forward, so who am I to complain.
These people have one thing in common
Albert Finney
David Bowie
Stephen Hawking
George Bernard Shaw
Alan Bennett
Ken Loach
Aldous Huxley
L.S. Lowry
Harold Pinter
J.B. Priestley
The transcript of the grooming gang trials came out. The most absolutely depraved sexual and psychological abuse of children you could imagine, and worse. Many of these perpetuators will be out of jail soon after serving short stints.
Also interesting, it is reported during the trials family and friends of the perpetrators came to give support to the perpetrators and to taunt the victims.
But for whatever reason Britain has decided this is the kind of society they want to have moving forward,
We are talking this level of events
I do not understand why any person would accept anything but the most severe penalty existing for any crime for people who did that. Whether it is the death penalty, or life no parole, or 30 years, whatever the maximum possible sentence is in a jurisdiction, it should be applied in cases like this.
Is there anyone who disagrees who can go through the rationale as to why it is proper to ever let people who do this participate in society ever again? because i truly can't comprehend a mindset that generates such an idea.
I believe he was found unanimously guilty and sentenced to life.
Id be up for the death penalty tbh
We are talking this level of events
I do not understand why any person would accept anything but the most severe penalty existing for any crime for people who did that. Whether it is the death penalty, or life no parole, or 30 years, whatever the maximum possible sentence is in a jurisdiction, it should be applied in cases like this.
Is there anyone who disagrees who can go through the rationale as to why it is proper to ever let people who do this participate in society ever again? because i tr
I personally think a whole life tariff without parole is justified in this case, but at the very least he'll be off the streets for 20 years and I'd be surprised if he was paroled upon serving his minimum tariff.
