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...
Greens clearly have the best policies by an absolute mile.
Meh, let's wait and see for their manifesto.
The environment is by far and away the most important issue for me, and I've voted Green in general elections before, but you can always trust them to include something spectacularly stupid in their manifesto which will drive all of the coverage away from the environment.
The problem for the left is that nature abhors a vacuum. In the absence of any important policies on issues that actually make a huge difference to peoples lives, it is going to get filled with lowest common denominator identity politics.
The Green party focus on all these issues. Free busses for under 22s, and £1 travel for those over. Free school meals for all. Better renters protection and a large investment in insulation for housing. Okay, they are never going to gain power, but a vote for t
Are the greens proposing to cover all the extra free stuff they campaign for mostly with extra taxes, or extra deficit, or both in more or less equal parts?
Are the greens proposing to cover all the extra free stuff they campaign for mostly with extra taxes, or extra deficit, or both in more or less equal parts?
It doesn't really matter how they plan to fund it as they are not actually going to win power. What matters is the optics of a significant minority endorsing their policies, which will force the major parties to change tack to try and win those votes.
Absolutely
The opposite of a wasted vote
I think Starmer does recognise this. He’s been making a conscious effort to appear patriotic and he mostly just tries to avoid culture war stuff.
I would not say that altogether. He's still weak on 'what a woman is', which makes him a culture warrior and also makes him look silly and overly metropolitan, and the plan to impose VAT on education in certain schools -- but not in universities, which are also private elitist fee-charging entities -- looks suspiciously like 1970s 'class war', in addition to the fact that the cost of accommodating and educating all those financially gonged-out private-school pupils in the state sector will greatly exceed the potential tax take, and the fact that a wholly state-maintained secondary education sector will itself impose vicious financial elitism according to who can afford to live in the catchment areas of the best schools.
I would not say that altogether. He's still weak on 'what a woman is', which makes him a culture warrior and also makes him look silly and overly metropolitan.
Although he took several years to get there, he has muttered "adult female" at least once in answer to this question. Here is the proof, although it's hard to read with a straight face.
This is all just so depressing. There is nothing to make me vote for either of the big parties, since Labour binned their environmental pledges. It's just Green or don't bother voting for me.
I probably won't bother voting for you - we've already got the NF in power now anyway.
The Greens are not seriously in contention outside of Brighton (though they have won a council seat in Hampstead & Highgate), being a niche middle-class ginger-group. The question is what happens to the Tories after the upcoming defeat, with numerous Tory MPs announcing they won't stand again, and also what happens to Labour after a victory which is really only to do with resentment of the government and not with anything Labour has to offer (which frankly isn't much).
You're missing the entire second half of the law that you're quoting. It's not enough for the behaviour to be reasonably considered "threatening, abusive or insulting" it must also meet the second part which says "a reasonable person would consider the behaviour or the communication of the material to be likely to result in hatred being stirred up against such a group."
So Husker is quite clearly not correct that a family conversation could be covered by it unless that conversation is of the form
This problem here is that you don't have any experience of following the bill through the Scottish Parliament. It was confirmed during this time, in parliament, that yes a family conversation around the dinner table could be covered.
Also, the major issue that you seem to be missing when quoting what a 'reasonable person considers...' is that it is very much open to the interpretation initially of the police. There is no general confidence that this statement actually means anything.
Not unless there was someone involved in the conversation that they were specifically harassing as part of the conversation (and even then it would need active hatred, not just arguments against the religion to meet the criteria). It requires both "threatening, abusive or insulting" behaviour towards a person and the incitement against the larger group to be covered under this legislation.
The actual issue with this stuff has almost nothing to do with the legalities involved (you might have an is
The bolded is very much the issue and all signs are that the police are already getting things badly wrong. There's been numerous arcticles and discussion around this in the past couple of weeks. The Scottish Police Federation are very concerned about this legislation as are the Association of Scottish Police Superintendents and The Scottish Police Authority. That's very concerning.
The main concern is that even where people don't cross the criminal threshold, the investigation, possible confiscation or laptops, phones, etc and the time this could all take will have a chilling effect on free speech. There is also issues around recording non hate crime incidents.
Just to show where we are right now, and this is before the new legislation comes in, a Conservative MSP is threatening to take the police to court as he just discovered that Police Scotland recorded his name for a non criminal hate incident
And this is the 'hate incident' that was the issue
And here's a report from yesterday about one of the various ways the police are acting disingeniously here. There is no confidence in how this will be policed.
I'm thinking of reporting everyone in scotland for hating the english
Funnily enough I was reading an article by Kathleen Stock today that touched upon that point
"Growing up in Scotland as the offspring of sassenachs, I have certainly been made aware of the presence of spikes of hatred at various times in my life; but strangely enough, animus against the English does not figure heavily in defences of the policies. Instead, the focus is upon more fashionable victims. You may not understand what a non-binary person actually is, let alone be able to summon up enough negative emotion to persecute one, but according to the Scottish government such people are sufficiently threatened as to justify their specific inclusion in the Bill. Also included under the characteristic of transgender identity are people who “cross-dress”: good news for the many Scotswomen who wear trousers, as otherwise females don’t get much of a look-in, with sex not mentioned as a protected characteristic at all."
Doesn anyone have a comparable table here for the UK government? Would be interesting to compare the figures for how few folk think each government is doing.
Jeffrey Donaldson has resigned as DUP leader after being charged with "allegations of a historical nature".
A husband and wife from Co Down have been charged with a series of historical sexual offences against two children.
The 61-year old male was arrested at his home alongside his wife, 57, around 6am on Thursday, March, 28.
The pair were transported to the Antrim Custody suite for interview.
Both are facing allegations of serious historical sexual offences.
The male is facing one charge of rape and has been accused of a number of other sexual offences, including historical gross indecency.
His wife is facing a number of charges relating to the alleged offences faced by her husband.
Both were interviewed separately at intervals throughout the day in Antrim and were 28-day charged. They were released shortly after 10pm.
The pair are expected to appear in court on Thursday, April 25.
What an awful man.
Just when it looked like NI politics was becoming a bit less of a shitshow.
Deviant Ulster Perv.
Doesn anyone have a comparable table here for the UK government? Would be interesting to compare the figures for how few folk think each government is doing.
83% dissatisfied overall with the UK government, per Ipsos.
https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/uk-opinion-p...
Though note that 55% are dissatisfied with Keir Starmer, though this is better than the 73% dissatisfied with Rishi Sunak.
(Interestingly, 52% now think Brexit has had a negative impact and only 22% think it's positive, with another 22% arguing no difference.)
The Westminster Tory government may have the same problem as the SNP in Scotland -- been in power too long and everybody's sick of them -- but the Tories have not done anything as mad as the SNP's Hate Crime Bill. Whether the inevitably incoming Labour government will do anything that mad, I wouldn't care to predict, but it's possible. You'd think the recent Irish referendum disaster might have warned politicians that, as they should have known already, the public tend to be socially conservative -- but politicians like to force things and act 'new' and show off their power, so maybe they haven't got it.
My friend Lisa was refused a job at Waitrose in Glasgow a few years ago because, she was told, 'Our customers don't like English accents.' I wonder if that would be covered by the Hate Crime Bill? I'm guessing probably not, somehow, even though you couldn't come across a clearer example of irrational hate-based discrimination which we all know is as common as rainwater in Scotland.
83% dissatisfied overall with the UK government, per Ipsos.
https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/uk-opinion-p...
Though note that 55% are dissatisfied with Keir Starmer, though this is better than the 73% dissatisfied with Rishi Sunak.
i dont think i will see a prominent politician maintain a >50% approval rating for a sustained period again in my lifetime
Politicians of all colours have facked things up in the UK so badly for so long it's a pretty rational response.
Try explaining to someone why Norway have a sovereign wealth fund set up from their oil and gas revenues but the UK spent most of theirs on unemployment benefit.
Norways pm has a lower (just) popularity rating that sunak
Politicians of all colours have facked things up in the UK so badly for so long it's a pretty rational response.
Try explaining to someone why Norway have a sovereign wealth fund set up from their oil and gas revenues but the UK spent most of theirs on unemployment benefit.
Not to justify government welfare in general, but the size of the benefit of fossil fuels for the UK was far smaller than for Norway.
Less total revenue for like 11x the people
