This thread exists to discuss British politics.
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Recent political stuff:
- The vote to see if Britain should adopt Alternative Voting has failed.
- Lib Dems lose lots of councils and councillors, whilst Labour make the majority of the gains in England.
- The Scottish National Party do really well in the elections.
A link to the BBC politics page containing relevant information.
Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 3rd 2023 at 11:15:30 AM
Tief girl with eartude
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
And the air here stays a little cleaner.
Student protest: lets focus on the arrests and not the issue at hand, standard. 10000+ students, 11 arrests. So lets make that 0.1% of protesters be representative of the whole movement shall we. (As an aside, I am feeling a certain level of schadenfreude when I see the NUS getting attacked for not getting behind this protest. Coming from being a heavily involved member of one of the University unions that has disaffiliated from the NUS we often suffered the same criticism as a result.)
Good God, Dominic Cummings is such a whiner. Now I know there is no smoke without fire and if we take him at his word it would confirm many of the "flashman" criticisms of David Cameron but face it, a lot of DC's problems are products of the age and DC is a politician for this age. Yes, DC cares too much about the gimmick and the 24hr news cycle but equally the 24hrs news cycle craves this sort of politics and the whole thing just ends up feeding itself.
Danny Danny Danny... don't steal people's milk! Danny Alexander, milk philanderer doesn't have the same ring to it as Thatcher, Milk Snatcher.
Peaceful protests don't sell newspapers though.
"Yup. That tasted purple."
A procrastination in of itself
I miss everything fun thanks to having assignments due soon. 
I remember the 2010 protests in parliament square, I helped build the toilets. Honestly I'd be shocked if the people arrested were even connected to the protest, we had a heavy black block element back in 2010 who obviously turned up for no other reason than to fight.
Actually it's the Met, they probably ignored the black block element and just went for the black kids.
And can they just fuck of with fencing of parliament square green? It's a nice bit of grass and if people wanna protest on it they should have the dam right to.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
BBC: Blow to UK's bankers' bonus cap challenge
The cap restricts bonuses to 100% of banker's pay or 200% with shareholder approval.
Advocate General Niilo Jääskinen gave an opinion that the EU legislation limiting the ratio was valid.
The cap on the ratio is designed to reduce incentives for bankers to take excessive risks but critics say it will push up basic pay and banks' costs.
That might look a bit ugly for the tourists.
edited 20th Nov '14 3:55:55 AM by Deadbeatloser22
"Yup. That tasted purple."
V
...and today is the Rochester By-Election.
Keep Rolling On
A procrastination in of itself
"What have the Europeans ever done for us?" much?
As for the green, it being constantly fenced off gives a more worse impression. It looks like someone in government took the "when I become dictator the first thing I'll do is abolish all squares, trouble always starts in squares" joke as a serious suggestion.
This is gonna suck. Real shame to, I know the Labour candidate well, she's a good person. The whole of Medway Labour are.
edited 20th Nov '14 5:14:32 AM by SilasW
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
V
Being a good person doesn't win seats. Not when the party has lost the support of an old-fashioned working-class area like Medway.
House Lewis: Sanity is Relative
Convicted rapist Ched Evans will no longer be allowe to train with former club Sheffield United.
Inevitable but good to see. Should have been done in the first place though.
My name is Addy. Please call me that instead of my username.
BBC: Labour's Emily Thornberry quits over tweet
The shadow attorney general previously apologised for the tweet, which showed a terraced house with three England flags, and a white van parked outside.
Alongside the picture, she wrote: "Image from Rochester".
She said she had not meant to cause offence.
V
But it's yet another nail in Labour's coffin for some working-class voters, who think that the now-Bourgeois Bohemian Labour treats them with contempt and hatred. If they vote at all, they'll vote for UKIP...
House Lewis: Sanity is Relative
Christ, the last thing that Labour needs right now. She's not wrong, but was stupid to say it (same applies to Gordon Brown over bigot-gate of course, that woman was a damn bigot!).
My name is Addy. Please call me that instead of my username.
V
From the Daily Telegraph feed:
22.30 EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Man who lives at house in Thornberry tweet hits back
Chris Hope, the Telegraph's senior political correspondent currently in Rochester, tracked down the house tweeted about by Ms Thornberry - who has just resigned - earlier today. Dan Ware criticised the (now former) Labour frontbencher about her comments and also posed for a picture.
Chris writes: Mr Ware, 36, a father of four who works in the motor trade and property maintenance, said the flags had been on his house since the World Cup.
He said that he had voted Conservative at the 2010 election but "I don't know why", and had no idea there was a by-election in Rochester and Strood that evening.
Asked about how he felt about Miss Thornberry's Tweet, he said: "She is a snob - what has she got a three storey townhouse in Islington?"
Mr Ware who has lived in Rochester for 15 years said he was upset that his van's licence plate had been put on the internet, saying it was a "privacy thing".
He said: "The picture shouldn't be took. She should ask first because the registration number is in the picture.
"I will continue to fly the flags - I don't care who it pisses off. I know there is a lot of ethnic minorities that don't like it. They have been up since the World Cup."
He said he did not like Labour's views, but was not political.
edited 20th Nov '14 3:33:51 PM by Greenmantle
Keep Rolling On
A procrastination in of itself
The BBC version of the pic clips out the numberplate rather well. And dear god was that stupid, Vince, Naushabah and the others are gonna be pissed about that.
I mean dear fucking god, who thinks deliberately insulting the electorate is a good idea? And on twitter of all places, if she wanted to take a serious statement about the prevalence of little England racism she could have, but instead the fool decided to insult the electorate (who had no finished voting) on twitter of all places.
Not to mention the privacy issue of putting photos of someone's house online without permission.
She shouldn't have been allowed to resign, she shood have been sacked from the Shadow Cabinet for stupidity alone.
edited 20th Nov '14 4:01:15 PM by SilasW
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Do you think we're looking at the next Bailiff of the Hundreds then?
"Yup. That tasted purple."
This whole thing is serving as a rorschach test.
If you think Labour are ruled by a metropolitan elite: proof.
If you find the cross of St George threatening and alienating: there you go.
What isn't happening of course is that no one has any answers to those problems. How does Labour regain credibility with the working class? Equally, how do we tackle the endemic racism that is on display in the mentality of the Little Englander?
Pronounced YAK-you-luss
After looking at her Twitter, I'm prepared to accept her explanation that she just went 'ooh, lots of flags, that's neat'. It's filled with pictures of quirky and unusual sights she's seen while out and about on MP business, including several others from Rochester. Dumb decision to include a licence-plate, but that's as far as it seems to have gone.
What's precedent ever done for us?
Maybe google should add that script that censored all the number plates on Streetview to the Andoid camera.
"Yup. That tasted purple."
A procrastination in of itself
Nah, central office aren't gonna go that far. Though this will cost us votes in Medway come the general, sadly Medway labour don't have that much pull, especially since our likelihood of gaining seats dropping rapidly.
Burn the square mile to the ground. No more coddling up to bankers, no more Westminster elites, we need to draw the party back to working class people with working class problems. As for tackling the racism, we run out the clock and tackle other problems. If we can get a good prosperous economy than people aren't going to care about immigrants as much. An immigrant can't steal a job if there are enough jobs for everyone.
That and we have to come out as pro EU, stop accepting the bullshit that is spewed out by the right. Champion the good things that the EU does for us while also pushing for internal reforms to the system.
If that's genuinely why she did it then she's an idiot for not saying that, such an explanation hasn't been picked up by any news organisations yet. Plus she'll have got angry tweets pretty quick about it, how hard would it have been to send a second tweet going "I thought it was a pretty house and wanted to share, what's all the fuss about?"? That explanation smells fishy to me.
edited 20th Nov '14 4:11:42 PM by SilasW
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Pronounced YAK-you-luss
Meanwhile, on the same day, Iain Duncan Smith cracks up while Ed Miliband's talking about a rape victim about to be booted from her home because of the welfare tax. Back in June, he argued for her case against the DWP to be dismissed. But sure British media, let's bay for the head of the woman who didn't write a long enough description on one of her Twitter updates.
She did do that, pretty much. Here's her Twitter feed. Note the past tweets and the image gallery.
edited 20th Nov '14 4:23:40 PM by Iaculus
What's precedent ever done for us?
A procrastination in of itself
In fairness we've got a screencap of one. Plus nobody acts with any decency in PM Qs, it's a massive farse. I've literally seen five year old children treat the democratic process with greater respect.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
IDS being a fucking vampire is old news. We need new controversy.
"Yup. That tasted purple."
Pronounced YAK-you-luss
The Shadow Cabinet response was hilariously terrible, though, and illustrates how gutless Labour has become. It would have been a lot easier to roll with it and wait for the media to get bored and wandered off if they hadn't gone into instant panic-mode and booted out one of their ministers. It's like Yvette Cooper going 'it's not racist to be concerned about immigration', Scottish Labour being barred from campaigning against the bedroom tax because Westminster hadn't decided if they liked it or not, or the way they're just uncritically regurgitating the tripe that is the economic underpinning of the Conservative Party's pro-austerity drive. For the love of Odin, grow some stones, people.
What's precedent ever done for us?
BBC: Farage rejects deportation claims amid UKIP migrant row
Mark Reckless suggested existing EU migrants would only be allowed to remain in the UK for "a transitional period" should the UK quit the EU.
But Mr Farage insisted UKIP respected the "rule of law and British justice".
And he downplayed the comments as a "minor cause for confusion".